Search
Close this search box.

Guy's Blog

Guy frequently keeps this blog updated with thoughts, challenges, interviews and more!

Category: What I’m Working On

[UPDATE:

ALL FIXED NOW. PrettyLink support staff went into the back-end of my site and got it done within a few hours of the problem being brought to my attention.]

Both my Rapier Workbook series and my Fiore Translation Project series depend on a system called PrettyLinks, where links in the text of the books direct through this website, and are redirected to the target video (or anywhere else). This means that I can update the video, and redirect the link, without having to change the book.

Awesome.

But while I was away on holiday, something happened and literally the entire list of pretty links, over 300 of them, disappeared from the site and stopped working. I have no idea what happened, but I have enlisted tech support, and even, ironically, upgraded to the ‘pro' version of the plugin to get access to their customer support.

Yes, I have backups. Yes, if necessary, I can recreate the entire fucking list by hand.

But we're currently working on other solutions…

The irony of giving the company money when their product has just trashed my publishing output for the last year is not lost on me. [see update though- money well spent]

Technology is awesome, isn't it?

A week after moving house I jetted off to Helsinki for the photo shoot for the German edition of The Duellist’s Companion, which is being published by Wieland (as was The Swordsman’s Companion, and The Medieval Longsword.) Somewhere in the mists of time the original photos for The Duellist’s Companion got lost, and as you can tell from their work on my other books, Wieland have a very high standard for visuals, so the lower resolution versions I could find just didn’t cut it.

The outstanding Jari Juslin showed up with a mountain of gear, we spent three hours setting up, and then took about 800 photos in the next seven hours. It was a long day, but a happy one, and much thanks go to Jari, of course, and also Maaret Sirkkala, Janne Högdahl (both of whom starred in the original The Duellist’s Companion 13 years ago!), Henry Vesala, and Elizabeth Hohtar. It takes great patience to be a model on one of my shoots, and they all rose to the occasion with sprezzatura.

The original images are enormous- about 40mb each, and over 120 when converted to tiff files as printers prefer. But you can get the idea from the pics in this post. Please note Jari has not tweaked the photos. These are the raw material, not the final version.

In the process of preparing for the shoot I had to go through The Duellist’s Companion with a fine tooth comb, and try to figure out what the hell was I thinking in several places. I think a second edition is long overdue. And with Tom Leoni’s new translation and transcription of the extraordinary Vienna manuscript (MS 381 in the Fürstliche Sammlung des Palais Liechtenstein (Vienna)) clutched in my sweaty palm, shedding new light on some of Capoferro’s more obscure remarks, a second edition taking the Vienna into account would be awesome.

That’s on top of the Fiore Translation Project, the Rapier Workbook Series, and a pretty full travel schedule.

Speaking of which, oh rapier fans of an American disposition: I’ll be in Baltimore in July for Lord Baltimore’s Challenge, helping to run the tournament and teaching a class on the following day. I hope to see many of you there! Follow the link for registration etc.

Ok, now back to work… organising those 800 photos into their proper places in the book. Where should this one go?

It’s been quite a month. I’ve spent half of it in the USA, and the other half moving house. Both of those projects went splendidly, but left very little room for anything like writing- even writing a blog post like this. I really ought to do a post-seminar-review-post for my first ever Boston seminar (the short version: it went very well, with lovely students and kind hosts (the Athena School of Arms – we’re planning a return trip), plus I stumbled upon the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which needs a huge post of its own, and the North Bennet Street School of craftsmanship), my first ever Providence RI seminar (a bespoke afternoon with Alexander Ripa, and two of his students, Halley and Victor- it was a delight, and we in HMA could learn a lot about running schools from sport fencing coaches like Alex), two days R+R in Madison with Heidi Zimmerman (of Draupnir Press) and Chris Vanslambrouck (the Meyer chap), then off to Seattle for lunch with Rory Miller (yes the Rory Miller), and a full weekend’s teaching. 

There were many slots in that schedule where I could have stolen an hour to write, but you know what? Spending the time with friends old and new was a much better use of it. 

I got home on the 16th, just in time to move house on the 24th. Yay! The new house is much better than the old one, for several reasons- not least:

1) I have a proper study.

The swords aren’t up yet because I need to build a rack for them. Something nice in oak, probably. Now, if only I had somewhere to build it…

2) The garden is long enough for archery

And 3) There’s a very nice shed at the bottom of it which is now a woodworking shop. Huzzah!

But you know the problem with a really good writing set-up?

No fucking excuses.

Normal service will resume henceforth.

Oh, but I’m off to Helsinki on Thursday for a photoshoot for a book project, so….

During all this chaotic busyness I’ve stuck to my standard operating procedure, of identifying the one thing that most needs attention, and moving that thing forward by one solid step every day. For the last couple of weeks, that’s been the move.

But now, I have these on my plate:

1) the Fiore Translation Project. I shot some more video for it in Seattle, and should carry on with the writing up and publishing.

2) part four of the Rapier Workbooks series: Rapier and Dagger. It’s coming back from the editor soon, and I should get covers, blurb, etc. sorted out for it.

3) Sean Manning has written a very interesting thorough review of The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts on his blog. You can read it here. It’s clear that the book does most of what I want it to do, but the academic/research section needs expanding, because his response to it is absolutely not what I was aiming at. We’ve corresponded quite a lot about it, and I’m planning to expand that section, post the new stuff here on this blog, and re-do the book somewhat. That may be a whole second edition, or just an expansion on the first.

So I have some questions for you.

Which project would you like me to prioritise?

And regarding The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts, if you’ve read it, is there anything else you’d like me to add to it? Because it costs money to get the print files laid out again, and it all uploaded to the print on demand services, so I’d rather make all the changes in one go.

Answers in the comments below, or by email please; I’m unlikely to see anything you put on social media.

I am face-down in the first draft of the third instalment of my new Rapier Workbook series. Part Two, Completing the Basics is back from the proof reader and I sent it off to layout this morning. Huzzah!

Part Three, Developing Your Skills is proving to be a bit of a beast. It's about how to train, how to develop skills, how to add depth to your art. I have it all clear in my head as one solid unit, but breaking down that massive and complex network of interrelated concepts into the linear framework that books demand is proving quite hard.

I almost never moan about such things on Facebook, but did, on Friday, and got a lot of useful ideas and moral support. My friend Jaakko Tahkokallio posted a link to the blog “Inframethodology”. It's flipping awesome. I especially like this article: On Telling People  What To Do. If you write, especially non-fiction, you should check it out.

I cracked the problem this morning. Instead of trying to establish the structure in advance, and put it neatly in the introduction, I'm just writing out the lessons as I would teach them in class. I'll identify the structure (and tweak as necessary) *after the fact*. This is going so well that I've got time to write this! It's lunchtime and I haven't had time to get dressed yet, but who cares? When the words are flowing, don't stop for trivia.

I'm currently in Helsinki sitting at the dining table in my friend Tina's apartment, and it's a very good day, on several counts:

  1. I spent the weekend at my salle teaching my students. We covered breathing exercises on Friday evening, spent all day Saturday torturing ourselves with rapier footwork, and all day Sunday working on Longsword. I don't miss teaching every evening and most weekends; it's nice to have a normal social life. But teaching seminars is what I'm built to do, I think.
  2. While here I've spent literally every lunch and every dinner catching up with old friends. It's 10 am here and I'll be having sushi for lunch with my godson and his family. I haven't got to see everyone, of course- after 15 years here I have far too many friends to be able to see all of them in a single week. But what a lovely problem to have.
  3. While I've been here I've also managed to shoot a ton of new training video footage, for my various courses and other projects.
  4. I just this minute sent the final print files of my new Rapier Workbook to the printers. I expect to see a jolly fine printed proof *very soon*.

I'm off home tomorrow afternoon… and leaving again on Friday to go to up to London, prior to flying off to Michigan for the Hero Round Table. I have to give a 12 minute speech there, something I've never done before. An hour? easy. Two hours? no problem. Twelve minutes? Dear god, I've got no idea.

So I'm practising…

My basic idea is that heroic behaviour (i.e. doing the right thing despite reasonable fear of the consequences) can be trained for, and the historical duelling arts offer a particularly useful way of doing that.

It will be an excellent opportunity to practise doing the scary thing.

Fortunately I'm also doing two short intro-to-Longsword classes at the event too, which will be much more comfortable.

A load of unarmed people sitting down and listening? Very scary.

A load of armed people standing up and swinging swords? Not scary at all.

This weekend we begin shooting on my brand-new rapier training course. It is intended to cover everything you need to know to get from absolute beginner to competent rapier fencer in the style of Capoferro. We will also look at how to coach, and how to come up with your own interpretations of the source material.

This is not a quick journey, but it is well sign-posted.

The course is organised in seven parts:

Part 1: Introduction

This covers safety, the historical background, warming up, footwork, holding the sword, etc.

Part 2: Fundamentals 

This covers controlling your opponent's sword, parries, and strikes, and the initial actions of plates 7 and 16 from Capoferro.

Part 3: Blade Actions

This covers cuts, beats, disengages, as well as completing plates 7 and 16, and covering plate 10.

Part 4: Completing the Basics

This covers plates 8, 9 and 13, as well as teaching how to add complexity to drills, and start playing with the material.

Part 5: Avoidances

This covers how to get out of the way of the attack, and includes plates 11, 17 and 19, as well as the Rapier Footwork Form.

Part 6: Skill Development

Having covered the entire basic curriculum, this section teaches you how to develop actual fencing skill, in yourself and in others.

Part 7: Rapier and Dagger

Now that you can actually fence respectably with the sword alone, we add the dagger in the other hand. This includes plates 23-26, and 38-40. We also cover rapier and cloak (plates 36 and 37).

You can download a PDF of the current plan and shooting script here:

The Complete Rapier Course Plan

If there is anything you think I've missed, or you have any requests or suggestions, please let me know!

Sound like fun? It will be. I expect to launch the course officially in a month or so, and have an early-bird heavily discounted price of $119 (plus tax in the EU) in place until then.

You can find the course here!

A few months ago I decided to take part in the Isle of Wight Challenge, a 106km walk done over the first weekend in May. This is totally unlike any other physical thing I have ever done, so I am approaching it with caution. (Props to Joanna Penn for suggesting it; I've joined her Creatives team for the walk.) My overarching goal is to stay healthy, so I have been thinking a great deal about how to train for it. I have been a fan of minimalist footwear since wearing medieval shoes on the medieval streets of Verona in early 2014, and have now gone so far as to own and use a pair of five-toed shoes, to the horror of my children and other conservatives. I trust a million years of evolution over fashion when it comes to my feet. But I need to build up the strength in my feet to handle the uneven terrain and the unusually long duration of this walk. My current approach can be divided into “gym stuff”, “morning routine”, and “training walks”, which I'll outline below. I’d be delighted to hear your suggestions for how to improve it.

Gym stuff

I’m taking most of my training inspiration from Ryan Flaherty (sorry about the Insta link; it's the only place on the net I can find him) and have been working on my hex bar deadlift. I was at 80kgs in September, and hit 110 before Christmas. This exercise really works the lower leg, and trains the feet to take the strain of all that weight. I’m concentrating on doing a few sets, with low reps: a typical session might look like this: 3 reps at 80kg, 3 at 90, 3 at 100, 3 at 110, 2 at 110. Job done.

I’m also including his 7 way hip exercise for knee stabilisation:

I'm also doing box jumps, at which my current personal best (without putting my hands on the box) is 33 inches. These are great for developing the fascia, which store and release energy.

And of course, I’m following my own advice from my (free) knee maintenance course regarding range of motion work, massage, and so on.

Morning routine

I usually do about 25 minutes or so of exercise every morning immediately after waking up (and making my wife a cup of tea— priorities!): gentle range of motion stuff, followed by three rounds of Wim Hof breathing, followed by a fourth with push-ups in the empty lungs stage, then my shoulder mobilisation routines, and a few burpees if I feel like it. This is followed by a cold shower (I brush my teeth while letting the shower run to get it properly cold). I videoed my routine a couple of years ago, so take a look here if you'd like to see it, though it has changed a bit since then. Then breakfast, and walk the angels to school. This was my normal morning routine before I decided to do the challenge walk, and I haven’t changed it materially. I also do about 5-20 minutes of stretching in the evenings while watching TV.

Training Walks

I tend to walk everywhere anyway. On a day when I don’t train at all, I’ll more likely than not walk about 10k (according to my motion-tracking ring of power), taking my kids to and from school, and walking to the office and back. On a recent trip to London I needed to get from the hospital where I was visiting my mother in law, to the pub I was having dinner in, about four miles away. It seemed easier to walk it than to fiddle about with tubes and busses. But four miles is not 70. The big problem with going on long training walks is the time they take. I’m used to being able to hit most of my training goals in under an hour’s work. Fortunately, the current trend in training for races is not to cover the total distance (even for short sprints like the 100m). I recently went on a 24km training walk around Alton Water (a convenient beauty spot, with a footpath circuit) which served as a useful diagnostic for the efficacy of my current approach. Two laps of Alton Water covers 24km, and took me four hours, plus half an hour each side for getting there and back. Five hours spent, and it’s less than a quarter of the total distance I’ll be covering in May. (I'm using the Map My Walk app on my android phone to measure training walks. It seems quite accurate, and gives useful data, like elevation as well as distance.)

Lessons from 24km

The walk served as a useful diagnostic for my training progress so far. By far the biggest problem was actually my shoulders. About 15k in, both of my shoulders were spasming in agony. A few shoulder rotations helped, and I didn’t stop for it because there was no clear indication that the walk was creating an injury; it’s just my bloody useless thoracic/cervical spine doing it’s usual crap job. So I will be increasing my shoulder maintenance routines, and seeing if I can figure out why walking is causing the problem. As far as I can tell, it’s irritating the nerves, probably at the junction of C5 and C6 (based on the pattern of the pain), which suggest a hypermobility there, caused by a lack of mobility probably between C6 and C7. In addition to mobility exercises for my upper spine, I’ll also be trying those ghastly ski poles that have become super-fashionable amongst walkers. I hate them because they’re ski poles, but you’re not skiing, and because they occupy both hands at once, and because they’re weapons but not very good weapons (not least because the handle is optimised for an ice-pick grip, though you’d never normally hold a weapon that long that way); seeing a gaggle of walkers coming towards me who are all heavily armed with crap weapons (as I see them), and clearly have no idea of point control, gives me conniptions. [Boy was I ever wrong about those sticks. They are a complete game changer.]

I started out the walk with a four-beat breathing rhythm: in for four steps, out for four steps (no breath-holding). As I warmed up and sped up over a couple of k, that went up to three and three; on the hilly bits, it even went up to two and two. In the easier stages (most of the walk is pretty flat; this is East Anglia after all!) it sometimes went down to five and five, and at no stage was I at all out of breath. When I could see a hilly bit coming, I'd deliberately increase the pace of my breathing to purge CO2 and prevent creating an oxygen debt.

The next day I was completely fine: no significant stiffness or pain. I could feel that my legs had been active, and the soles of my feet were a bit tired, but that was it. (I was wearing Vivobarefoot winter boots).

I am also thinking about doing the long walk in a state of ketosis, to reduce oxygen requirements and because it’s generally better for endurance work. Triggering ketosis is easy enough, but it requires some preparation, and may be hard to maintain with the food available at the actual event. We’ll see…

Advice Please!

Perhaps the most important decision that I have yet to make about this walk is which charity to support. Givewell.org have their recommendations, which are based on lives saved for dollars spent. But I’m not sure that the charities they recommend are necessarily the best use of the funds. Preventing malaria is of course massively worthwhile, but Bill Gates is currently working on it. Will whatever I can raise really make a difference? Perhaps something along the lines of education? Or sexual equality? Education for girls in the developing world perhaps? What about baby rhinos? Or pandas? God, this is such a first-world problem to have, isn’t it? I would very much like to hear your recommendations. When I’ve chosen a cause to support, rest assured I’ll be asking you to donate towards it.

The Oakeshott Institute looks after legendary sword collector and author Ewart Oakeshott's extraordinary collection of swords.
They have launched their Historical Sword Documentation Project which will provide detailed 3D models of genuine historical weaponry. Starting with the items in their care they will catalog these pieces and provide contextual materials. This will allow scholars and enthusiasts to experience these items in ways that have not been possible in the past, even with the item in hand.
If you're not excited about this, I have to wonder why you're reading my blog.
In short, they will be measuring swords and pieces of armour, and making 3D models (you can see an example here).
Craig Johnson measuring a helm
This is the same team behind Arms and Armor, who made my favourite training rapier, training longsword, sharp rapier, smallsword… need I go on? One of the things I love about their work is that it comes from detailed measurements and latex casts of original weapons. This current project is an extension of that attention to historical detail.
This is a very exciting addition to the scholarship of arms and armour, one that provides new insight and a great opportunity to learn about swords and armour… and you can help! They have a Patreon page, where you can support their work with a little (or a lot!) of your hard-earned cash. Go check it out: https://www.patreon.com/oakeshott

This is a great week for historical fencing. I spent three full days at the National Fencing Museum with a decent camera and a book-photography rig, taking hi-res images of the cream of their amazing collection of treatises, with the kind assistant of James Hester, and Malcolm Fare (whose collection this is).

I have 122 gigabytes of raw images, that will in due course be processed into a more web-friendly format, and put online for free into the public domain to be used by anyone as they please. You can find the currently available photos on my gumroad account with a little searching.

We have Hope: New Method (1707), Fencing Master (1687), and Advice to his Scholar (1729).

We have McBane (1728), Viggiani (1575), Sainct-Didier 1573), De La Touche (1670), Senese (1660).

And we have goddam Thibault (1628).

Plus eighteen other treatises, dating between 1540 and 1838. The ones I am most excited about are Senese, Viggiani, and Alfieri. But having both the 1610 AND the 1629 editions of Capoferro is pretty cool too. Not to mention the marginalia, like this detail from this copy of De La Touche:

And this is only about 10% of the museum’s collection.

There is a huge amount of work to do to crop, order, rotate, enhance, and otherwise process these files, and if anyone with the necessary skills would like to help, please do volunteer.

Most of these are in Italian, English, and French. But Spanish? We got Spanish: Narvaez, 1672. Russian? We got Russian. Ficher, 1796. And this is an especially good week for German-reading historical fencers, because we have Schmidt from 1713:

This work includes fencing:


And even gymnastics, back when gym horses had heads and tails!

Note that these photos here have been heavily reduced in resolution to be transportable. The originals are breathtaking. I can’t do them justice in this format, but this close-up might give you an idea. Each photo is about 25mb in the raw format.

We have the 1600 Meyer.

And to cap it all, when I got home from the trip, I found a box waiting for me: full of the brand-new German edition of my The Medieval Longsword book.

This was translated by my student Frank Polenz, and published by Wieland-Verlag. You can find it here. The designer has done a stunning job of the interior, and frankly, I’ve never looked so good 🙂 You can see some interior shots on their webpage. Incidentally, Wieland have incorporated this book into their own series of “Schwertkampf” books, so don’t be mislead by the series number; it’s #2 in Mastering the Art of Arms, but #3 in Schwertkampf.

This will go very nicely with Der Mittelalterliche Dolch!

And in other news, I’m wrapping up the final edits to my re-translation of De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, so it should be here by the end of the year…

Update: my new translation is called The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest, published in early 2018. It includes an introduction, translation and commentary, and you can get it in fancy full-colour hardback with the facsimile built in, or in paperback in black and white, or indeed as an ebook.

Audatia is now available on the Steam platform tabletop simulator!

Probably the best thing about creating Audatia, the medieval swordfighting card game, is the way it inspires its players. You may have seen this beyond-awesome fan-made trailer which perfectly represents the spirit and intent of the game:

You can find the rules in Spanish, French and Russian (with, I believe, Italian on its way), because fans of the game have translated them for other players.

And now another fan project has come to fruition: Michael Thompson has created a tabletop simulator on the Steam platform, where you can play the game. He did it on his own, without any help from the creators of the game (Rami, Samuli, Jussi and I), and when it was done he just asked for our permission to upload it.

This is also way-beyond-awesome, and I hope you enjoy playing it!

 

Search

Recent Posts

Ready to Wrestle?

I’m delighted to let you know that From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Wrestling

¡Viva la Panóplia!

I’m just back from the Panóplia Iberica, held in Alconchel, a village in Spain near

Categories

Categories

Tags