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Hi!

I do weights with my wife on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We normally do classic weight training, but last week she thought it might be fun to do a follow-along “posterior chain” workout from Roxanne Russell (an Australian fitness person on the tubes of you). It was so much “fun” she immediately wanted to do a dumbbell shoulder workout from Caroline Girvan. Caroline was using 8kg weights, I used 5, my wife was on 3. I quite like workouts where you just stick to one weight, it simplifies things. There were of course exercises where I could have gone a lot heavier, but also moments where 5kg felt more than enough.

So my hamstrings are toast and my triceps hate me. But it was fun! So much so that we repeated it (and I moved up a weight or two).

Why am I telling you this? Because it’s no bad thing to cross train, and it’s no bad thing to change things up every now and then. And if I can suffer through it, so can you. It’s honestly a refreshing change not to be making all the training decisions in a session.

Speaking of cross training, I’ve been having a go at “rope flow”, which seems quite fun and useful if you don’t take it too seriously. I cut the sound on this video because there was a lawn mower running nearby, and I was swearing a lot:

​https://vimeo.com/1096945046​

It’s not all suffering through kettlebells and chonky bits of iron. I also ended up shooting a couple of sword videos. This is me getting into a longsword frame of mind:

​https://vimeo.com/1096538105​

And this is a very useful exercise for learning when to pass and when to lunge, with a rapier or any other weapon:

​https://vimeo.com/1096538161​

Introduction to Historical Martial Arts course

As you may have noticed last week, I’ve created a course aimed at absolute beginners, which includes a complete beginners’ course in Fiore’s Armizare, and in Capoferro’s Rapier (because many beginners don’t know what’s available or what their specific sword interests may be). It also includes a huge set of taster classes, so once the beginner has an idea of how to move and what the tactical preferences are of at least one system, they can get a broader idea of what historical martial arts are all about. It’s too much stuff to price sensibly- it would be in the high hundreds, based on the quantity of material. And stuff for beginners should be accessible in every sense of the word, so it’s only available through a $10 subscription. I’m guessing most people on this list aren’t beginners, but if you know anyone who would find it useful please do share this link.

There’s more to Vadi than longsword!

But it’s clearly his focus. All of the introductory chapters on fencing theory focus on the sword. But over half of the illustrated plays are other things- some armoured combat, some mixed weapons, and a whole lot of dagger plays. While I was working with Jo York on the Vadi longsword course (currently available here), we took the time to shoot the entire manuscript. So my entire interpretation of Vadi is now recorded on video, hurrah! Given that so much of it is dagger, there’s more than enough material for a separate “Vadi Dagger” online course, so we also shot the necessary additional material to make a standalone course: how to fall, mechanics, safety, how to train, all that stuff. These gigabytes and gigabytes of video have been sitting on my hard drive since April, but I’ve just now started on editing them up to produce both the course on Vadi’s dagger plays, and an entire video interpretation. I’m not sure exactly how I’ll combine them, but for sure they’ll be in the Medieval Italian Combat subscription, and Mastering the Art of Arms, as soon as they’re ready.

And yes we are planning a Vadi facsimile with my translation and links to the videos. Like the Fiore facsimile, but as I haven’t shot all of my Fiore interpretation yet (there’s all the armoured combat and the mounted combat to do), that one doesn’t have the video support (yet).

Office Hours

Running my Office Hours on the 21st was actually fun, and provided a good chance for people to ask questions directly. I’ve decided to extend the idea to cover anyone who has bought any of my books or courses. Because why not?

This month is almost entirely full of family time (yay!) so the next one will be in August. More details in due course.

What I’m Reading

Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water is a terrible book. It will make you produce psychosomatic symptoms that will stop you from working so you can read the next chapter. It’s amazingly well done; a narrative sweep covering 80 years, centred on a single Indian family with an obscure condition that makes them prone to drowning. Verghese is a doctor in his other career, and so it all eventually makes medical sense. It has some similar elements to Cutting for Stone, but it’s very much its own book. Definitely worth a try… if you don’t mind taking time off work.

On a lighter (in the sense of genre and style) and much heavier (in the fictional stakes), I’ve also read Robert Harris’s Enigma, which is a kind of murder-mystery, and definitely a thriller, set in Bletchley Park in 1943. Harris is usually very good, and this while perhaps not his best, is a solid thriller set at an interesting time.

Holidays!

I’m off on holiday starting early next week, with a family holiday followed by a road trip with daughter #2, so I’ll be much less responsive than usual. If you’re having technical trouble with a product you’ve bought (logging in to a course, for example), please send a message to help@swordschool.com which will be monitored. Anything else, please be patient; I’ll be back at my keyboard around the 25th.

cheers,

Guy