Art of the Sword

"It is foolishness and endless trouble to cast a stone at every dog that barks at you. This noble science is not to cause one man to abuse another injurously but to use it in their necessities to defend them in just causes and to maintain their honor and credits" George Silver, Brief Instructions 1605

"This book is a collection of essays and articles, about half of which have been adapted from Guy’s successful blog, at guywindsor.com, the rest have never been published before." http://guywindsor.net/blog/books/swordfighting-the-book/#sthash.5lezJdED.dpuf Just a quick review of this book. Firstly I should say I'm a big fan of Guy Windsor. I read his Swordsman's Companion back in the day and since then I've kept up to date with his blog. I am, at the moment, very interested in reading general thoughts on the Art of swordsmanship so when he released this I was quite excited. I also found it quite interesting how you would explain the Art concisely to a complete lay person who perhaps isn't interested in wielding a sword but just wants to understand how it works. Great stuff I thought. Now, I don't think the book does that or that Guy was really making much of an effort with this book. It really is just a loosely strung together collection of his ...

 "there are a great many Men, who by their Awkwardness will puzzle a good Fencer"   Captain John Godfrey, A Treatise Upon the Useful Science of Defence 1747

This  is a very cool way of breaking down and describing techniques. 

Great article on HROARR at the moment, specifically I enjoyed this concise summary : "for me being advanced means to understand the logic between the individual devices and techniques and being able to interconnect the bigger picture." and "They are able to perform an absetzen in practice and in ideal condition, but fail to do so in a freefight. One of the reasons behind it is using extremely simple, improper and incoherent stimulus – reaction methods, mixing illogical actions and often limited by what is written in the surviving fighting manuals" This really nails it for me, I'm uninterested in hearing about the latest interpretation of blah technique but very interested in hearing about drills, games and other training methods.

I've spoken about this before  but I feel that one of the key pillars of successful swordsmanship is developing a good mental attitude. Being relaxed and adopting a playful mindset allows you apply your knowledge gained from study and drilling to successful sparring. Like with strength or technique there is training you can do to develop this. Training for a good mental attitude is partly about training to reduce stress and reducing the likelihood that you will freeze under pressure. It is also partly about encouraging you to understand the linkages between techniques, how to apply the technique in different situations and how a technique fits into the bigger strategic picture. So, what's a solution? Games. Here's a list of some that I like to use with descriptions (I'll keep updating this list as I come up with new games): Without swords Slappy facey / tag -  based on a childhood game from my upbringing in Scotland, slappy facey in it's natural form is...

Wow, people are on fire this month. This is one of the clearest and most concise explanations of Aristotelian physics from a German tradition HEMA perspective. It would certainly get my vote for the best post on historical fencing I've seen this year. Likewise, this post summaries well how it could be seen as a fallacy to get too "purist" in defining HEMA practice: "If the end result can be presented as a credible format using every relevant source at its disposal to practice the art : it is HEMA" I wrote a while ago lamenting the lack of open and intelligent information sharing in HEMA "community" at that time. Beyond politicking and people generally throwing their weight around on the established forums there was little activity. It's great to see new blogs springing up with people finding channels to get their ideas and information out there.