Philippo Vadi - On Mastery

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"If you would be dexterous, and master the sword, you must be accomplished in teaching and learning" Philippo di Vadi, On the Art of Swordsmanship (1480's)

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10 simple tips for improving HEMA sparring

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Shamelessly inspired by this article: 1. Game I agree that relaxation is important. Being tense means you're thinking about being tense and not smiting the other guy. One of the simplest ways I've found to do this is to play more. This means treating sword fighting more like a game than a serious life and death situation because the only thing in danger in our pretend sword poking is our egos. Here are a whole bunch of games to help induce a relaxed mindset. 2. Train fast and get faster Not many sword fighting sources have ponderous complex actions but rather lots of simple actions done at the correct time and measure very, very fast. Want to be fast? Then recognise that what you are doing now is actually slow and do specific drills to improve your explosive speed. Just try this and see what I mean: Throw a glove in the air and do as many cuts as you can before it falls. Go as fast as you can while maintaining good body mechanic s. If you're loosing good mechani...
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