December 2022 Update

Howdy y'all. Here's what I've been up to towards the end of 2022.

New Digs

The big news is the move: my partner and I have moved to Victoria, on the south end of Vancouver Island. We co-bought a place with another couple, they went in for 2/3 and we went in for 1/3, so when we found a 3 storey house, we decided that we'd get the bottom level, and they'd get the top two. Our level is currently split in half between a finished suite (the South Wing), and an unfinished workshop area (the North Wing). We're pretty much moved in and sorted in the South Wing, and the next month will see us fitting out the North Wing with a few walls, so it'll be an additional two rooms for a rentable room and an office/den area, while keeping the bulk of the unfinished workshop unfinished, which we'll be using as a workout/training area. There will be a squat rack, kettlebells, indian clubs, plyo box, rings and agility ladders, as well as space for a short piste/fencing area.

A view of the North Wing. Shelves are going to come down, and we're going to clear some ceiling space. The window in the background will be obscured by one of the new walls.

Beat the Crap Out of Cancer XIII

At the start of November, Maelstrom Martial Arts hosted the latest iteration of their annual event that raises funds for the BC Cancer Agency. This is probably my favourite event every year, and you better believe that even though I've moved to the island, I'll be coming back again next year. The format runs relatively close to a Dog Brothers gathering (I'm told, I've never been), in that fights are agreed upon by the combatants themselves, and they run for a set time (two minutes), and at the end of the clock the fighters hug/shake hands and no victor is declared. The difference from a gathering is that fights aren't full-force no-holds-barred, but each pair can decide if they want to do technical (no/minimal contact), light (reduced speed & power), or heavy (full gusto, but not actively trying to break each other). Also, any given pair is free to add any other restrictions they want (no throws, no groundwork, restricted targets, whatever).

I managed to get eight fights in, a blend of Nova Scrimia assalto cortese, sword vs sword, sword vs two daggers, single short stick, double short stick, and walking stick vs double stick. It was a blast, but I don't think I'm training enough right now for it to really be an effective feedback mechanism. The main feedback that I got was that it's been a while, and I'm out of shape!

Daze of Derby

A week after BTCOOC the folks over at NWO roller derby in Chilliwack hosted Daze of Derby, an event that they usually run annually, but it's taken a few years off due to the plague. I was scheduled to be a support ref, which I was excited for (local derby's small enough that I usually end up as head ref for any given event), but one of the three crew heads had to call in sick at the last minute, and I ended up inheriting the role of crew head ref.

The tournament overall was a whole lot of fun, even with some organizational scrambling at the beginning of the day. With two tracks right next to each other, we tried to use Fox 40 Pearl whistles on one track, and Fox 40 Classics on the other, but only 2/3 crews got the memo, which led to a handful of very confusing jam transitions, where one track had started/called off a jam and the other track thought it was their track that had started/finished. Overall, for a first post-covid run, I think the event went pretty smoothly, and I'm fully confident that next year will be even better.

Book Club

Back in September, when I went to WMAW in Racine, WI, Michael Heveran invited me to join his book club, which was about to start tackling FA Marcelli's Rules of Fencing, originally published in 1686. We've been meeting weekly (ish) for two hours or so, on Sundays, getting through a chapter or three each time. I'm super grateful to Michael for the invite; I've been collecting Holzman translations for so long, it's nice to finally start reading one.

New Town, New Job

After five and a half years at the little shop on Broadway, I've moved over to Victory Barbers here in Victoria. I knew that I was going to need a place to land as soon as we made the decision to move, back in the spring, and I'd already talked to Paul, the head barber at Victory, about the barbering scene in Victoria, so when I saw a posting for barbers back in June, I dropped them a line. It was an odd place to be: I wasn't sure where I was going to be living, nor when we'd actually be moving over, but Victory's central location made it accessible from wherever we'd be getting a place, and Josh seemed amenable to me just coming over for a couple of Monday/Tuesdays once or twice a month until I could actually make it out full time.  

Looking Forward

What's next? I've now unpacked so many of my to-read books that there's a part of me that thinks I have no time for anything that isn't reading my to-read books, at least for the next few months, but I know that's also a road towards stir-craziness. Locally, I'm just getting to the point of figuring out what I want to do training-wise. I've reached out to a few boxing gyms, and I'll be looking up fencing clubs and HEMA groups in the next few weeks as well, although I'm not sure the extent to which I'll be down to clutter up my schedule in the immediate future.

In the new year I'm planning on heading over to Vancouver at some point in January, for a full day of training/sparring. Forms in the morning, sticks/sparring in the afternoon? Location(s) and time TBD.

Form Tips for Novice Rapier Fencers

I was recently asked to provide a list of things for new(er) rapier fencers to keep an eye on when practicing outside of class, specifically in small groups with a similar skill level. Here are the questions, and my answers.

What are three mechanical things that you consistently notice with green cords/new sword-players that, ‎over time, will affect their physical health? How can they correct these issues?

1 - Drifting front knee/toe. You know, the one that senior students are always correcting you about. Over time this leads to knee injuries, so make sure that your femur and front toe are pointing straight ahead. This may require externally rotating the thigh, and tucking in the pelvis.

2 - Overreaching lunges. This is when the step of the lunge ends, but you continue reaching forwards. This also strains the knee, and you should either take a bigger step or be closer, so that you are hitting your target at the same time your foot lands, or ever so slightly before.

3 - Hunchy shoulders. The shoulders should be relaxed, even (especially) when extending the arm to gain or lunge. This is also related to collapsing the chest/curving the thoracic spine (a general postural problem that can effect back/neck health). Keep your chest up and your shoulders relaxed.

What can less-experienced fencers do for each other to help correct the aforementioned issues?

Make sure that every practice session involves a form check, preferably at the beginning. Take some time to tweak your stance while standing still, while stepping in stance, and while doing a few lunges. Correct each other's form in stance, after/during each step, and at the beginning/end of each lunge.

Describe your own challenges with training safely and how you have been able to overcome them.

The biggest issue for most people is hurting themselves when they push themselves harder than they're used to. This is a common problem for people moving from drilling to fencing, in part because their form falls apart when stressed. Once your form is consistently good at slower speeds and lower intensities, make sure to include some high speed practice in every session, if possible. It doesn't have to be fighting, and newer fencers should stick to plain lunges at a target, or possibly a simple play like the cavatione di tempo (A. steps to P's wide measure, finding P's sword; in a single tempo, P disengages, gains, strikes with a lunge). Don't forget that we have safety equipment for a reason: Masks and gorgets should always be on for all drills and fencing.

[Book Review] Swordfighting: for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists

Guy Windsor's latest book finally arrived. Because I supported his Longsword book campaign on Indiegogo, I got a bonus hardcover copy of Swordfighting as well (you can find my short review of the longsword book here).

This book is Guy Windsor's swordfighting manifesto - a combination of edited and republished blog posts and articles, as well as original material new just for the book, all of which paints a picture of what it means to be a swordfighting martial artist. It's far less of a guidebook for the audience listed on the cover (writers, game designers, and martial artists) and far more of a view inside Guy's head. In Swordfighting, Guy has put together an in-depth look at what's driven him to be a swordfighter (there's talk of mystical mountaintop revelations), the division between swordplay-as-sport and swordplay-as-martial-art (how much do you deal with the reality of taking another human being's life?), and all of the pesky details that bother swordfighters when it comes to martial arts in fiction (both on the page and on the screen).

A More Detailed Look

Let's go through the book section by section, and see what comes up. The book itself is divided into seven chapters, preceded by a forward and an introduction, and followed by an impressive set of acknowledgements, further reading, and bibliography. The bibliography alone is almost worth the price of admission - it is a truly impressive reading list, with a number of books picked out as being especially worth your time.

Each of the chapters consists of a number of discrete blog posts and articles. Each of these is prefaced by a mini-introduction that lets us know when & where it was originally published, what its reception was, and whether it had been changed significantly since its initial publication.

1. What is Swordsmanship?

This is one of the beefier sections of the book (along with chapters two and seven, all three of which run a full fifty pages). This is a general overview of how Guy got into historical European martial arts, a survey of the major sources available for folks who want to learn how to do it, and an in-depth analysis of the level of detail you need to be willing to go into to qualify--in Guy's eyes--as a historical European martial artist.

2. Lessons from the Art

What are the benefits of studying martial arts? In this section we see how studying martial arts can develop all kinds of "real world" skills beyond what is useful in the sala/dojo, from facing fear head-on, coming to understand personal responsibility, to picking yourself up after failure and moving forward anyway. Herein lies much on character development, and on how there is really no replacement for hard, focussed work.

3. On Martial Arts

Here Guy looks at what differentiates different martial arts: It is important to understand the context your art is designed for. A combat sport designed to work in the ring has different parameters than the killing arts of a commando, and those skills don't necessarily transfer from one context to the other. Also a bit of mythbusting around strength and speed, and what constitutes "strong" or "fast" enough.

4. Swords

I've trained with Guy a number of times, both shorter workshops and longer weekend seminars, with blunt swords as well as sharps. Every time I talk to someone about Guy's use of sharp swords they get a particular "freaked out" look. In this chapter, Guy explains why a true martial artist--that is, someone training for the possibility of killing someone else--needs a healthy respect for the deadliness of the weapon, and there is really no substitute for training with sharp swords.

5. Writing Swordfights

This is the beefy heart of the book, in a lot of regards. Composed entirely of newly written material, Guy goes into great detail about what fight scene considerations: Is it an ambush, a duel, or merely a fencing lesson? What kind of sword do you have? How do you carry it? What do swords actually do to the human body? It's all really good stuff, most of which tends to be overlooked by most authors (in my experience). As a bonus, this section ends with historical accounts of a pair of fairly brutal duels.

6. Gaming

One of the shorter chapters, this one recounts the story of Guy's involvement with the development of two projects: Audatia, a relatively successful swordfighting card game, and Clang!, a flash-in-the-pan video game. It's interesting to see the differences between the two, and it really highlights the extreme difficulty of trying to get games of any kind to be accurate-to-life.

7. Training

What does it take to become a swordfighting master? This section is fairly broad in scope, detailing both how to incorporate martial arts training as a part of one's life (journey vs destination-type stuff), as well as going into the specifics of how to make the jump from centuries-old book to practical modern application. This is another very useful chapter, particularly for folks who are trying to put together a study group but don't know what they should focus on.

The final article in this section, "Bullshit," should be required reading for every martial artist.

Some Issues

Because this book is a collection of essays, blog posts, and articles there is a certain lack of coherence to the work as a whole. Reading the book in one giant go, as I did, feels a bit like binge-watching a 90s sitcom: there are certain things that are pointed out as novel in a few places that we've already been shown more than once (the bit from Viggiani about training with sharp swords is quoted in full more than once). That aside, the perk of this format is that individual bits and pieces are far more complete on an individual level. If I just want to read about structure, for example, I just need to look at the "I am weak" section, and it'll have all the relevant bits self-contained.

The only real complaint that I have--and it's rather nitpicky--is the formatting of article breaks. Using the book's sword-and-heart logo between article intros and the articles themselves makes the intro seem like part of the previous article. More than once I found myself confused by an abrupt change of topic, only to realize that I'd moved on to the next essay without realizing it.

Conclusion

In a lot of ways this book is far less useful than Guy's other books: It's not a how-to manual for writing, or a reference for the study of a particular system or style of swordplay. In fact, the vast bulk of the book is already available for free on his blog.

In many more ways, however, I'd say this book is probably more useful than the how-to manuals and reference books, in no small part because this book isn't tied to a particular interpretation of a particular book's instruction. Instead, Guy has provided us with a look inside the world of a dedicated life-long martial artist: what makes him tick, how he got to be where he is (warts and all, in more than a few cases), and how to develop your martial practice as part of becoming a more complete human being.

How Many Things Do You Want To Suck At?

A few years ago I heard Greg Mele of the Chicago Swordplay Guild say something that's stuck with me, "How many things do you want to suck at?" This wasn't a personal attack of any kind, but rather an honest question, and a warning. The field of Historical European Martial Arts is massive, with sources as early as the 1300s, from all parts of the continent: Medieval, renaissance, and classical; Italian, German, French, Spanish, English, Dutch, and more, I'm sure, that I know nothing about. Sometimes manuals fill out each other's gaps, sometimes they directly contradict each other. Cuts are favoured in some, thrusts in others, longer swords, shorter swords, staff weapons, etc.

It's kind of like a drug, the kind of drug that any martial artist is familiar with. You start to figure one system out, and, just as it starts to feel like you're doing the same old thing again and again, you notice a shiny new thing to check out and, hey! This new thing is pretty close to the old thing, but because I've got a bit of experience I can pick it up easier. Hey, and it expresses some new ideas that make a lot of sense! They make more sense than the first one did, that's for sure. Oh, but wait, there's another one over here...

At the school I teach at there are a number of different classes you can take, most of them based in the same theory, but with idiosyncratic differences from weapon to weapon: rapier, longsword (both on foot and mounted), polearms (on foot and mounted), and sidesword, not to mention grappling (also on foot and mounted). Outside of the core, single-system weapons we've also got Bartitsu (which itself consists of different disciplines, to some extent), stage combat, and archery (on foot and mounted). That's, what, up to a dozen different things to work on? Fifteen, if you count the components of Bartitsu separate things. It's a veritable feast of choice, but I highly recommend against doing everything at once, unless you want to have a really frustrating experience.

The biggest issue is time, and skill acquisition. It's hard to learn new things, and once a week, to be frank, doesn't cut it for most people. Generally, once a week is just long enough for you body to have forgotten what it learned the previous week. For someone who's relatively new, twice a week is pretty good for starting out, but to really get things down you should really be working on it three or four times a week. And, yes, those should be sessions with an instructor, for at least an hour. It's good to practice the basics on your own, but it's not good to practice the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong way. When you're starting out your practice time should be spent learning the viscera of whatever you're doing: get the terminology down, and classes become much easier. That means 1-2 hours of class time, 2-4 times per week. If you're splitting that time up between all of the above (rapier, longsword, and bartitsu, say) you just aren't going to learn them nearly as fast as if you dedicated the same amount of time to each of them in turn.

The good news is that once you've got the basic skill set down pat, it's relatively easy to maintain that skill. Get yourself up to an intermediate/advanced level with something, and weekly sessions are often enough to keep the better part of the rust off. Let too much time elapse without training, however, and you'll be amazed at how much your limbs have forgotten how to do. This means that diversifying is okay, as long as you're building a solid base in each area before moving on to other things. And the closer the theory of each of the systems are to each other, the easier it is to learn and transfer skill between them: Learning Fiore's dagger, longsword, and wrestling works together, because they all share commonalities and build on each other.

There's so much information out there, and it's very tempting to learn everything. But, and this is the hardest part for me, it's also so easy to drop something once it starts getting difficult. Sticking to something for the long haul is sometimes the only way to really find out what it has to offer.

Final anecdote: I see a lot of guys doing amazingly well at the HEMA thing, some of whom are out and teaching classes and being hailed as experts with as few as two years of study of the subject. The other day I had a kendo guy come in to the store, and we were talking a bit about swordplay. When I asked him what he thought of it he said, "Well, I'm just getting started; I've only been doing it for five years."

Jogo do Pau Intensive Course: Full Course Review

Overview

During the week of November 10th, Academie Duello offered a five-day course on the living art of Jogo do Pau, a stickfighting tradition from Portugal that has its roots in the swordplay practices of medieval European battlefields. The course was taught by the internationally recognized instructor, author, and coach Luis Preto, and ran 10am to 4pm Monday through Friday, with an hour-long lunch break each day. As an add-on, some of us also signed up for additional instruction for a coaching certificate. This came in the form of an extra thirty-minute lecture each day, and an exam following the course to see how much we'd retained.

I've already put down my initial thoughts on each of the first five days (which you can see here). This is my one-week-later review on the whole event: Content, presentation, format, and so on.

The Art - Jogo do Pau

I've heard that the Spanish tend to play sports gently, whether soccer, or jugger, or anything else. The same cannot be said of the Portuguese: Jogo do pau is fast, hard, and unforgiving. The name "Jogo do pau" means "Staff game," and it's primary weapon is a five-foot staff made of a robust but flexible hardwood (Luis said it was lotus). The staff is thicker on one end, and held by the thinner end to deliver more powerful blows.

Because jogo do pau uses the staff, and not a bladed weapon, the art is focussed on delivering rotational blows to deliver maximum force at the point of impact. Because it is a defensive art (i.e. focussed on surviving an encounter with someone trying to injure you), and because it has strong foundation in outnumbered combat, there is a strong emphasis on breaking hands and knees, and anything else that happens to be within reach.

For a full accounting of jogo do pau, some of its history, and a thorough accounting of its techniques and strategy, I highly recommend checking out Luis' books and DVDs, and his youtube channel.

One of the main perks of working with a living tradition, as opposed to trying to reconstruct arts from books, is having someone to correct all of those little mistakes you don't even know you're making. Right from the get-go Luis was clear about which techniques worked and which ones didn't. He was particularly clear about which techniques were better at full speed, and which ones only seemed to work, and only at slower speeds.

We spent the bulk of our time working on one-on-one techniques, but also covered some two-on-one techniques. By the end of the course, I felt like everyone had a thorough understanding of the mechanics of one-on-one combat with the staff, and we all had the tools to develop outnumbered combat more thoroughly with a bit of reading and practice. We didn't go over any of the baton (short stick) material, though I`m sure there`s plenty of it to go over at higher levels of study.

The Coach - Luis Preto

It takes a lot of planning, experience, and insight to run a twenty-five hour intensive course without either burning out the students or covering so much material that it cannot be retained. Fortunately, Luis Preto hasn't only been practicing jogo do pau for almost two decades, but it's clear that he's been practicing it at a very high level and putting a lot of thought into the best way to pass it on to other people. His postgraduate training in sports training methodologies and coaching sciences definitely showed, in particular during the coaching certificate add-on.

The material of the course was carefully structured around developing perception skills, with a focus on distance management and reinforcing the key principles of day one: Defense is more important than offense, distance is the best defense, and always keep an eye out for easy targets (thrusting someone who attacks from too close, and striking hands and/or knees if they're left unprotected). Each day carefully reviewed the material of the day(s) before, and adding new material in a way that easily integrated it into what we'd already learned.

If you're ever presented with the opportunity to train with Luis, I highly recommend it.

The Format - Week-long intensive

Twenty-five hours is a lot of work, especially when a significant portion of that is working at full(ish) speed and (mostly) maximum intensity. By the end of the week, I suspect that everyone knew which muscles they hadn't used before, and which muscles they hadn't stretched enough. I know that there were muscles in my inner thigh that I spent the weekend stretching and working loose again.

Over the course of the week we covered a LOT of material, but I'm fully aware that there could have been more. We only did relatively little multiple opponents stuff (only...two or three hours?), and we didn't do any baton (short stick) material. I don't think most of us could have taken much more than five hours a day, but I think a second week would have been manageable. At least in terms of training; in terms of taking-time-off-work I think two weeks would be significantly more difficult to fit in. 

On reflection, one of the biggest perks to having that much time dedicated to training was that we were able to give each concept the time that it needed to be fully explored and developed. If something needed two hours we could work on it for two hours and still have the time to put it in context and integrate it into freeplay. 

The Add-On - Jogo do Pau Coaching Certificate

At the end of each day, those of us who'd signed up for the coaching certificate were given a lecture that was supposed to be half an hour, but, due to technical issues and tangents, usually ran forty-five minutes to an hour (though nobody complained). Each day we went over the theory a different aspect of coaching: Teaching Fundamentals, Physical Conditioning, Managing Practices, the Perception-Action approach to teaching, and Tactics (including sparring guidelines). Lectures were accompanied by powerpoint slides which efficiently laid out the topics covered. 

The coaching lectures were very helpful, even just in terms of putting the rest of the day into context. Most of what we covered in the coaching classes followed the contents of Luis' books, particularly these two, but with room for questions and answers, and being backed up with the rest of the course, I found that it stuck a lot better.

Rather than wrapping up the course with a final exam, Luis opted for another day of lessons and Q&A. The final exams are being carried out over four weeks: every Friday Luis sends us a list of questions, and we have a week to supply answers. It's an interesting format, one that encourages longer-term engagement with the material, and thus greater retention.

(Final?) Thoughts

The whole course itself was a definite success. The instruction and fellow students were all top-notch, and the intensity of the art itself is something that I particularly enjoy. Finally getting the chance to learn from Luis in an extended setting is something that I've been hoping to do for a long time, and it's been everything I hoped for.

The entire course's strict focus on the primacy of defense allowed us to go the whole week with a minimum of protective equipment, while maintaining intensity and "speed honesty." The system as presented by Luis was pretty simple and straightforward, and everything we learned was geared towards combat efficacy.

Although this past week has (mostly) been a return to the same-old schedule, Luis' training methods have been rolling around in the back of my head pretty much non-stop, and have already changed the way I think about teaching and planning classes.

Jogo do Pau Intensive Course: Day Five Thoughts

Day Five Thoughts

Material Covered: Review and develop approaching parries, and why they aren't a good default. We added approaching parries against people that don't have the same dominant hand. The post-lunch section was full of material: we reviewed three classes of defences (exiting parries, avoidance by distance, and approaching parries), learned specific footwork for being trapped against a wall, learned one more technique for fighting against multiple opponents, and wrapped up by learning a super-cool spinning attack.

Initial Thoughts: It's all over! Somehow we managed to go all five days without any serious injuries. That said, there were a lot of knuckles rapped, and a few old knee injuries that were aggravated by well-placed strikes. Also, a number of us (myself include) found that there was a very special ache to the inside knee after a week of low stance and rapid direction changes.

There'll be a certain amount of mental digestion required before I really know what I've learned and what I want to do with all of the information. A lot of this is going to be incorporated in my practice of striking weapons (sidesword and longsword), and I'm definitely interested in keeping up the stickfighting skills. Whether or not it'll take the form of a smaller study group or a more formal class has yet to be seen, but with more than a dozen of us in the course it shouldn't be too hard to find a training partner, at least.

In the end, my body held up far better than I'd expected, in no small part, I don't doubt, to the strength training I've been doing for the last year and a half. There were moments of sometimes significant mental fatigue, but overall I was able to stay engaged and active the whole time (when I wasn't taping up replacement staffs). By the end of the week my body had mostly adapted to the high training volume, including the fairly high intensity that we maintained throughout each session (with the exception of the aforementioned sore knee, which I suspect requires just a bit of dedicated loosening/stretching until the tissues have had a chance to adapt to the new stresses). I am sorely tempted to figure out a way to get in five hours of training a day if at all possible.

Now to get to work on a bigger, beefier review of the whole thing, including Luis' teaching methods and a report on the coaching certification course that was also offered (which I, of course, signed up for as well).

Jogo do Pau Intensive Course: Day Four Thoughts

Day Four Thoughts

Material Covered: Rather than covering new material, the bulk of the day was spent on perception drills, building from attacks against the forehand side up to seven possible strikes (descending to head or knee, or ascending, all on both forehand and backhand sides, or vertical). Once we'd covered all of that, we got into some medium-speed freeplay, alternating blows and strikes. We learned some "knight" footwork approaching on the other side. The day ended with what Luís called "approaching parries," horizontal parries against descending strikes while closing distance to grapple.

Initial thoughts: Staff fighting is fun! Getting into freeplay was incredibly satisfying. I'm told that when Mike and I were paired together the hall was filled with the sound of staffs clacking and both of us giggling.

Today marked the start of the staffs dying. Jon's exploded, then Matheus broke his, and Dave broke two in a row. Fortunately we've got enough staffs lying about to replace the broken ones, and we've been taping them up right away to increase their longevity. The replacement staffs are just 1-1/4" dowelling, and it's noticeably heavier and more rigid than the tapered staffs. Both characteristics significantly change the handling of the weapons, but they do pretty well.

Hands and knees continue to get clipped, but I think we've still managed to keep the injuries down. Devon's thumb was particularly bothersome for him at one point after taking a hit from Matheus, but he seemed all right by the end of the day.

Tomorrow's the last day, then I'm ordering staves and books for the trainees. I want to find some way to keep up training jogo do pau, but I'm not sure where to fit it in to my schedule. I'm already involved in the wrestling and duelling sabre study groups, and I think that for this I'd like to organize something more formal than just a one-hour study group.