Hi! and greetings from Helsinki, where I’m writing this after a marvellous weekend teaching two seminars for Auri Poso’s (of episode 131 of the podcast) Gladiolus School of Arms. On Saturday we spent many hours marinating in sweat (it’s extraordinarily warm here: the temperature inside the hall got well into the mid-30s (Centigrade), which is like 100 degrees for Finns). The goal was to improve everyone’s freeplay skills, or rather, give them the tools to improve their skills themselves over the coming months. As it happened, I went climbing the week before, and coming down off the wall in a perfectly normal fashion, managed to sprain a couple of ligaments in my lower back. It was ridiculous, actually. I got into position to start a climb that I’ve done before, changed my mind about making the first move (the hardest bit of the whole route), and put my feet back on the floor. Then went and lay down for a while with my back screaming at me. Absurd, but bodies do that kind of thing occasionally. Fortunately I had a session booked with Eki (of Fysio Sakura, in Helsinki) to follow up on my knee issue (which he seems to have fixed in our first session back in February), and we spent the full hour on my lower back instead. This meant that I spent the whole day teaching people how to fence better, without being able to demonstrate much at all. And you know what? It didn’t matter a damn. Because (as we covered in day 2, How to Teach), it’s not about what I can do; it’s about what the students can do. And they were awesome! The second day was even more fun (partly because my back was hurting less), as we delved into how to teach, using a simple set of heuristics to guide decision making. There was a lot of discussion about theory (such as how to develop a syllabus), but we got a lot of sword-time in too, looking at how to teach students to coach each other, and simultaneously teaching the teachers present how to coach their students better. All the attendees had access to an early copy of my forthcoming book Get Them Moving: how to teach historical martial arts, which helped establish some background, and also (top tip to my fellow writers) generated some very useful feedback on the draft, which I’ll be applying in due course. Speaking of books, From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the wrestling techniques of Fiore dei Liberi is now wide on all stores (i.e. you can get it from Kobo, Amazon etc. if you want to). Of course I’d rather you got it from here: https://swordschool.shop/products/from-medieval-manuscript-to-modern-practice-wrestling-hardback But no pressure :) This back stuff has buggered my training routines of course- I’ll be staying off explosive kettlebell swings for a while. If you’re interested in my general approach to recovering from injuries, you can find it here: https://guywindsor.net/2018/04/recovering-from-injury-six-useful-ideas/ I wrote it the last time I hurt my back (much much worse than this time), in 2018, but the principles hold true for any injury. Madison seminar reminder:While I’m over in the states in July I will be doing a couple of seminars, starting with Improve your Freeplay, in Madison WI on July 6th and 7th, in which we’ll spend a day improving your, you guessed it, freeplay skills with longsword and rapier (a day of each!). You can find the seminar details and registration instructions at guywindsor.net/madison This week on The Sword Guy: Could HEMA ever be big in China? With Zeng Yang
Today’s episode is with Zeng Yang, who is a doctoral student at the Shanghai Sport University, where he is pursuing a PhD in the history of European swordsmanship from the 14th to the 17th centuries. He is a lifelong martial artist having begun training in Wushu at the age of eight. His master’s degree is a comparison of Duan Bing and HEMA. In our conversation, we talk about the spread of Chinese martial arts to the Western world, through things like kung fu movies and immigration, but the question is, why the same hasn’t happened in the other direction? How could HEMA become more popular in China? We hear about a new term, Bing Ji, which combines all steel weapons in an exciting new form of cross-cultural communication. You can find the episode here:
yours, Guy |
Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.
Hi! Right now you may be confused because I sent an email out yesterday announcing a few hours left to go on this launch... which hadn't started yet.This is because my assistant who normally does these things was away, so I scheduled all the launch emails myself, and hit the wrong button on the last one of them.Sorry. And, this is why I have an assistant!Now, on with the launch... At the end of June I went to Kansas… and came back with footage of a whole lot of my interpretation of Fiore’s Il...
Hi! as this goes out I’m on my way to Stansted airport to fly to Berlin for the Swords of the Renaissance event, where I’m teaching three classes: Improve your Rapier fencing; Lessons from the Abrazare; and a short “break-out session” on fencing with the rapier and dagger. Should be lots of fun! I’ve attended the last two of these events, and am really looking forward to this one. Between the family trip to London and dashing off to Germany, I’ve been finishing up the video editing for the...
Hi, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The Dardi article I posted about this morning- Michael Chidester, Josh Wiest, and David Biggs all got in touch to let me know that the institution and author apparently don't exist. It's almost certainly a hoax of some kind. Though why anyone would post such a thing on Academia.edu I have no idea. I've deleted the post wherever I can find it, and posted retractions. These things happen- but next time I'll check more carefully before posting stuff. Sorry...