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Hi!

Tournament Takeaways

I’m back from a wonderful trip to Potsdam, where I competed in both sidesword and rapier at the Torneo di Spada. I took no action shots at the event, but used it as an excuse to buy a new sidesword. My friends at Malleus Martialis hooked me up with this beauty (their Marozzo no. 3 sidesword trainer):

I’ve written up the tournament experience in a 3000 word post, which went live on Patreon last week, and is now up in the Training and Conditioning section of SwordPeople. I will get it up on my blog as soon as I can, but we’re in migration limbo: the current versions of the Swordschool website, the wiki, and my blog have been downloaded from the current host and uploaded to the new host, but it’s taking a while to get everything working properly. Until the migration is complete it would be foolish to add new material, as it would inevitably introduce errors. This is why there have been no wiki updates lately either.

My main takeaways are:

1. My conditioning is up to scratch.

2. I can still fence.

3. Tournament rulesets reward specific fencing approaches.

4. The organisers are heroes who should be paraded through the streets.

If you want specifics, go read the post!

I’m working on a “how historical martial artists can use tournaments in their training” post, to cast my experience in a more usable form. I’ve no idea when that will be ready! Some time after the migration is complete.

Is there a Neurologist in the House?

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the risks of traumatic brain injuries in historical martial arts, especially in sparring and tournaments settings. We are swinging steel bars at each others heads, after all. I’d love to discuss the kinds of damage we risk, and ways to mitigate the risks, with a neurologist on my podcast. If you happen to be a neurologist, or know one who might be interested in talking about this stuff, please do get in touch.

The Grand Salute

My friend Malcom Fare is interested in the Grand Salute, as practised in the late 19th century. If you happen to know of anyone who performs it now, and has it on video, please do let me know.

Malcolm is the foremost fencing historian in the UK, runs the National Fencing Museum, and allowed me to photograph a bagillion of his amazing fencing treatises, so we the historical fencing community owe him a favour or two.

I’ve written a blog post on the Grand Salute, including full instructions for how it’s done. You can find it here.

On The Sword Guy podcast: Embodying martial arts in an aging body, with Jess Finley

The inestimable Jess Finley is back on the podcast! If you’re not aware of her work, she has written a wonderful book about medieval wrestling, starred in several of my online courses, and we recently collaborated on an online course about Von Baumann’s wrestling. On her Patreon account, she produces translations, interpretations, previews of books in progress and videos. She also teaches swords around the world.

We start by talking about travelling with knives and guns, before moving onto the main topic, which is looking at ways to mitigate the downsides of aging as we train and get older. One of the main things to work out is understanding the difference between discomfort and dysfunction, i.e. is this pain OK, or have I catastrophically injured myself? And at what point should I listen to the fear? We talk about what lessons a long term martial arts practice has given us in our daily lives, especially when dealing with life’s big moments.

And Finally

I was in the garden this morning before training, and noticed the frost on the grass, and the fallen oak leaves, and took a photo of it. This has nothing to do with swords, and everything to do with why we do swords.

cheers,

Guy

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