I was asked recently to write a preface to the new Finnish-language Conan compilation, Conan Palkkasoturi (Conan the Mercenary). It was a pleasure to write, and the published book is nothing short of beautiful. The editor, Janne Suominen, translated my thoughts into Finnish, and with his permission I am sharing the original English version here:
When I was a child I faced a serious choice regarding my future. I was either going to grow up to be a ninja, or Conan. While neither quite panned out, I do find myself swinging swords every day at work, so it could have been a lot worse. My career choices stemmed from two sources: the ninja movies of the early 80s, and the great, the glorious, Conan books and movies. Incarcerated in boarding school, I was forced to play hockey. Field hockey. This had one major advantage over all other sports: they gave me a weapon. I used to try to play defence so I wouldn’t have to run around much after that stupid ball, and instead could get back to the serious business of training up to becoming CONAN!!
When the first movie came out in 1982 was only 8, so I didn’t get to see it right away. It took about 3 years and a pirate VHS copy before I saw it on the screen. But the novelisation of the film Conan the Barbarian was in the school library and I devoured it. There were other Conan books to be had, the one I remember best being Conan the Buccaneer, also by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. These were heaven on the page: swords, sorcery and sex. Fantastically educational for an 8 year old. Graphic novels like the wonderful example you are holding had not yet become mainstream enough to be widely available, and were banned at my school unless obviously made for children. How the legendary Frank Frazetta book covers slipped through the net I don’t know. But I think my swordsmanship students should be glad they did.
I am often asked who draws the best swordfights, and it is a tricky question to answer. We have some great swordfighting graphic artists here in Finland: my favourite is Hannu Lukkarinen, not least as he came to me for training just to improve his artwork. The Art of Swordsmanship is to strike first. To do this your actions should be as small and quick as possible while still getting the job done. The sword is a labour-saving device, as it is so much easier to kill someone with one than without. But Swordfighting Art is a whole other story. It has to look good on the page, to an uninformed audience. It has to look like it would do the damage, and it doesn’t matter if the actions are way too big. On one of my consultancy jobs for a swordfighting computer game they had me put on a motion-capture suit and do various sword drills. A year later when I was back helping these game designers work out the underlying logic of what action counters what, I saw the game footage and said “that isn’t me! It’s all over the place!” and they told me that the actions I had made for them looked like nothing on the screen. Nobody would believe that they would work, as they seemed to take no effort. “That’s the fucking point” I said. But next time I’ll ham it up for them.
The great thing about fantasy series like Conan, of course, is that it is not trying to be historically accurate. The writers and artists can take whatever liberties they like, and must only be true to the characters, the story, and the fictional world of the Hyborian Age. Conan the Babysitter would not go down well. Nor Conan the medieval knight. But Conan the Cimmerian is one of the great characters of 20th century fiction, an archetype of the independent warrior spirit that can encompass being a thief and a pirate, a mercenary and a king, remaining true to himself alone.
Conan is a perfect hero, if you think about it. He is really, really good at killing people, but never takes advantage of a naked slave wench, never kills people who don’t deserve it, and is always there for his friends. Today in my School’s training hall there is a shelf of role models, gifts from friends and students: Yoda, Zorro, the Black Knight, and of course, inevitably, Conan. Thanks to some of the artwork, and a certain Austrian’s screen portrayal, the modern Conan is a muscle-bound archetype of brawn over brains, which is quite unsuited to swordsmanship. But this is not at all how Howard portrays him. Howard’s Conan is cat-like and clever, strong yes, but lithe, fast and cunning, with a very clear moral code. In every way, the ideal swordsman.
There are many reasons why people are afraid to begin training swordsmanship, or indeed choose to follow any path, and many reasons why those who have begun the journey may quit. What follows is by no means an exhaustive list, but it contains some of the more common problems that I have encountered, and my own solutions to them. These worked for me (so far); your mileage may vary.
1) Fear of failure. Perhaps the biggest step I have ever taken in which fear of failure was a major issue was opening the school. My friends at the time could tell you that I projected two possible outcomes to my mad move to Finland. One, I’d be back in six months with my tail between my legs. Two, it would fly. I chose to view the whole thing as a lesson. In other words I was going to Finland to learn something. I did not know what the lesson would be. If the school failed, if I failed, then that was the lesson. I comforted myself with the knowledge that no matter how badly it failed, so long as I was honest and gave it all that I had, the worst possible outcome (other than serious injury) was bankruptcy and embarrassment. The culture and time I was lucky enough to be born into would not allow me to starve, nor would I be hauled off to debtors prison. Really, there was nothing to fear except my own incompetence.
2) Fear of success. At its root this is a fear of change. If I succeed in the thing I am setting out to do, what then? What if I actually become the person I wish to become, who am I? My solution to this was to set up my school and my training in such a way that success was impossible. There is no end goal or end result. There is only process. My mission in life is deliberately unattainable: to restore our European martial heritage to its rightful place at the heart of European culture. Of course that cannot be achieved alone, and there is no reasonable expectation of it being accomplished in my lifetime. There is no question that European martial arts have come a long way in the last decade or so, and my work has been a part of that, but another excellent aspect to this goal is even if we could say it was accomplished in my lifetime, nobody would ever suggest that I did it. So fear of success is not a problem, as success is impossible.
3) Putting outcomes ahead of process. The most common problem I have had in my career choices to date is putting outcome before process. When I went to university to get my degree, I was more interested in training martial arts than is studying English literature, and so though I got my degree, I didn’t at the time get that much out of it. I wanted the outcome, not the process. As a swordsmaship instructor I am a much better reader than I ever was as a literature student. Then when I went to be a cabinetmaker, again I was interested in having made the furniture more than in actually making it. Sure, I enjoyed parts of the process very much. But I did not have that dedication to perfection in process that marks a really good cabinetmaker. Ironically, now that I do it for a hobby, I enjoy the process of it a lot more. In a similar vein to step two (fear of success) teaching swordsmanship is the only thing I have ever done where I have truly been more concerned with process them with outcome. Which is why I am a much better swordsmanship instructor than I ever was a cabinetmaker. Writing books is another process/outcome issue. I enjoy writing books quite a bit. I absolutely hate the editing and polishing and publication process. Hence the errata. By that point outcome is everything— I just want that fucking book done and out. This is why I don’t think of myself as a writer. When I write, good enough is good enough. In my swordsmanship, good enough is shit, perfection is the minimum standard. Never got there, never will, don’t care, get it perfect anyway. It truly bugs me when my left little toe is in not quite the right place when I am waiting in guard. So far, in the thousands and thousands of hours I have put into it, there have been perhaps 3 whole minutes where it felt perfect. But that’s only because my faculties of judgement were not developed enough to spot the imperfections. So, while I am deeply dissatisfied with the outcome, i.e. my current level, I am actually quite pleased with how far I have come: the process so far. Being a swordsmanship instructor is the only thing I have ever done (other than parenting) where I am emotionally capable of perfectionism. (I will never be satisfied with my parenting skills, but am eternally satisfied with the outcome, my angel children, because of who they are, not anything they may or may not do.)
4) The external validation trap. This is related to the outcome/process problem. External validation tends to come from outcomes rather than processes. People bringing me one of my books to sign is hugely gratifying, and validates the outcome of all that work. But if you only write books in the hope of people asking you for autographs, the books are likely to be crap. And who wants an autograph on a crap book? I get around this problem by thinking of my books as steps towards the overall goal of establishing European martial arts at the heart of European culture. This makes even the production of books part of a larger process. And because they are mission-oriented, I have the emotional energy reserves to demand a certain standard in them, if not quite the standard I demand of my basic strikes. (For the gold standard in books, see here!) The external validation trap is one reason why I tend to prefer martial arts that have no belts or ranks, as it is too easy for me to care about the next belt rather than actually mastering the art. Ironically, the best outcomes are usually the result of the best processes. So the best way to get great outcomes is to forget about them and focus on the process.
5) Time and attention. It is not enough to want to want it. I wanted to be the sort of person who was a great cabinet-maker, but I wasn't, and didn't want it enough to become so. I only have a certain amount of energy to give, and it is what I actually choose to do that indicates what is truly important to me. The only currencies that actually matter are the ones you can’t make more of: time and attention. How one spends these vital currencies is of course influenced by the problems outlined above. My priorities are: family first, school second, then everything else. Within “school” it goes: teaching, research/writing, training, admin. As I see it, the school is the emergent property of the students, the teachers, and the syllabus coming together in a suitable space. My students make it all possible, they are the base, so their needs come first. The research and writing is for them, so we have an art to train. The training I do is so that I have something to show them. Admin, running the business side of things, is so far down the list it’s pathetic. I only do it so the school can keep running. Because it’s the school (students, research, and syllabus), that actually further the mission. But as has happened more than once: if the shit hits the fan at home, I abandon the school to take care of itself, and put all my attention on the family. Of course. My mission as husband and father outranks my personal mission in life. So, the solution to the problem of insufficient time and attention is to prioritise. Decide based on what you actually spend time doing what is truly important to you, and focus on that. It is ok to give up things you don't care about. And ok to have hobbies you just fool around with. It is also ok, admirable even, to take an indirect route, such as becoming a banker to make tons of money to put into a noble cause. But don't squander your life on stuff you don't care about. “Follow your passion” is often bad advice, but “commit to the things you are willing to spend the time getting really good at because you believe they are fundamentally important”, is not.
This post has rambled on long enough, but clearly I need to write up “the perfectionist’s survival guide” and “mission-oriented thinking” and “why 50% of my income goes on having a salle” and of course, “I am fearful, so I study boldness”. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
Readers of this blog will know that I am quite fond of books. Reading deeply is good, reading widely is good too. I am often surprised by the extraordinary usefulness of books that on the face of it have no connection to martial arts, historical or otherwise, in my work recreating historical swordsmanship. These five books have been especially influential in the way I teach, train and research the Art.
This book has massively influenced the way I teach, because it highlighted for me for the first time the major differences between the part of your mind with which you analyse things, and the part of your mind that actually gets stuff done. Thanks to this book I talk less, explain less, and demonstrate more; and try to always set up a clear feedback mechanism inside every drill. And I have noticed that my students pick up new skills much quicker now than they used to. I found this book going for a euro in a bargain box at Arkadia books. I despise tennis as an utterly pointless waste of time, but can forgive the sport for taking over my TV every summer because it has produced this book.
Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman lays out an much of the theory that actually supports the thesis of the inner game of tennis. It has been hugely helpful in putting the lesson of The Inner Game of Tennis into practice.
I have always felt that the notion of inherent talent is fundamentally counter-productive, as well as being inaccurate. There is no such thing as natural talent. I’m sure there are some disciplines in which a certain amount of genetic advantage is required: if you want to play professional basketball but are under 6 foot 4, you’re unlikely to get there. Or if you want an Olympic gold in gymnastics but you’re tall and heavy boned, again you are unlikely to get there. But the point and the essence of swordsmanship is it transcends physical limitations. The sword is an equalizer and a labour-saving device. If you need to be big and strong to use it then a) what’s the point owning one, and b) I am not interested in teaching it. The physical threshold for us is really, really low. No legs? No problem. Didn’t stop Douglas Bader, it shouldn’t stop you. The first book I read that demolished the myth of talent was Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which is a good book, but this one is more specifically targeted to people trying to master physical skills. Syed was an Olympic-level table tennis player so knows a thing or two about the process of becoming exceptional in a physical art. Really it is only attitude, luck and discipline that matter. And this book proves it.
4) On Killing, by Lt Col. David Grossman
This book is essential reading for anyone involved in any kind of martial art because it outlines the process of conditioning a person to be emotionally capable of taking life. He demonstrates that most people (thankfully) are emotionally incapable of killing. And this is how it should be. But the psychological barriers to killing must be addressed by any martial art that pretends to be seriously martial. This book is also very useful for its discussion of stress response, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It is also the source of “combat breathing” which is a hugely useful tool for reducing your sympathetic nervous system’s response to stress. I have much to thank Col Grossman for because I have used his advice in this book to keep myself useful and sane in some hugely stressful situations.
Okay, this is kind of a martial arts book. But he never tells you how to throw a kick, or execute a joint lock, so I’ll let it slip in. I do so because this book, amongst other things, is the best, most complete, system for analysing what your martial art is actually for. I would go so far as to say that if you have not read this book there’s not a lot of point in discussing combat contexts with me. This is the bullshitometer every martial arts teacher must have in his toolkit. Thanks to Ken Quek for putting me onto it.
The essential cognitive skill behind the application of swordsmanship is to see what is really there, not what you think is there. This is a profound and difficult skill to master, as we are all subject to all sorts of cognitive illusions and biases. Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow is perhaps the best single resource on the subject.
For us, in practice, we have to pay attention to what the opponent is doing, all the time- but refrain from telling ourselves stories about what we see. “His sword is coming towards me” is meaningful. But “he is attacking” is not: it prevents us from realising his action may be a feint. Ascribing motives to his motions is to be avoided. Likewise, we must not tell ourselves stories about what we are doing. “I am parrying that attack” is a lie. Because you don’t know whether the parry will work, or whether the attack is real, or anything. “I am moving to intercept his motion” is better, because the movement is real, and its intention is clear, and if the interception fails to occur, there is nothing in that statement to prevent the motion changing to find his weapon.
If we are telling ourselves a story, and the action changes, rewriting the story to fit the new data is hard. So we tend to ignore the data that doesn’t fit- we prioritise the story over the facts. This is normal. But will get you hit. I don’t think we can truly prevent the story-writing process, but we can cast the story in terms that permit endless easy rewrites as the situation changes.
Of course, the fight happens faster than conscious thought can keep up. Which makes story-telling that much worse, as the data is not just incomplete, it’s out of date. Better then to give yourself a set of instructions that fit the goals of the bout, such as “control his sword and hit him”, and let your training do all the hard work of actually issuing specific commands to the sword.
My own solution to the distractions of the conscious mind when fencing is I quietly sing a little song to myself. That keeps my conscious story-telling mind gently occupied, leaving my adaptive unconscious relatively unfettered, and able to see what is happening. It also freaks the hell out of my opponent if they get close enough to hear it. A win-win situation.
This week’s intermediate class yielded some interesting insights. I began by asking my students what they thought my job was. As far as I see it, at their level, my job is mainly to keep their practice mindful, and provide solutions to any problem that crops up that they cannot solve themselves. We started by having each student identify for themselves a specific problem they were having, and articulate it clearly to the class. These included difficulty in closing the line after the first action in a bout, difficulty in controlling measure in dynamic situations, and difficulty in maintaining flow under pressure.
We began with the cutting drill as usual, and then discussed how it could be used or adapted to address their specific needs. We concluded that for their purposes right now, it was of limited use in its basic form. So we went to the X-drill, with the pell in the middle of the salle, and the students divided into two groups. One individual from each group crossed the space in style and struck the pell couple of times, with one group’s aim being to arrive first, and the other group’s aim being to arrive at the same time. This brought in dynamic control of measure and timing.
The next exercise was first drill, with the variations the attacker may feint, and the defendant may counter-attack instead of parry. This highlighted specific difficulties, such as vulnerability to a counter-attack, or difficulty in distinguishing between a feint and a real attack. After a few minutes of this each student had a super-specific example of a specific weakness related to the more general problems they had highlighted at the beginning of class.
So, the next exercise was to articulate exactly the problem they were having to their partner who then coached them through that specific issue. For example if you found that you were vulnerable to a feint, your partner would coach you in getting that second parry in time. This required the coaching partner be able to control elements of the fight in real time so that their student was training at the optimum level of difficulty. After five minutes the roles were reversed and then, each student having had a lesson, we returned to the particular variation on first drill, with the same original partner, to see whether the corrections had taken.
Next up we have to establish whether the corrections, having worked (because each student reported an improvement), were general or specific. In other words, whether an improved ability to defend against a feint of mandritto fendente followed by a roverso fendente lead to an improved ability to deal with feints in general. So I had the students change the drill so that they could defend from any right side guard and the attack to be of any kind from any side, real or feint. As it turned out most of the improvement was quite specific, which meant that what we ought to have done next would have been developing that more general skill, but given the problems declared at the beginning of class, it was necessary to move on to address the issue of controlling measure. I pointed out that they could follow this thread in free training. By this stage they were all sweating hard and out of breath. This is one of the hallmarks of mindful practice. It is tiring.
We started our addressing the issue of measure with a drill that I invented back in 2001, where one student establishes a measure with their partner, then the students move around freely with the partner initiating change that measure, and when I clap at random intervals they were to check whether they were still in measure. There may have been push-ups involved. Then we used wooden bucklers like focus mitts , with one student coaching another. This prepared them for giving a specific lesson on measure, for which, given that the students present were not trained coaches, I gave a specific example for them to copy. In this case simply a variation on first drill in which the coach is defending, and if he ends up close after his parry, the student should pommel strike, but if he ends up further away the student should cut on the other side. This allowed them, in a very simple set up, to take one specific aspect of the art and develop measurable improvement.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with gathering together with some swordy friends and having a bash. Neither is there anything wrong with playing around with some aspects of swordsmanship. I would actually go so far as to say that not all practice should be mindful, as you can become too goal oriented: it’s the journey that matters, not the destination. But for those activities, you don’t need a professional instructor. So when I am running the class, there is no point my being there unless I am making it possible for my students to really improve, and for that mindful practice is without doubt the most efficient approach.
The basic pattern is this:
Practice something that you know, at a pace and level that generates error.
Articulate the error in the clearest possible terms. This becomes your goal.
Select the training tools that you think will most efficiently address your goal. Apply them with rigour.
Test to see whether your goal has been reached, by returning to the original set up in which the error occurred. If yes, return to step 1 to find a new error if no, either select new tools, or apply the same ones better.
If you’re not sure what skill that you’re trying to develop, it’s not mindful practice. If it does not demand the absolute limit of your concentration and physical skill, it’s not mindful practice. If it does not generate measurable improvement, it’s not mindful practice. If it’s not tiring, frustrating, or painful, it’s probably not mindful practice. If your practice highlights your every weakness and makes you strengthen it, efficiently and deeply, then it is, must be, mindful.
What do you consider “real swordfighting”? For some, only tournament bouts really count. For others, there has to be a corpse by the end. My answer to this vexing question is below.
When I was a little boy I want nothing more than to learn real swordfighting. My mum told me that real swordfighting was called “fencing”, and that her dad, my grandpa, was an expert. He had been a keen fencer for about 70 years at this point, and was duly prevailed upon to give his grandson an introductory lesson in the noble art. This involved him sitting in his armchair smoking a rollup cigarette while I stood there holding a foil. When he yelled “extension!” I stuck my arm out, and when he barked “Lunge!” I stepped forwards with my front foot. I was about eight years old, and this was heaven. REAL swordfighting! Unfortunately though he was extremely old (about 88) and my family were living in Botswana while he was in London, so I only ever got a couple of sessions with him before he died.
I made do then with what I saw on the silver screen, though at this time sword flicks were pretty rare. Conan the Barbarian was my primary source, with supporting material from such legendary high-quality movies as Hawk the Slayer. But it was very very hard to get my hands on movies like this, as a) the VCR had only just been invented and b) we didn’t have so much as a TV to plug one into. But while I was home for the school holidays I went most Saturday afternoons to Gaborone’s one and only cinema, the Capitol. The kids’ matinee was occasionally such gems as Clash of the Titans, but usually full-length, uncut, Hong Kong kung-fu movies, complete with hardcore violence and some pretty nasty porn. My friend Mark and I would gloss over the bits with naked women in (we were only 9 or 10) but treat the rest of the film as instructional; on the walk home we practised the top-level moves we had learned. I never did quite manage to jump backwards onto a tree branch, but we waved our arms and legs with vigour, and we were both adept at the sound effects.
My martial arts education took more serious turn when a karate group started up at the local golf course. It was run by Korean man who barely spoke, and spent quite some time after most classes trying to break concrete paving slabs with his bare hands. He would set up a couple between some breeze blocks, put a thin towel on top, and slam his hand down. The top slab always cracked in two, but I never did see him break both at once. The class consisted of three or four students, and we would start by running somewhere on the course, finding a quiet spot and going through a set of ritualised opening moves before the punching and kicking would begin. The first command, which sounded like “Chariot!” had us standing up straight with our hands by our sides; then “Chumbi!” and we would drop a little with our hands fisted in front of us. This was by way of salute, I think. What with commuting to the UK three times a year for school I didn’t get a lot of training, but the buzz of doing real martial arts for the first time will never leave me. (This still strikes me as by far the best use a golf course has ever been put to, and I would urge those of you of an activist frame of mind to set up an “occupy golf courses” movement, so that these lovely spaces can serve a worthwhile function as outdoor dojos.)
My school at this time was a boys-only boarding school in rural Suffolk, not far from Ipswich. There was a general policy that if enough boys were interested in something, the school would organise classes in it. So I campaigned for martial arts, and eventually, at the beginning of my final year there, the powers that be allowed a karate class to start. My name was first on the sign-up sheet, and I went to the deputy head, a normally terrifying individual, and begged for a guarantee that I would be picked. The list of those doing karate was posted a week later and thank the lord, there was my name.
Imagine my delight when the karate we were doing turned out to be basically the same style, chariot, chumbi and all. But this time we also had belts and ranks, and so gradings. The club began in September 1986, which was also the beginning of my final year, and the year in which we moved from Botswana to Peru. This meant that two days before my first ever grading I had a load of really nasty vaccinations, and took the test with my left arm swollen and in constant agony. There were tears running down my face for most of the exam, and I was shaking like a leaf by the end. But, and here’s the lesson, I got a first-class pass. This had nothing to do with my rather feeble ap chagis (front kicks) and everything to do with my having got through it without quitting.
This martial arts heaven lasted only a year before I was packed off to public school and there was no karate to be had. But, joy of joys, finally there was fencing. Not only that but fencing had just been designated a “major sport” in the school, which meant that taking it I was not obliged to do any other sport. In other words I never had to chase after another fucking round object again. I cannot tell you how much of my life had been wasted by my being forced to pretend to care where a leather bag (football or rugby), or solid round object (hockey or cricket) ended up relative to a white line and some posts. Hockey at least had the decency to supply me with a weapon and people to hit with it, but the rest were just so stupid. Surrounded by boys who were sports-mad, as good little Englishmen are trained to be, I had always felt like a complete alien. Sometimes I even faked a bit of enthusiasm. But hanging about outside in a muddy field, wearing shorts in winter, and being yelled at for not paying attention to a completely arbitrary set of rules is just the single least explicable human pursuit. But fencing, that made sense. Someone is trying to stab me. I’m trying to not get stabbed and to stab them instead so they have to stop. Makes perfect sense. I am motivated.
I loved every minute of fencing, from footwork drills to technical drills to individual lessons with the coach, to the actual competitive fencing. But the tournaments themselves were a pain. It meant getting up early at the weekend, going somewhere in a coach (I despise and abhor all forms of motorised transport unless I’m driving), hanging about for endless hours waiting for it to be my turn, fiddling with stupid kit, and then finally getting to fence people I hadn’t fenced before. Total time investment: perhaps 9 hours. Total bouts: maybe 10. Less if I got eliminated early and one of my teammates didn’t so we all had to stay. Inefficient, the least good bit about the whole fencing endeavour, but with some useful aspects, mostly to do with the experience of crossing blades with new people.
I spent all five years of my secondary education doing no other sport but fencing, and by the end of it, I was reasonably good; good enough to be captain of the team, but not good enough to get into the nationals. In September 1992 I went up to Edinburgh University to read English Literature. I naturally joined the Fencing Society, and showed up to my first session wondering what the level would be like. Fencing clubs are one of the few environments on Earth where it is perfectly polite, friendly even, to go up to someone you don’t know and say “fancy a fight?”. This I did, to a tall Chinese-looking chap who was already kitted up. He agreed, and we set to. On the first pass it was obvious to me he was out of my league, but I did ok- I even pulled off a lovely doublé in carte (he was a left hander). The score was 4-3 in his favour when I saw the opportunity for another doublé. As I took it, he neatly stepped offline with his back foot and counterattacked under my arm, my point went sailing inches past his chest. 5-3, I lose. Then I noticed the logos on his kit- he was just back from the Barcelona Olympics, where he was on the British team. Suddenly losing was far less important than the fact that I’d got three hits! And having seen my predilection for the doublé, he had set me up for the second one. Lovely.
Sad to say though, that bout was the highlight of my University fencing, because at the time a completely erroneous interpretation of the FIE rules was being applied by pretty much all tournament referees. The rule states (in foil) that the attack is determined as the extension of the sword arm with the point threatening the target. But it was interpreted as “whoever moves forward first is attacking”. This lead to people running forwards with their point back over their left shoulder, and walking onto my extended arm, while flicking their point around to touch my shoulder. According to the rules, my attack on their preparation. In a duel, their pierced liver versus my small bruise on the shoulder. According to the referees, a hit against me. Given that my interest was in real swordfighting, I was not prepared to fence like that, so I stopped going to competitions. But around this time I fell in with some other fencers who wanted to do things for real, and started meeting up with them to fight the way we wanted to- in a way that felt real.
One of the books in my grandfather’s house was a first edition of Alfred Hutton’s The Sword and the Centuries. It opened my eyes to the possibility of researching historical fencing styles, and even provided some details about the sources I might work from. Amazing- there were books that could tell us how real swordfighters really fought with real swords for real! Then in the National Library of Scotland, I stumbled upon a little book that was to change everything: The Expert Sword-man’s Companion, by Donald Mcbane. What a book! I wangled it onto my English Lit course Identity in 17th century Literature with Dr. Jonquil Bevan, and even managed to get course credit for it- I wrote an essay on it called The Gallant Pander. Best of all, from my perspective, was that the smallsword material McBane presents did not contradict my early fencing training, but allowed me to apply what I knew in a historical way. It may come as a surprise, given that these days I am best known for my work on medieval Italian swordsmanship, but my first love was 18th century French smallsword as taught by a Scottish thug.
So, my friends and I started the Dawn Duellists Society, in 1994, to bring together like-minded people to fight with. I quickly found that in order for the fights to be anything like the books, I had to teach these people first. So I ended up teaching historical swordsmanship in order to create opponents. The whole point of researching these historical systems was to pick up new tricks for winning fencing matches with historical weapons. I had a complete separation in my mind between stuff done with swords, and martial arts. Martial arts were about killing people; sword-activities were about fencing. Martial arts were serious, fencing was not. Martial arts was about the Path, swordsmanship was about scoring touches. Given my interest in real swordfighting, this makes no sense now, but it was how my head worked back then.
The psychological wall I had built between swordsmanship and martial arts melted away during the summer of 2000. I won’t go into the full story here- suffice to say it involves witches and angels, sex and violence, lust, betrayal and a mountain-top revelation. Yes, really. And no, not while sober. Suffice to say I suddenly decided to move to Helsinki and open a school- a school devoted to historical, european, martial, swordsmanship. Above all, restoring the arts of our ancestors, and maintaining at all costs the martial depth of the practice. Because that, to me, is real swordfighting.
The first advanced Fiore class every month is a freeplay-based session, in which we use freeplay and related exercises to expose specific weaknesses in individual students, for them to work on, and general weaknesses in the group as a whole, which sets the theme for the next month of classes. This month we are working on speed. The first indication that this would be necessary was that almost none of the students present could get their freeplay kit on in under 120 seconds.
Speed, celeritas, is one of Fiore’s four key virtues that a swordsman must possess. The others, for non-Fioreista readers, are audatia (boldness), forteza (strength) and avvisamento (foresight)). There are two key models for developing speed available to us. These are the sporting approach, and the musical.
The most obviously applicable is that of sports. High-level sportsmen, in games like tennis and fencing, must be quick. This is trained mostly by repeating explosive movements, to encourage development of type II fast-twitch muscle fibres, and to task those muscles with the motion desired. In this model, actions should pretty much only ever be trained at speed. If you do the action slowly too often, you end up training to use type I “slow twitch” fibres instead, and the maximum speed of the action is diminished. This sort of thing tends to emphasise gross motor movements, such as extending the arm, rather than fine motor movements such as manipulating with the fingers. As Johan Harmenberg writes in his must-read book Epee 2.0, “only simple movements are used (even an action like a disengage is not very common in a World Championship final)” (p28). He attributes this to the stress that the fencers are experiencing. At this level, “the pressure is so intense it is impossible to describe” (p 43). Harmenberg won the epee world championship in 1977 and Olympic gold in 1980, so may reasonably be assumed to know his stuff.
In music though, speed of execution is attained through getting it right at slow speeds first, then letting the phrase get faster and faster. A good example of astonishing speed of execution can be found here:
Wynton Marsalis playing the carnaval of Venice by Jean-Baptiste Arban. If music’s not your thing, just scroll ahead to 2.40, where he plays the 8th variation so fast it sounds like there are two cornets being blown- one for the tune, one for the accompaniment. The fine motor control is just dazzling. I have been taught to play this (though I never got close to this level of execution) and can attest that is is simply appallingly difficult to do. And under the stress of the performance, even worse. But the advice I was given (and every musician I have ever met would agree) was to get it absolutely accurate slowly first, and then speed it up. As my teacher Mr Foster wrote on my sheet music- “go at the speed of NO mistakes”.
We find a remarkable similarity between training to play a musical instrument, and combat shooting. In shooting al actions are trained slowly first, to become smooth and efficient, and then speeded up. I’ve been shooting pistols since I moved to Finland in 2001, and I have never, ever heard an instructor tell a shooting student to hurry up. Not only because mistakes can cost lives (just like in a sword fight) but also because shooting requires fine motor control, which if speeded up too soon becomes inaccurate. In both areas, music and shooting, the goal is to enable the practitioner to execute complex motor skills under high levels of stress.
I can attest to the stress of performance: I played the trumpet at school, and developed an absolute phobia of playing solos, despite being a member of several bands and orchestras. Though I was never under any direct physical threat (there were no beatings for splitting a note, nor would anyone have shot me for fluffing a phrase), I was at times incapacitated by fear when a solo was coming up. I never actually vomited, but it was pretty damn close. Yet, I still did them. And while they were never perfect, and I could always play a lot better in practice than performance, I was able to produce a passable result. The training worked. The level of stress is probably much higher for a professional musician, as not only his ego but also his career rides on the quality of the performance, and much higher still for a soldier or policeman facing an armed assailant, but the process is the same.
In both these areas, you’ll hear the phrase “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. In other words, get the action right slowly, and let it speed up as you practice. Keeping it smooth will allow it to become fast.
We can summarise then by saying that if you think of swordsmanship as a fine-motor-control skill, the musical/shooting model is best. If you think of it as a gross-motor-control skill then the sporting approach will work best. In my experience, students training to win tournaments should emphasise the sporting approach; students training to recreate historical duelling arts should emphasise the musical approach.
It is of course possible, and often desirable, to do both- swordsmanship for sport or murder have some overlap, and for those elements of the sporting game that are improved by fine motor control, use the slow-smooth approach, and for those elements of the martial art that involve improving explosive power, use the sporting model. For example, if a student is having difficulty lunging with sufficient speed to take advantage of tempi that he ought to be able to strike in, the critical skill for the instructor is to diagnose the problem; are the mechanics of the lunge at fault? If so, then slow it down and smooth it out. If the mechanics are ok, then apply drills that develop the raw speed of the lunge. Just don’t try this with a disengage- it’s so much a fine motor skill that trying to speed it up by making the student go faster will just make it clumsier and slower. Get it smoother and smaller to make it faster.
In swordsmanship, speed serves two functions: damage and timing.
Damage first: The speed of the sword determines how hard it hits. E=mv², so the energy available for damaging the target is proportional to the striking mass and to the square of its velocity. Double the mass of the sword and you double the impact; double the speed and you quadruple the impact. This assumes of course that to make the sword go faster you haven’t made the motion less efficient, so energy is wasted on impact. There is a huge difference in practice between the amount of energy technically available, and the amount actually delivered into the target.
I believe that the sword should act as a labour-saving device. Its function is to destroy certain types of target, and it should require less effort to do so with the sword than without. So there is limited virtue in simply making the sword go faster and faster to hit harder and harder; at some point, there is sufficient energy to do the desired damage, so additional speed is wasted effort.
Now Timing: the purpose of speed is to ensure that your strike arrives before your opponent’s parry, and your parry arrives before his strike. It is therefore proportional to the motions of your opponent. The key skill here is to be able to adjust the acceleration of the weapon, rather than attain a specific top speed. There is a lovely section on this in Karl Friday’s excellent book Legacies of the Sword, on pages 74-5. Especially the graphs showing the different rates of power applied to the weapon by beginners versus experts. The graphs look like this:
The key point is that the expert can accelerate the weapon quickly; the total force exerted is actually a lot less. But the weapon is moving fast enough when it needs to be. The key to this kind of skill is to eliminate inefficiencies in the starting position, minimise the tension in the muscles about to act, and develop perfect mechanics for the strike itself. The importance of early rate of acceleration over final speed attained is elegantly demonstrated by this exhibition at the Heureka Science Museum in Vantaa, in which two tennis balls are rolled down two slopes. One slope is straight, the other curved. Though both balls are moving at the same velocity when they get to the end, the ball on the curved slope always arrives first as it has a higher rate of acceleration at the beginning of its movement compared to the other. They would both hit with the same force, but one would arrive long before the other.
The easiest way to reduce the time in which an action is done is to make the action shorter. So, a great deal of speed training, training to do an action in less time, is to eliminate any extraneous motion; to pare the movement down to its absolute minimum. To take a beginner’s marathon and create an expert’s 100m. There are several ways to do this, from the obvious: select a starting point that is closer to the end point; to the more sophisticated: tuning the path taken between those two points. In general, the sword-hand should move in the straight line from A to B. But sometimes it’s the middle of the blade that does that, sometimes other parts of the weapon or wielder.
In practice, it is useful to be able to adjust the path, and the rate of acceleration at various points on the path, for best effect. To simply hit hard, make sure the sword is at maximum velocity at the moment of impact. But to make the hit more likely to land, adjust the acceleration pattern and the path taken to best fit the tactical circumstances. Easier said than done. It is always slower to lift a heavy weight than a light one. So speed training is also about reducing unnecessary tension, making the action as smooth and efficient as possible, expending the least possible force to get the job done.
So, as we would expect with a medieval virtue, cultivating speed for its own sake, simply going as fast as possible, is a route to ruin. It takes an essential quality that should exist in equilibrium with others, and makes a vice out of it. This is a common theme in medieval thought (and should be still today). That which is virtuous when in balance becomes vicious when done to excess. Excessive courage leads to foolhardiness, excessive strength leads to stiffness and slowness, excessive speed leads to weakness and overextension, excessive judgement lead to cowardice.
In the case of speed, emphasising raw speed over speed in proportion to your opponent’s movements, leads to getting hit through being over-committed and over-extended. It is also hell on the body because explosive force applied to the joints is only safe when the motion is being done perfectly.
In every discipline there is usually an optimum balance between youthful vigour and the experience of long practice that can only come with age. A sportsman usually peaks between the ages of 20 and 40; a concert soloist somewhere between 35 and 60. A martial arts instructor normally peaks somewhere between 50 and 70. Fiore says he was about 60 when he wrote his book. So cultivate speed carefully, getting the mechanics absolutely right before you put a lot of energy through them, and make sure you develop the muscular support of your joints to absorb any slight errors. Muscles and bones last forever- the weak spot in any mechanical system is the joints.The syllabus wiki has some of the school’s joint-care curriculum uploaded, including wrist and elbow exercises, knee exercises, and joint massage. I do these a lot, because I intend to hit my peak in about 15 years, and need to make sure my joints can handle all that energy. Which brings me on to strengh, forteza, which I’ll write about next month.
