Hi!

If you’ve been following along with the websites debacle, you can probably imagine what my week has been like. I didn’t start teaching historical martial arts for a living because I wanted to become a website manager.

The infrastructure matters, of course. Good web design matters too. A badly-made website can ruin your day if you rely on it for something important (I’m looking at you, every government website I’ve ever encountered).

The redirect links used throughout my books are now working again, and the blog is back online too. That means the temporary spreadsheet of replacement links has done its job, so I’ve taken it down. If you’ve been putting off using the links in your books, they should now work just as intended. There is still work to be done, but critical functions are now restored. Thank you to everyone who downloaded the spreadsheet, forwarded it to friends, or simply sent kind words while I was digging my way out. They really did help.

As you can imagine days of wrestling with servers, redirects and security issues was sending me bonkers, so on Friday afternoon while waiting for the excellent support team at my web hosting company to get back to me, I did something about it. I opened the Scrivener file for what will probably become my next book, How to Win Sword Fights.

It had been languishing at about 800 words and a folder structure for most of this year. Somehow I cracked the seal, and since then I’ve been writing well over a thousand words a day. We’re comfortably past 10,000 words now.

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I didn’t open my school because I wanted to become a writer either, but it’s a damn sight better than fiddling about with computers.

The idea behind the book is quite simple: what actually matters when it comes to winning sword fights?

The reach, weight and sharp bits of your opponent’s sword matter. Whether it’s a three-ring swept hilt or a Pappenheimer doesn’t. So the chapter on weapons isn’t about aesthetics or typology for their own sake; it’s about the characteristics that make a sword useful and dangerous.

Winning sword fights isn’t just about technique. It’s about attributes too: strength, speed, timing… and accuracy.

Most people try to improve accuracy through simple repetition. But repetition without useful feedback mostly reinforces the habits you already have. The trick is designing exercises that make errors obvious enough for your nervous system to start correcting them.

Which brings me to this weekend’s webinar.

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​Hit What You Aim At: Point Control for Historical Fencers​

If you want to improve your accuracy with any thrusting weapon, this class is for you.

We’ll spend about ninety minutes working through practical solo drills for precision, body mechanics and point control, followed by questions and discussion. I’ll demonstrate mostly with the smallsword and foil, but the principles apply equally to rapier, sidesword, and longsword, and I will demonstrate with those too. All you need is a simple wall target (instructions are included in the workbook).

Choose whichever session suits you, or attend both:

• Saturday 1 August, 8:00 am (UK) — Europe & Australasia

• Sunday 2 August, 7:00 pm (UK) — Europe & the Americas

Register once and you’ll receive recordings of both sessions.

I do find hitting things very therapeutic. Especially when computers are misbehaving.

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Speaking of webinars, I’ve split the second Foundations of Smallsword webinar into eighteen bite-sized lessons and added them to the Solo Training course as a free upgrade. If you already own the course (or have access through subscription) you should find them waiting for you. I’m now working out the best way to make them available to everyone who attended the webinar too. Suggestions welcome!

This week on The Sword Guy: Your own personal necromancer, with Josh Wiest

Joshua Wiest is an instructor at Forge Fencing in Durham, North Carolina, specialising in the fighting systems of Marozzo, dall’Agocchie, Manciolino and Palladini. He’s also a successful tournament fencer and host of the historical martial arts podcast L’Arte dell’Armi.

You may remember Josh from episode 90 of this podcast, “A Whole Lot of Tasty Bolognese, with Josh Wiest”. We’re delighted to have Josh back on the show to continue the discussion of Bolognese fencing, specifically, was there a Bolognese tradition? How can we be certain, and is this the correct name for it?

In this in-depth conversation we cover the historical context of Bologna in the 15^th Century, the important families and their influence on the fencing tradition. This includes the significance of necromancy, chivalric academies, English kings, a pirate Pope, the sack of Rome, political intrigue, feuds and much more besides!

I love the podcast. It’s one of my favourite parts of what I do because I get to meet such a wide range of fascinating people, many of whom become friends if they weren’t already.

But since my mother died I simply haven’t had the energy to seek out new guests. Josh’s episode feels like the right place to pause for a while. If all goes well I’ll be back with a new season in the autumn.

In the meantime, I’m disappearing back into How to Win Sword Fights. After the year it’s been, making something new feels like a big step in the right direction.

Yours,

Guy