books | swords | teaching
I like to share my thoughts about life, business, and martial arts. I find writing a blog is one of the best ways to order my thoughts, so that I understand myself better. Sometimes my thoughts may even be of interest to other people.
I have collected a list of my most popular articles, as well as the various articles I have written with advice for shorter fencers. My various reviews of HEMA gear have been collected together for ease of reference.
Finally, I keep a curated page setting out my philosophy for training, teaching, and fencing. This links to the various pages and articles on this website that I believe help to explain my approach to these elements of life and martial arts.
Who was the intended audience for Liechtenauer’s art? What was the intended purpose of the Zedel as written? These are questions that are quite often posed and answered in one way or another – during training, at the pub, at events, and online …
The intended audience and purpose of Liechtenauer’s artRead More
It should come as no surprise to any of us that your words convey a message. After all, that’s why we do the speaking for the communication. However, it may be a little more surprising what message is actually being conveyed when you choose a …
Pretty much every HEMA club will engage in some kind of sparring or free play, and every club will have some form of etiquette that governs how people behave and how they handle situations that arise while sparring. It is very easy to get used to …
Motivation can be quite a difficult topic, and yet it is one of the most important things to understand if you want to run a happy, healthy, and successful club. Having had the experience of attending a variety of different martial arts and sports …
One of the things that holds back many clubs is the issue of finances. There’s never enough money to do everything you want to do, to buy all the equipment you would like to have, to pay staff as much as they might want or need. So how can you …
This is going to be a short article today, with some thoughts about the role of rewards and punishments during martial arts training. Films and TV series often show some kind of punishments in the dojo or training hall, and yet, this is rarely the …
Schoolchildren have always grumbled when made to learn long lists of names, dates, and British kings and queens in their history classes. What is the use of such lists? Why would anyone need to know this sort of thing when you can find out by posing …
Good habits can be a powerful foundation for the practice of any martial art. Good habits are a pretty good basis for life in general, and I’m sure no one would disagree with that! And yet, when learning martial arts, it can be tempting to dive ever …
Working on good habits rather than excessive detailRead More
The concepts of Vor, Nach, and Indes are integral to the art of fencing according to Liechtenauer. The words and concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, and I have gone through many iterations over the last several years of practice and …
Understanding Vor, Nach, and Indes – part 3: working in the bindRead More
The concepts of Vor, Nach, and Indes are integral to the art of fencing according to Liechtenauer. The words and concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, and I have gone through many iterations over the last several years of practice and …
Understanding Vor, Nach, and Indes – part 2: tacticsRead More
The concepts of Vor, Nach, and Indes are integral to the art of fencing according to Liechtenauer. The words and concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, and I have gone through many iterations over the last several years of practice and …
Understanding Vor, Nach, and Indes – part 1: definitionsRead More
This is a guest article by Martin Höppner. Originally, Martin posted this as a YouTube video, and I asked if I could host the transcript on my website to help preserve the message for posterity and for more easy reference and access in the future. He …
Protective equipment vs. concussions in sword fightingRead More
How many instructors are struggling to find motivation to return to running a HEMA club this year? 2020 was truly brutal, across the globe, in so many ways; many clubs in many countries have been forced to close during local and national lockdowns, …
Finding motivation to return to teaching HEMA this yearRead More
It is a well-known statement that patience is a virtue, and it is also quite commonly understood that there is a strong relationship between martial arts and patience. Of course, the practice of martial arts is supposed to help improve your tolerance …
A few days ago, it was Bonfire Night in the UK, which means lots of people setting off fireworks. Where I live, it meant people setting off fireworks from mid-afternoon until late evening, making it really quite difficult for me to concentrate on …
When we create a Facebook group, or a subreddit on Reddit, or a channel on Discord, or whatever, we are creating an online community. Once we have an online community, we must curate it, by which I mean we need to maintain it and keep it healthy …
How did people practise their fencing and sparring before fencing masks were invented? This was a question asked a couple of weeks ago in a thread on Reddit, and I think it’s an excellent question well worth considering. If we didn’t have modern …
How did people practise sparring before the invention of fencing masks?Read More
I recently finished making a new video course about working with Indian clubs, because I want to share this activity with people. Mainly, I would like to be able to give my own students some resources that I think they would find useful - and since I …
Why do we use the original and potentially foreign terminology when studying HEMA, instead of translating everything into English? This was a question asked through a video on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, and I would like to propose an …
Why use original and foreign terminology when studying HEMA?Read More
The messer is an interesting HEMA discipline to study. There is quite an active and vibrant community of people who practise it regularly, and I would like to interview some of these instructors to help show some of the different approaches to study …
An interview with Katja Poppenhaeger about studying HEMA: the messerRead More
