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Hi!

It’s that time of year again… I’ve just ordered my Swordschool Training Year Planner. This is a great tool for (you guessed it) planning your training, but it’s also just a lovely thing to have in the house.

You don’t have to start it in January; it’s been carefully designed so that you can start at any point in the year (it makes a lot of sense to start a new year in Spring, for instance). But I need a new one now!

I have a fancy code that gets me anything I want from my own store for FREE! (well, not quite. I still have to pay for printing and shipping). I’m not sharing that, but you can get 25% off all digital products with the code GUYSBIRTHDAY25, and 10% off all print products with BIRTHDAYPRINT10.

The codes are valid until January 2nd, so there’s no rush. This is an expensive time of year for everyone. Feel free to share this email or those codes with your friends.

Bolognese, anyone?

My friend and colleague Esko Ronimus has produced a new course: Introduction to Bolognese Swordmanship: Marozzo's one-handed sword form​

This course offers an in-depth introduction to the fundamental techniques and tactics of Bolognese fencing. It focuses on the one-handed sword techniques as presented in Opera Nova de Achille Marozzo Bolognese, Maestro Generale de L'arte de L'armi (A New Work by Achille Marozzo of Bologna, General Master of the Art of Arms, 1536), chapters 94-100: Combat with the Unaccompanied Sword, One-on-One. Through a series of seven plays—four offensive and three defensive—along with their accompanying exercises and demonstrations, you will explore the foundational principles of Bolognese swordsmanship, and gain a clear understanding of Marozzo’s method of fighting in earnest with a sharp sword, both in the essential plays and in the tactics they contain.

And yes, the 25% discount code GUYSBIRTHDAY25 applies to this new course too.

If you already have Esko’s previous course, Introduction to Bolognese Swordsmanship: dall’Agocchie's Varying Guards Form, you should have already received an email with a 40% discount code for the new one. If you can’t find that email, let me know and I’ll send you the code.

100 days no booze results

If you’ve been following along with the 100 days no booze saga, you’ll be aware that I passed the 100 days mark last week. I went for my DEXA scan on Friday 28th, and it was absolutely weird. On the one hand, visceral fat is down from 136cm2 to 103. Awesome! Under 100 would be better, but that’s a great result.

On the other, according to the scales at the DEXA lab, I’m 1.8kg lighter. Fair: that’s about the same as I measured at home, especially allowing for the different time of day. But the scan itself said I’ve lost 2.631kg of lean mass (mostly from my trunk! WTF?) and 785g of fat. That’s a total of 3.416kg… so where’s the extra 1.616kg? And what the hell has gone from my trunk? And why has cutting a bottle of wine a day out of my lifestyle only cut 785g of fat?

I’ve contacted the company for an explanation of how the scan disagrees with the scales by a factor of 90%…

On the cholesterol side of things, there is great improvement across the board.

The 28th was day 102, so I had some wine in the evening, and a bit more on Saturday, and more again on my birthday on Sunday. And yes it was lovely, and I was careful not to overdo it. But I’m back off it again while I properly consider my long-term approach, and my actual goals. Total abstinence seems unlikely, but I think drifting back to my previous habit would be a mistake. Assuming the scan accurately measured my visceral fat, 100 days of no alcohol has greatly improved the two metrics I was interested in. I’m in the process of writing this up properly for my blog, with the actual multi-page scan results, and the cholesterol details, and my actual goals and the approach I’ll take to reach them. It turned out to be more complicated than I expected, so it may be a while before it’s ready.

On the Podcast: The perfectly rational fencer? With Martin Höppner

Dr Martin Höppner has been involved in historical martial arts since joining a local reenactment club, “Berliner Rittergilde” in 2008 before getting into historical fencing in 2015 studying classical sabre and rapier at the University of Berlin club. He then moved into sword and buckler, inspired by Roland Warzecha’s work (you can hear from Roland here) and Fiore’s Art of Arms, before being seduced by Manciolino and Marozzo. In 2017 he co-founded Schildwache Potsdam as a collaboration between the Berliner Rittergilde and the University of Potsdam’s Academic Sports Centre. In 2020 and 2021 he was on the DDHF national longsword first squad. And since 2022 he was on the Rapier national squad, where he is now head coach. He runs the Schildwache Potsdam YouTube channel, and is one of the organizers of one of my favourite events, Swords of the Renaissance. He is a research associate at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg and has a PhD in economics and social sciences.

Economics is very relevant to this episode, because Martin and I discuss how Game Theory relates to fencing. What is it rational to do when sparring and what do people actually do? What is the most rational way to react to an opponent who hits you increasingly hard or fast? Should you match them, or walk away?

We also talk about rule sets in tournaments, and Martin’s thoughts on how to devise them to stop people gaming the rules, and make the fencing cleaner and scoring fairer.

cheers,

Guy

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