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

Tag: video

Without doubt the best rapier duel in cinematic history is the one between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity, in The Princess Bride (1987). To celebrate breaking 10,000€ on my recent crowdfunding campaign, I told my backers I would put up a video of how the duel might have gone if the fight directors, cinema legends Peter Diamond and Bob Anderson, had actually followed the dialogue, and been versed in historical swordsmanship. (Please note, this is a thank-you, not a stretch goal. An important distinction in crowd-funding matters.)

The dialogue is, I think, the earliest reference to historical fencing masters in film. Here it is:

Inigo: “you are using Bonetti's defence against me, huh?”

MIB: “I thought it fitting considering the rocky terrain.”

Inigo: “Naturally, you must expect me to attack with Capoferro!”

MIB: “Naturally. But I find that Thibault cancels out Capoferro.”

Inigo: “Unless your enemy has studied his Agrippa!” [does great big somersault] “Which I have!”

Thus inspiring a legion of potential historical fencers to look up Bonetti, Capoferro, Thibault and Agrippa. Huzzah!

However, the actual choreography turns out on further study to bear no resemblance whatsoever to the fencing methods of the historical masters in question. This should come as no surprise, given that the goals of stage and screen combat are that no-one should die, and everyone should see what is happening: and the goals of real combat are to kill the enemy, which is best accomplished if no-one can see what’s going on. There are skills common to both, of course, such as control of measure and weapons handling, but the core intent could not be more different.

This begs the question: how does Thibault cancel out Capoferro?

As students of The Book (whichever source we are trying to recreate), it might be a good idea to also check the original source. The Princess Bride, first published in 1973, was a book for 14 years before it was a film.

Written by William Goldman, it is, as one might expect, even better than the movie. 

So, from the 1998 edition (pp 130-135) here are the actual references:

“They touched swords, and the man in black immediately began the Agrippa defence, which Inigo felt was sound, considering the rocky terrain, for the Agrippa kept the feet stationary at first, and made the chances of slipping minimal. Naturally, he countered with Capo Ferro, which surprised the man in black, but he defended well, quickly shifting out of Agrippa and taking the attack himself, using the principles of Thibault.

Inigo had to smile. No one had taken the attack against him in so long, and it was thrilling! He let the man in black advance, let him build up courage, retreating gracefully between some trees, letting his Bonetti defence keep him safe from harm.”

Quite different, I’m sure you’ll agree. But this was 40 years ago, long before the resurgence of historical swordsmanship in the 90s: where was Goldman getting his information? The next reference is also interesting:

“Inigo … was not entirely familiar with the style of the attack; it was mostly McBone, but there were snatches of Capo Ferro thrown in…”

I assume McBone is McBane (though why the change when the other masters are spelled normally: a little joke, perhaps?); has Goldman read Aylward’s The English Master of Arms? I would love to buy him a drink and ask him.

But anyhoo, and without further ado, here is the video:

And for those of you interested in how rapier fencing was really done: you might enjoy my book, The Duellist's Companion.

And if you're interested in recreating historical swordsmanship from historical sources, you might find my course useful. See you there!

Feel free to share this with your swashbuckling friends!

 

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Class on Monday (in March 2014) was all about how the seniors should approach the new sword handling drill, the Farfalle di Ferro, the Butterfly of Iron. As this is a pretty important topic, especially for the chaps in the branches, we videoed the class. The footage here was preceded by the usual 10 minutes of breathing exercises and a few minutes of the Syllabus Form done solo, then (because there were difficulties with it that we fixed last week) the Syllabus Form Applications Drill. Then by way of introduction, we did the Farfalle di Ferro in its basic form.

[Update, Dec. 2021] Over the 8 years since I created the Farfalle, it has become quite popular, and many folk have lost sight of where it comes from: some even think it's directly from some historical source! Let me set the record straight: I invented it from scratch, with the help of some senior students in March 2013, as you can see from this video:

So that's the Farfalle- what's it for?

This 20 minute video is basically unedited footage of the Applications class.

The video contents are:
00.00-0.56 introduction. Making the handling drill tight and small.
00.57-2.35 basic applications of the drill: counterattack with mandritto fendente; gaining leverage control with fenestra to thrust (note groundpath in true edge, not in the flat); yielding to the parry and striking on the other side.
02.36-04.11 corrections to mistakes made in class; when not to follow the drill. General rule: “If your opponent’s point is going away from you, strike into the opening line.” Being specific about when to use the farfalle combination.
04:12-07.06: About the footwork: when winding to fenestra to thrust; and especially the footwork when striking on the other side: the meza volta. Noting Fiore’s explanation of the meza volta, groundpaths and the mechanical consequences stepping linearly instead of turning.
07.07-08.39: The same applications, applied by the attacker. Noting what happens if the parry against the fenestra thrust is a yield to the outside instead of the turn to the inside.
08.40-09.41 changing the measure; using the drill to get into close quarters. The rules: “stick your point in his face. If his sword is moving away from you, strike into the opening line. If his sword is moving towards you, put your sword in the way.”
09.42-10.52 difficulties arising from poor mechanics, especially the turn around the middle of the sword. Minimising time spent with your point moving away from the opponent.
10.53- 11.46 a basic drill to help with the turn around the middle of the blade.
11.47- 12.51: repeating the drill beginning with the roverso instead of the mandritto (i.e. start at part 2). And other variations on the basic drill.
12.52-15.19: Using part 3; the sottani blows. Variation on second drill, defender ripostes with sottano on either side. Notes re the necessary footwork to stay safe. Note re continuations if attacker parries the riposte. Note re getting away again after the riposte.
15.20-16.48: Attacker’s use of the same action, as a response to the parry. Variations depending on the defender’s actions. Use of the sottano v. the sottano.
16.49-18.02: Counter to the punta falsa as an example of turning within the turn. Making your actions smaller than your opponent’s. Note re opponent’s expectations re line of attack.
18.03-19.35: How does this work with sharps? Very nicely, thank you.

So, there you have it. Enjoy!

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Memory is the key component of mastery. Being able to effortlessly recall and recombine elements held in long term memory is the essence of creativity and expertise. This is why I have deliberately crafted my School’s syllabus to be a memory palace. It is obvious when reading Fiore that his system has been organised for memorisation, which is especially apparent in his use of numbers: the 4 guards of abrazare; the “8 things you should know” for abrazare; the four blows of the dagger, and the “five things you should know” to do against the dagger… five plus four is nine, so is it any wonder that there are nine remedy masters of the dagger?

The basic level classes in Helsinki have been focussing on these aspects of the system for the last couple of weeks. Just as Fiore loves us and wants us to be happy, and so provides an answer to every sword-related problem, so too do I love my students, and want them to be happy, so have created all sorts of devices to help them remember the things they wish to learn. Among these efforts are a set of memory verses, published in 2010 as The Armizare Vade Mecum.
By way of a wishing you all a merry Christmas, here is the verse on the nine masters of the dagger. The full text is below the video.
See you next year!

Here we are, Nine masters we,
Teach you all to remedy,
Safe defence for any threat,
We have ne’er been beaten yet!

When the blows come from above,
From right or left, or with a shove,
Left hand, crossed hands, right hand then
Both hands high we win again!
When he comes to collar grab,
Fifth will cover any stab!
Dagger high, it’s sixth you see,
Disarm, stab him, done with glee!
Seventh has the dagger crossed
In armour he has never lost,
Dagger low, eighth of course,
Also done hands joined for force.
Then both hands down for number nine:
See that player wince and whine!

But watchful for the counters thus:
See he comes to elbow push,
Or trap your wrist, or feint you see,
Or see it not! Then one two three!
When he wants to give you strife,
Go fast against his dang’rous knife!
Hands arms and elbows, all must play
And surely you will win the day.

O scholar you must heed our call
Arms crossed armour; never fall;
Make your cover, make your strike,
Then to break him as you like.
The five things all go together:
Like sword and dagger, steel and leather:
Disarm locks breaks throw him down,
Strike to win the master’s crown!

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One of the major drivers of syllabus development is the difficulties the senior students have either with the drills themselves, or with making sense of them. Recently the stretto form of second drill has been causing problems. Most critically this comes from the (perfectly reasonable) perception that step four of the drill is the counter to step three. In other words that the entry to wrap counters the left-hand pommel grab (11th play of the zogho stretto). But of course, it doesn’t. The issue here is that one of the defining features of the crossing at the zogho stretto is that either player can make the plays that follow. So, what we have in the stretto forms of first drill and second drill is, at step three, how the attacker should respond to the crossing, and at step four, how the defender should respond to the crossing. But because they are set drills, the attacker knows what the crossing will be in advance, and so is busily executing his response to the crossing in the tempo in which the defender is trying to act. This is a fault of the design of the drills, not of the way they are being trained.

Let me note here that unless otherwise stated, play numbers refer to the Getty MS: there are 23 stretto plays in the Getty, but the PD is quite different, having 12 plays of the first master, crossed mandritto v mandritto, and 9 of the second, who is crossed roverso v roverso. You can see him and his scholar here:

To address this problem I have, with the assistance of the members of the intermediate class on Monday nights, come up with new versions of these drills. Unlike all the other drills in the syllabus, they branch: so the stretto forms of first drill and second drill come in two parts. In part one, the attacker enters at the crossing, to which the defender has a counter; in part two as the crossing is made the defender enters, to which the attacker has a counter.

The Pisani-Dossi second stretto master
The Pisani-Dossi second stretto master

So the stretto form of first drill, part one, goes like this:

  1. The attacker initiates, with a mandritto fendente.
  2. The defender counter-attacks, also with a mandritto fendente, sending his point into the attacker’s face.
  3. The attacker parries the counter-attack, keeping his point close to the defenders face, and grabs the defenders hilt (as in the second play of the zogho stretto).
  4. As the attacker parries, the defender grabs the attacker’s point and smashes it sword into his face (the 12th play of the zogho stretto).

This has the added benefit of including one of my favourite plays, the 12th play of the zogho stretto. Why blunt your sword on his face when you can use his? The text reads:

If someone parries from the mandritto side, grasp his sword with your left hand as shown and strike him with a thrust or cut. If you want, you can cut his face or neck with his own sword as you see in the picture. After I'm done striking you, I can leave my sword and grab yours, as the student after me will do. (trans Tom Leoni)

Grab his sword and hit him with it!
Grab his sword and hit him with it!

The stretto form of first drill, part two:

  1. The attacker initiates, with a mandritto fendente.
  2. The defender counter-attacks, also with a mandritto fendente, sending his point into the attacker’s face.
  3. The attacker parries the counter-attack, and the defender enters with a pommel strike (3rd play of the zogho stretto).
  4. The attacker counters the pommel strike with the ligadura mezana.

The stretto form of second drill, part one:

  1. The attacker initiates, with a mandritto fendente.
  2. The defender parries with a roverso sottano and strikes with a mandritto fendente.
  3. As the defender parries the attacker binds the parry, and grabs the defender’s pommel with his left hand and throws it over the defender’s left shoulder (the 11th play of the zogho stretto).
  4. As the attacker binds, and will try to enter, the defender kicks him in the nuts (stomach, amongst friends), and strikes with the sword.

The 11th play is important to know as it has a similarly general application as the 12th:

If someone parries on the riverso side, grasp his left hand and his whole pommel with your left hand and push him backward; then you may strike him with thrusts or cuts. (trans Tom Leoni)

grab his pommel and throw it over his left shoulder.
grab his pommel and throw it over his left shoulder.

I like having both these plays in the basic syllabus, as their context is so clearly defined.

The stretto form of second drill, part two:

  1. The attacker initiates, with a mandritto fendente.
  2. The defender parries with a roverso sottano and strikes with a mandritto fendente.
  3. As the attacker binds the parry, the defender enters to wrap, as we see for example in the Pisani Dossi MS, first and second plays of the second master of the zogho stretto.
  4. The defender counters the ligadura mezana with the 16th play of the zogho stretto (Getty MS). Note we already have the 15th play as a counter to the ligadura in the base form of second drill, so here is the alternative.

Many people find this counter to the ligadura mezana easier than the 15th play (which ends in a ligadura sottana, the most commonly used counter to the ligadura mezana, seen before in the 3rd and 4th plays of the 1st master of the dagger, and elsewhere).

throw your sword to his neck.
throw your sword to his neck.

The text reads:

I am the Counter of the student who tried dagger-plays against me–i.e. I act against the student in the second play before me. Slitting his throat would be going easy on him. And I can also throw him to the ground as quickly as I want to. (trans Tom Leoni)

Having these additional forms of the drills should clarify what is supposed to counter what: the main problem with the old versions was that “step four” was really “alternative step three if the defender had had the initiative at the moment of the crossing”. Breaking it down like this and adding the counters should solve the problem. This is one of the best bits about being the head of the school: if there is a problem with the syllabus I can just try to fix it, without committee meetings or appeal to a higher authority. I look forward to hearing from branch leaders whether these new drills have actually solved the problem, or whether they need more work. Bear in mind that they have not been tested yet in their proper environment: class. After teaching them for a few months we should have our answer.

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Finding myself at odds with a colleague regarding what it is fair to call “Fiore’s Art” (or indeed any other historical master’s), I have decided to get down on virtual paper my views on the subject.

It is obvious that coming from a different time and culture we cannot ever perfectly recreate the Art as Fiore himself did it. Not even one of his students would ever have expressed the Art exactly as Fiore himself did it. But the Art is not just the specific choreography of the set plays; it is also a set of tactical principles, a set of movement mechanics, and a body of technique, intended to grant us victory in specific combat contexts. We have abundant exemplar techniques to work from, complete with clear instructions and before-and-after illustrations. With sufficient effort we can train ourselves to solve the swordsmanship problems that fall within this system’s scope, using Fiore’s techniques in accordance with his principles. Thus, express his Art.

As artists though we must apply the art according to our gifts and our natures- there is no sense in trying to be someone else, especially not if that someone else is long dead. Fiore claims Galeazzo da Mantoa as one of his students. It is possible that he was. And when he fought with Marshal Boucicaut, no doubt Fiore was proud of the way he did it, as he mentions it in his book. But equally, it is vanishingly unlikely that had Fiore taken Galeazzo’s place, he would have fought exactly the same way. But Galeazzo, according to Fiore, was applying Fiore’s Art.

A useful analogy here is the theatre. Shakespeare’ plays, for instance, have been put on in every conceivable way— from the attempts to get it all as close as possible to the way Shakespeare would have done it, at the Globe theatre, to modernist interpretations. The play is not the text, it is the production: the combination of text, performance direction, set, stage, costumes, lighting, and audience interaction. It is possible for the same production, the same play, to run for decades with the actors changing from time to time. Of course, bringing in a new actor changes the experience of the play, but it does not become a new production. A good example of this is the Savonlinna Opera Festival’s production of Aïda, which has been repeated almost every year since 1986. The cast has changed, but the physical interpretation of Verdi’s music and Ghislanzoni’s libretto are the same. The production is the same. It’s the same opera. Every single performance will have been unique in some way, but it’s still the same show.

As historical swordsmanship practitioners we are obliged, I think, to make a sincere effort to perform the art as closely as possible to the author’s original intentions. Getting back to Shakespeare:  The Globe theatre is a good example of this idea in practice. Especially in their “original pronunciation” productions. This is a movement to reproduce the accents that the actors would have had back in the day- and we though interpreting swordsmanship texts was difficult! This video explains it better than I could:

For examples that you can see for yourself if you wish, we can compare two movie versions of Hamlet (Shakespeare wrote for the movies, didn’t you know?), Franco Zeffirelli’s (1990) and Kenneth Branagh’s (1996):  two totally different films. Gibson (despite being an anti-semitic, misogynist, religious fundamentalist thug whose work should be boycotted on principle, but we didn’t know that when the film came out) was directed by Zeffirelli in an amazingly good, pretty much by-the-book, set-in-a-castle, classic interpretation. But the text is heavily cut: the running time is about 130min. It grossed about 20 million.

Branagh’s mighty opus weighs in at 246 minutes— almost twice as long as the Zeffirelli. It has the complete text of the play, and has been hailed by many critics as the greatest film adaptation of a Shakespeare play ever. But it was set in the nineteenth century! And it grossed only 5 million. So while Branagh was very faithful to the script, he made no attempt to make it look the way Shakespeare would have.

Nobody in their right mind would suggest that either of these movies “is not Hamlet”. Of course they are. Different takes on the same artistic vision, different bringings-to-life of the same core text, in a medium of which the original author could not have imagined. But Hamlet nonetheless.

The aim of play scripts and screenplays is of course quite different to that of swordsmanship manuals, and likewise their interpreters have very different goals. Putting on a play, or making a movie, is done for any number of reasons, not least among them to entertain an audience, express an artistic vision, and to make money. In the theatre it is perfectly normal for actors, directors, and the rest of the crew to be deliberately expressing their own interpretations, for their own reasons. Except in recreationist versions such as those at the Globe, there is no serious intent to reproduce the play exactly as the playwright saw it in his head. It is understood by all that any production is an interpretation. There is no practical limit on what constitutes a “correct” interpretation: there is really no concept of a “correct” interpretation.

The goals of Fiore’s Art are simpler: Kill your enemies. Survive the fight. Gain renown. This places a constraint on correctness. Whatever interpretation of a historical martial art we come up with must be:

A) Historical. It must be a sincere attempt to accurately reproduce the art as the author intended, taking into account all the data points at our disposal.

B) Martial. The interpretation must work under the conditions initially envisioned by the author.

C) Artistic. The interpretation must be expressed according to the precepts of the art in question: principles both tactical and moral; movement dynamics; tactics and technique.

We are not at liberty to simply excise the portions of the text that don’t suit our vision; nor can we export the art to a foreign context and still be “doing Fiore”. But within those constraints there are a pretty wide range of interpretations that still fit within the scope of “Fiore’s art”. A pretty wide range of tactical and technical choices, of routes to renown. Even a range of core movement dynamics, especially between versions of the text (I’m thinking of the Getty and the Pisani-Dossi here).

In conclusion then, I have no hesitation about claiming that what I teach is Fiore’s Art of Arms, in the same way that Branagh would claim his Hamlet is Shakespeare’s. We have no way to know exactly how Fiore would have fought, and anyway, it would have changed over time as he learned and trained and aged. But we have his book, and what I am teaching is, as far as I can manage it, at the cutting edge of Fiore research. It is a sincere attempt to follow the Master in thought, word and deed. I am not Fiore. And if he came back to life and saw what we do, the best I could hope for would be for him to shake his head sadly and say: “Guy, no. Not like that. It’s like this”. But I am a practitioner of his Art of Arms. And so are my students.

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I am weak. So I study strength. In martial arts, strength has little to do with the usual measures of muscular performance, and everything to do with grounding, structure, power generation and joint maintenance.

Given my choice of profession my naturally weak skeleton is a blessing. My petite 12 year-old niece has wrists about the same size as mine; I’ve had neck issues since I was 14; and I will generally get injured at the slightest provocation. This means I have always been looking for ways to win fights that did not rely on robustness, and that I have always been working through health issues of my own. So I am able to help my students, most of whom have some kind of physical imperfection. Indeed, about half my time in private lessons is spent fixing postural issues, knee or wrist problems, or similar.

My wrists, for example, have suffered from tendonitis since the early nineties. It got so bad when I was working as a cabinet-maker that I literally had to choose between swinging a sword and working the next day. Then I met a kung-fu instructor who in 20 agonising minutes did what the combined medical profession of Edinburgh had failed to do in 5 years: fix my wrists. The treatment involved massage (the agonising bit), very specific exercises with very light weights, and breathing exercises. I had gone a year without touching a sword, five years without push-ups, then suddenly, my wrists worked again. I can now do push-ups on the backs of my hands. So it is no wonder that I place massage, targeted weight training and breathing exercises at the core of the conditioning syllabus. If your body doesn’t work, you can’t use it. Striking targets, and being one, require that your joints can handle the impact of hitting and being hit.

Simply building up the joints is not enough: we have to minimise the impact they are subjected to. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction: when you hit the target, the target hits back. That energy has to go somewhere: if it is not carefully directed, it may very well go into shocking your joints. So it is necessary to establish a safe route for the kinetic energy coming back from the target: it either moves the weapon (not ideal, usually), or is routed down into the ground through the passive structure of your skeleton. This skill can be refined for decades, but I find that even beginners can generate major improvements if we simply create the position of the moment of impact (the lunge, for instance), and apply very gentle pressure in the reciprocal direction to the strike. The student can feel the place where it takes most effort to hold the position (the lead shoulder, for instance), and create a correction to the position that allows the same pressure to be absorbed with less effort. Then we can apply the pressure at the beginning of the movement and establish that the entire movement is properly grounded. (This is much easier with thrusts than cuts, obviously.) Ultimately, we are looking for a structure which does not need to change at all to route the energy: when we add the pressure, there is no need for any kind of muscular reaction, any increase in effort or tension.

This sort of practice leads to all sorts of gains in efficiency: the starting position, the movement, and the end position are all naturally grounded, and so all the muscular effort being made is directly applying force to the strike. Muscles that are not working to hold the position are available for generating power. So, a deeply relaxed guard, and a deeply relaxed movement, allow for massive increases in power generation. We can see hints of this in Fiore's famous elephant: the only one of the four animals depicted standing on a surface (which is square, suggesting stability), the tower on its back indicating that your back should be straight, and balanced.

As the text says:

Ellefante son e un castello porto per chargo/ E non mi inzinochio ne perdo vargo

I am the elephant, and a castle I carry as cargo/ And I do not kneel nor lose my stride

Power is generated by muscular contraction, the difference between the relaxed state of the muscle and the contracted state. It pays to work both ends of the differential. Increasing the raw strength of the muscle is an obvious way to go: creating more efficient positions and movement is less obvious but generates much faster gains because it doesn’t require opening up new nerve channels nor building muscle mass. The stability drill is a good example of this kind of training. Of course, most beginners come to their first class woefully weak and unfit- it is necessary that swordsmen, especially in the early years, develop a decent level of core strength and fitness. This prevents injury, allows sufficient endurance for long-enough training sessions to actually learn the cool stuff, and makes precise postural adjustments much easier. As a basic guideline, if the warm-up shown here feels like a warm-up, not a workout, then you should have the basic strength and fitness level at which the fastest gains come from the kind of grounding training we are looking at here. Note that, compared to the average competitive boxer or wrestler, we are pathetically unfit, but then the sword is a labour-saving device, not an odd-shaped dumbell.

In many students the weak link in the chain between sword-point and ground is their grip on the sword. I don’t think I have ever come across a student in any seminar, regardless of experience, whose grip could not be improved. In most cases, the interface between sword and hand does not allow a clean flow of energy from the blade up the arm. The modern tendency to chunky grips exacerbates this; most antiques I have handled have very slim grips, which when you understand grounding, makes perfect sense. Indeed, after coming to a seminar on this topic, many students end up having their sword grip modified. The human hand is an incredibly complex and sensitive machine- but all too often folk hold onto their swords like they were carrying a suitcase.

I usually demonstrate the proper interface by hitting a tyre with a longsword with both my hands open, and by hitting the wall target with my rapier, again with my hand open. Simple beer-can-crushing grip strength has almost nothing to do with striking power with the sword. The role of the fingers is to direct the energy in the sword into the lifeline of the palm, and thence up the arm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grb3wgBk7Zs

With thanks to Ville Vartianien on camera, and Janne Högdahl holding the tyre.

Having established a safe and efficient route for the energy to travel down, we can use the same pathway for energy to travel out. With a rapier, for instance, once the lunge position is grounded, we can find the same pathway in the guard position too. Clearly though, while the lunge creates a straight diagonal line from the point of the sword to the ground, in guard that line goes horizontally along the arm, and curves in the upper back to go down through the hips and into the (usually) back leg. If you can feel this line clearly, lunging is simply a matter of taking that curve and snapping it straight. A more sophisticated version of this works for cuts too (with any weapon). It is much easier to maintain the groundpath than to break and reform it in motion, so establish it in guard, and let the strike be a resistance-free extension of it.

As you become more efficient so you hit much harder, so there is more energy coming back down into your body, so you need to improve your grounding, so you can hit harder, so there is more energy coming back, etc. Given that you can break your hand by punching a concrete wall, it is obvious that you can generate far more power than you can withstand the impact of. So gains in power generation come from increases in your ability to handle the power, more than increases in the power itself.

When you practice like this, it swiftly becomes obvious that general carry-a-TV-up-the-stairs real-word strength has little bearing on the outcome of a sword fight, and so it is necessary (because real-world, TV-carrying strength is useful, just not so much in the salle) to do a bunch of not-sword-training to develop it. Push-ups, kettlebells, and the like. This is not to help us hit harder, but more an insurance policy against errors in technique, and for general health and fitness. Likewise, joint strength training and massage should ideally be a matter of maintenance, not cure.

P.S. added Dec 5th 2012: there is a very interesting article the use of strength training in HEMA here, which points out that strength training has added benefits that I have not addressed above.

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One of the mysteries surrounding German (i.e. Liechtenauer) and Italian (i.e. Fiore) unarmoured longsword combat (and I’m sure it keeps you awake at night too) is the different responses to a crossing at the middle of the sword (meza spada) in the two systems. At Fiore’s crossing of the swords in zogho stretto we see lots of entering with grips, pommel strikes and the like, whereas from the same starting point (swords crossed at the middles, some pressure in the contact, points threatening) Liechtenauer would have us wind, bind, or cut around (such as the twitch, zucken). My theory (and is it only a theory) is that the systems are optimised for slightly different weapons. Fiore’s longsword appears to be a little shorter than that used in the German manuscripts. (If you don't have examples to hand, you can find them at the  excellent Wiktenauer.)

It is is difficult to establish the size of the weapons from the illustrations in the manuals, but fortunately one Italian master, Filippo Vadi, explicitly determines the proportions of the sword in Chapter 2 of his De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi (Folio 4)

La spada vole avere iusta misura
Vole arivare el pomo sotto el brazio
Come qui apare nella mia scriptura.

The sword should be of the correct size,
The pommel should come under the arm
As it appears here in my writing.

(Translation here and below mine, from my The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest)

Using Vadi's stated proportions, my sword should be 133cm (my floor-armpit measurement). If we measure the illustrations, we find that the longest sword (relative to the man holding it) is 1.31:1. I am 175cm tall: keeping this ratio, my sword should be 133.6cm long, and my floor-armpit measurement is 133cm. Pretty close: but this is the longest sword in the sample. In contrast, the swords in Fiore appear to be a bit shorter. (There is no hard evidence for this.)

In Vadi’s explanatory chapters on the art of the sword, he makes several references to techniques that re clearly Fiorean, but also many to techniques that appear to be very similar to Liechtenauer. For instance, he describes at length the way to play at the meza spada, and includes the following:

On folio 11V
Ragion de giocho de spada. Capitolo XI
Theory of Swordplay chapter XI

Qvando tu sei amezza spada gionto.
Facendo tu el diritto o voi el riverso.
Farai che piglie el verso.
Di quel chio dico poi che sei al ponto.

When you have arrived at the half sword,
Making a mandritto or roverso,
Be sure to grasp the sense
Of what I say, because it is to the point.

Si tuui steggie tien pur lochio pronto
Et fa la uista brive con coverta.
Et tien la spada erta.
Che sopra el capo tuo le braccie gioche.

When you feint keep a sharp eye out,
And make the feint short, with the cover,
And hold the sword up,
So your arms play above your head.

So when crossed at the meza spada, we leave the crossing to strike. Lifting your hands up at this point seems to indicate exactly the kind of winding action we see in the Liechtenauer material.
We can even feint on one side and strike on the other:

On folio 12V

Ragion de mezza spada.. C. XIII
Theory of the half-sword.

Essendo tu pur gionto ameza spada
Tu po bem piu et piu volte martelare
Da un sol lato trare
Da laltra parte le tue viste vada.

Having then arrived at the half sword,
You can well hammer more and more times,
Striking on only one side,
Your feints go on the other side.

The problem is of course that all this is being done in circumstances where as Fioreans, we would only enter because the leave the crossing would mean being immediately struck (the defining feature of zogho stretto). But here’s the thing: with the longer swords, the situation is different. The extra length, only a few inches at most, nonetheless changes the game completely. To illustrate this I shot a short video with my student Ilpo Luhtala. The swords we used for the Fiorean crossing were an Arms and Armor Fechterspiele, at 123cm (48 1/2”) and a 117cm (46”) Pavel Moc Embleton (old version, the new ones are longer). We then switched to longer swords, about the right length for Vadi: a Peter Regenyi fechterspiele at 135cm (53”) and an Angus Trim sharp at 130cm (51”). As you can see in the video, with the shorter swords, crossed at the meza spada in measure to strike without stepping, it is easy to enter in, and very dangerous to leave the crossing, even for an instant. The points are very close to our faces. With the slightly longer swords (about 10-12% longer), the game changes completely, and there is time to safely cut around, provided you make a small motion, a “turn of the wrist”:

El mzzo tempo est solo uno suoltare
De nodo: presto et subito alferrire
E raro po falire
Quando le fatto con bona mesura

The half tempo is just one turn
Of the wrist: quick and immediately striking,
It can rarely fail
When it is done in good measure.

And we must close the line and strike with a single motion, as Vadi demands:

De tucta larte questo sie el givello
Perche inun tracto el ferrissi et para
O quanto e coxa cara
A praticarlo con bona ragione
E facte portar de larte el gonfalone.

Of all the art this is the jewel,
Because in one go it strikes and parries.
Oh what a valuable thing,
To practice it according to the good principles,
It will let you carry the banner of the Art.

You can find the rest of the translation free here: https://guywindsor.gumroad.com/l/sXBJh

Or even buy the book! The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest

Free Sample of The Duellist's Companion

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