I’m delighted to let you know that From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Wrestling Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi is now out on the Swordschool shop! For the next week only, you can get 10% off the hardback, paperback, and ebook here. Use the code wrestle10 at checkout to apply the discount. This book is the academic basis of my interpretation of Fiore’s wrestling plays, following the format I pioneered in the first book to come out in this series, From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi. I start at the very beginning, and provide a ..read more

For an academic, it is the best feeling in the world when the ground you have built a mansion on starts to tremble. (Less so for an architect, I’d imagine.) I had that experience on my recent trip to the Panoplia Iberica where I finally met Dario Magnani in person. He runs the THOKK gloves enterprise, and is a keen Fiore scholar. We talked for literally hours about the most minute details of our interpretations, starting with his take on the famous “three turns of the sword”. It was so much fun I got him onto my podcast to revisit the topic, which you can hear here: What is a volta? A very d ..read more

Academic research is the foundation of Historical Martial Arts. When you try to recreate an action described in a book, that’s academic research. When you try to figure out what a particular phrase in a source means, that’s academic research. Most mainstream academic research is presented in a way that is deliberately hard to get access to, and often deliberately hard to read. The only reason to publish that way is to get jobs at universities. Historical martial arts books are usually written for practitioners. All of mine are, so I need my research to be perfectly clear and easy to distribute ..read more

I’m just back from the Panóplia Iberica, held in Alconchel, a village in Spain near the border with Portugal. This was an utterly delightful event, all the more impressive for being the first time it has been run. Hats off to the organisers Pedro Velasco, whom I met in Warsaw in June; Jessica Gomes, whom you may recall from episode 38 of the podcast, and who also looked after me in Lisbon before and after the event; and Diniz Cabreira, from episode 157, who runs AGEA Editora, publishing historical martial arts books, primarily on La Verdadera Destreza in Portuguese. Diniz, Pedro, and Jessica ..read more

This Thursday, November 30th, I complete a half-century. And even more exciting than me getting a year older (which to be fair is an annual event), the TOP SECRET project I’ve been working on with Katie Mackenzie is ready!! The Swordschool Training Year Planner Plan your training like a pro! With this beautiful full-colour planner you can set goals, plan your training, and review your progress. Embark on a transformative journey using the Swordschool Training Year Planner to tailor your approach. Aspire to mastery of the Art of Arms, and craft a lifestyle that will lead you towards it. From ..read more

I get asked all the time what movies and tv shows have “good” sword fights in them. This begs the question, “what is good?” We can all agree, I hope, that the Princess Bride duel on the top of the cliffs of insanity is perhaps the best screen rapier duel in history. In terms of action, character, and tone, it's unmatched. But it ain't the slightest bit historical. References to historical fencing masters aside, there's not a breath of history in it. The Duellists, by Ridley Scott, is probably the best, most accurate, historical duelling on the screen, with smallsword and sabre. It seems that s ..read more

In July I flew to Kansas to shoot video with Jessica Finley. I originally intended to just get the material for my medieval Italian wrestling course, but when I saw this amazing mural on Jessica's salle wall, I was hit by a really good idea- why not use this memory-tree of the 12 hauptstucke (“chief pieces of the art”) as a course plan? Jessica is one of my oldest sword friends, and a highly respected colleague. We first met at a Western Martial Arts workshop event in about 2007. She was my first choice for a podcast guest (and has been back on the show twice since then). She started out as ..read more

This post is intended to be useful to the attendees at the recent seminar I taught with Chris Vanslambrouck in Madison, Wisconsin. It may also be of interest to folk who couldn't make it. First up, huge thanks to Heidi Zimmerman who organised the seminar. It literally couldn’t have happened without her. And thanks also to Chris Vanslambrouck, who co-taught the seminar, with related plays from Meyer. Given that there was also a lot of Meyer technique being taught that weekend, it’s a miracle we covered so much ground, so hats off to the students. I’ve assembled a list of the material we covered ..read more

I’m just back from the International Rapier Seminar, held in Warsaw last weekend. It was an absolute blast, so the first order of business is a heartfelt dziękuję/gracias/thank you to the organisers, especially Lorenzo Braschi for inviting me (he was the very man who introduced me to the mighty porrón in Spain in 2012), and to Karol for driving all the way out to the Ryanair airport to get me, which was only marginally closer to Warsaw than it is to my house. The event kicked off at 5pm on the Friday, so I spent the day in Warsaw being a tourist, mostly at the Warsaw Museum, which had a specia ..read more

It's the beginning of “Mental Health Week”, so I thought I'd share the chapter “Mental Health” from The Windsor Method: The Principles of Solo Training. This comes after a chapter on visualising your mental model for training as a tree, with mental health as the roots, physical health as the trunk, and specific attributes as the branches, and is followed by a similar overview of physical health, before we delve into the details of goal setting, how to practice, etc. I am currently working on the audiobook version of The Windsor Method, and have attached the audio for this chapter here, i ..read more