[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.

[Book Review] Mastering the Art of Arms, Vol. 2: The Medieval Longsword

In brief: a solid resource for the beginner swordsman, and a splendid example of a progressive curriculum for instructors of any level.

If you're looking for a general reference/guidebook for Italian medieval martial arts, this is not the book for you. Instead, this book is a guidebook for someone just getting started: a curriculum to work through, chapter by chapter, at the end of which you will have learned all of the basics: blows, stances, and tactics, all the way through swordplay to grappling and counter-grappling.

I found it particularly useful as an instructor, especially since Guy's spent years refining both his interpretations of the sources and his teaching method. There's a lot to learn about how to teach, how to structure a curriculum, and how to get students ready for freeplay, all cunningly disguised as straightforward, easily read and understood instructions.

As always, Guy's language is clear and precise, and contains no small amount of good humour.

My Hands Are Not Invincible

A few years ago, Luis Preto was living in Vancouver, getting his Masters in Coaching Sciences at the University of British Columbia, and stopping by Academie Duello every week or so to get some practice time in with either myself or the school's director, Devon Boorman, or, as was frequently the case, with both of us. The weapons of choice were usually longswords, but he usually had a bag of staffs, which we'd pull out from time to time. He also had two sets of ActionFlex staffs that he'd had specially made that were fun to play with.

Training with Luis was always enlightening. His training paradigm tends towards full-force and minimal gear. More often than not we didn't wear any protective gear, not even masks, the result of which was that I quickly learned that my primary concern must be defence. Luis' precise sense of both distance and timing, and incredible speed all forced me to bring my top game to every drill and exercise, no matter how basic or complex. His low stance also allowed him to strike low targets that I was unaccustomed to defending, which brought me to develop defensive strategies to be able to keep all of my limbs protected or ready to evade.

One particularly memorable session started with the three of us working on parrying exercises for about an hour, at the end of which Devon had a meeting or some kind of important business with a deadline. Both Luis and I didn't have anything to do until much later in the day, so we decided to go all out with the ActionFlex staffs.* Since the weapons are padded, and the point of contact is quite flexible, we decided to forego any kind of protective equipment beyond mutually agreeing against thrusts to the face.

Boy, did I underestimate what I was getting myself into.

After half an hour, I was starting to figure out how to keep my hands safe. Imagine thirty minutes of having your hands very enthusiastically slapped by a towel-wielding ninja. Thirty minutes after that and I started to figure out how to protect my lead leg, which in turn led to another twenty to thirty minutes of being reminded that I needed to protect my hands. I did manage to land a few hits of my own, and there were a handful of very satisfying thrusts, but overall I think Luis belaboured me for the better part of an hour and a half, if not two hours.

It was marvellous.

It was marvellous, and I'm pretty sure that I learned more in that single two-hour period than in any other single training session before or after. I learned that, aside from one notably eye-watering exception, my ability to protect my head was pretty darn solid, likewise for my torso. I learned so much about how to move to keep my limbs safe. And upon reflection, I learned a lot from Luis about how to train someone without having to say anything. For every improvement that I managed to implement, Luis was able to push my limits, to make it better than it was. If I was able to deal with a particular hand shot, Luis changed his targets or approach and forced me to think strategically, rather than just technically.

By the end of the session my hands were pretty puffy from getting slapped around, and so was my left thigh. I still haven't really figured out how to keep my lead knee safe, but my hands are much safer than they were, and protecting the hands is now one of the first things I check for when getting students ready for sparring.

At this point it's been a few years since I last got to train with Luis. I'm definitely looking forward to spending a whole week with him.

*A quick note on padded weapons: They are kind of silly, yes, and definitely do not accurately reflect the dynamics of steel-on-steel contact, sure, but they do allow you to go all out without too much worry about damaging your partner, and although they don't necessarily match up to sword dynamics that well they are not that far off from a pair of sticks. Did I mention that they allow you to go all out? All of my most exhilarating training revelations have been in the discovery of training tools that allow me to express myself with gusto--Duelling sabre, anyone?

Why do I train?

Why do I train? It's a pretty complicated question, and one that I don't think that I can answer right out. The question "why?" is also closely related to "what?" and "how?"

What is training?

The first thing to think about is what training is, and what it's supposed to accomplish. Mark Rippetoe, the author of Starting Strength, and a barbell coach with decades of experience, distinguishes between exercise and training, the former being done for immediate results, and the latter for results over time. Exercise is done because it feels good, and training is done because you want to get better at something. 

Almost everything I do I do for very short-term goals. I fence because it's fun, and I enjoy the chemical rush of adrenaline and endorphins. For the longest time, I only worked out for the social aspect of moving heavy objects with a fun group of people. But, since discovering Starting Strength in late 2012, I've started trying to think about my activities not just as fun things to do, but as a means to improve myself.

What do I train?

The human body is a highly adaptable machine, and those adaptations are governed by the principle of specificity: The human organism adapts itself to the specific stresses that it is subjected to. If you're going to start training for something, you'll need to think about what characteristics you're looking to improve. Here are a few:

• Strength - The ability of your muscles to produce the maximum amount of force. This can be improved by increasing the quantity of muscle producing the force, by increasing the efficiency of each muscle's force-producing mechanism, or, most often, both.
• Range of Motion - The ability of each joint to move functionally to its maximum extent. A lot of the time a restricted range of motion is a direct result of insufficient strength.
• Recovery/Strength Endurance - How many repetitions can you perform of a strenuous action? How long do you need to rest between sets of repetitions? This is the core of conditioning training.
• Technique - How well do you mechanically perform an action? Is it efficient, or are you moving in such a way that you're wasting energy?
• Tactics - Can you identify which actions are the correct actions given the current set of stimuli? Is you defense the correct one, based on the attack you are receiving?
• Strategy - How do you manoeuver your opponent into a position that's favourable to you? Of the many possible actions that could be considered correct, which one is the best for the current situation?

How do I train?

Each aspect listed above has a different method of training. Operating at the highest possible speed is not the best way to learn a technique, but it is required to fine-tune it. Swordfighting, contrary to what some people think, does not in itself make you stronger.

Likewise, you have to ask yourself how far you want to go with everything. How strong is strong enough? How much range of motion do you need in order to perform your tasks without injury? Does my mandritto fendente really need to be that perfect before I start fighting?

Want to get stronger? I mean, really, stronger? There's no substitute for barbells, especially for lower-body strength. There's a lot of gymnastics stuff out there that'll do wonders for your upper body, though, frequently in ways that just aren't possible with barbells.

How about conditioning? I like kettlebells. None of those goofy, million-variety moves, though. Just good old swings, snatches, cleans and presses, and maybe a turkish get up or twenty.

Technique, tactics, and strategy have the problem of being difficult to assess. Conditioning and strength are easy: how much weight is on the bar? How long did it take you to do 100 snatches? Unfortunately there's no easy assessment for combat performance, since there are so many variables. You can't measure your ability based on how easy it is for you to beat someone else in a fight unless you expect that person to stop training just so they can be a marker for you. Training to fight really requires a coach/instructor with a solid idea of what you should be capable of, who also has enough knowledge and experience to know the best way to get you there. For those instructors, sparring and drilling can be assessment mechanisms, but all the hard work of improving (the training itself) happens in drills.

Why do I train?

I train strength for the simple reason that I know I can be stronger.

I've gotten back into kettlebell training for the simple reason that I signed up for a certification workshop in the new year, and my conditioning isn't up to snuff, so I need to train to pass.

To be honest, right now I'm not training my swordplay at all. I'll fence from time to time because it's fun, and I teach because I like seeing other people get better, but I'm still looking for a reason to get better at swordplay that isn't just "I don't want to suck." I'll let you know if I find one.