Check Your Height
Greetings,Much has been said in various manuals and treatises about the combat of the short fencer against the tall fencer and also vice versa. These are considerations of note and need to be taken...
View ArticleAccuracy is the Best Weapon
Greetings,The following discussion is about accuracy and the assertion that "accuracy is the best weapon". This will be discussed from three different points of view, all of which are relevant to those...
View ArticleTo the "Sword Widows"
Greetings,We often do not thank our significant others (wives/girlfriends/husbands/boyfriends/insert appropriate title) enough for allowing us to pursue something which gives us so much joy. There is a...
View ArticleThose Who Can't, Teach?
Greetings,There is this idea going around that if a person is an instructor or trainer or master of a particular school then they should also be some sort of high-level competitor, able to dish out the...
View ArticleDefine: Martial Art
Greetings,The definition of what a martial art is has been debated somewhat and I have made mention of the concept in previous articles in this blog. The following article is designed to examine this...
View ArticleOf the Use of the Foil
Greetings,The foil is a much misunderstood weapon. From the point of view of many historical fencers it is much maligned, and even from modern fencers it is misunderstood due to the rules which are...
View ArticleHistorically-Based Weapon Dimensions
Greetings,Toward the end of this post you will find a statistical comparison between some modern and some museum rapiers to see if the weapons which are being constructed and used stand up...
View ArticleNaval Swords: A Curatorial Discussion
Greetings,The following is a rather long article on naval weapons from a curatorial point of view. It has references included so that the reader can follow up any information that they might find...
View ArticleOld Learning for Old Treatises
Greetings,The following article examines the question of what background reading the fencer should do to put themselves in the mind-set of the individual who wrote the Medieval or Renaissance treatise....
View ArticleOn Respect for the Point
Greetings,The following article discusses the respect given to the weapon which is being used in a martial context, something which seems to be being lost in some HEMA (Historical European Martial Art)...
View ArticleHeisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Applied to Fencing
Greetings,Some first things that need to be established. I am not a physicist, I have not studied physics save for a little dabbling in Aristotelian Physics to greater understand Renaissance thought....
View Article"There can be only one." Monolithic training environments and the fallacy of...
Greetings,Before I start with the discussion of this article I would like thank Nic Harrison for his assistance with ideas and direction in this article. His ideas and formulations have been most...
View ArticleOn "Stupid" Questions
Greetings,"Carl Sagan, in his work The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark said: "There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate...
View ArticleFence Like Wile E. Coyote
Greetings,The most important thing that a fencer can do is fill themselves with fortitude and strength, because the path that they have chosen is not going to be easy. From this perspective there are...
View ArticleAgainst Strength
Greetings,In a person's fencing career, they will always come up against an opponent who will want to use strength as their primary method to force their way through an engagement. Over the past months...
View ArticleRotella: Considerations of Form and Size
Greetings, Considerations of the form and size of our companion items tends to be relegated to secondary discussions. In this discussion there will be a short investigation of the rotella, with these...
View ArticleRead the Whole Thing
Greetings,I posted a document in October of last year, which I had been working on for a couple of months. It was a recreation of an Elizabethan political pamphlet, which I spoke about on my blog...
View ArticleLearn Your Lessons Well
Greetings,The idea for this post was sparked by a student of mine, Helen Gilbert. I am writing the post, but the idea and the foundation is all hers. It is something that we should all consider,...
View ArticleJust Another Fencer
Greetings,With the title of "just another fencer," it could be thought that I would be speaking about a person being left behind or forgotten. This is not the purpose of this article, but it is one of...
View ArticleIn Response to Criticisms of "Just Another Fencer"
Greetings,I don't usually release a second article before the next month but the previous article Just Another Fencer seems to have caused some contention, at least among some circles. To wit, and in...
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