A Numbing Diet

A few months ago I decided to go on a diet. It was not a change in my eating habits but a change in my mental consumption. I had caught myself over the course of the pandemic reading more and more news articles, scrolling through endless youtube videos, and occasionally losing myself in social media–often when it was time instead Read More …

The Three Ms of Excellence

The idea of pursuing personal excellence is great, but functionally how do you do it? I’ve written about beating the boredom of repetitive drilling, and promoting an excellence mindset. Yet when you get the opportunity to really up the quality of what you’re doing, where do you focus? Below is a piece of guidance material I have put together for instructors Read More …

Eat the Book: A Process for Digesting Historical Sources

One of the awesome things about Historical European Martial Arts is that they come from a rich historical tradition. And this tradition includes a wealth of instructional books written from within the period where those arts were most actively practiced. Picking up a 15th-century fighting manual is by no means necessary to learn, practice, and enjoy these martial arts, but Read More …