Thoughts on swordplay, mastery, coaching, teaching, and living with intention.
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Early in my days of swordplay, I remember a common piece of training advice was to "never give anything less than 100% to your training partner". Because the only form of training our practice group...
So this past weekend I attended the bi-annual Western Martial Arts Workshop in Racine, Wisconsin. Hosted by the Chicago Swordplay Guild, this is one of North America's oldest European swordplay and...
To get out of danger. Self-defence is one of the oldest reasons for conflict. To uphold honour, right wrong, and make just. Both noble aims and righteous justifications. To tell a story. To explore...
Not long ago, I had a conversation (online of course — who talks on the phone or in person anymore?) with my student Xian from Halifax. He asked a question about the nature of longsword fencing as it...
At the moment of writing I'm sitting in a plane seat on my way out of Duluth Minnesota. I've spent my weekend at the beautiful facility of the Avalon Educational Institute teaching a combination of...
This past weekend, we hosted the Vancouver Martial Challenge at Academie Duello and it was a tremendous weekend of inter-disciplinary sparring and camaraderie. The goals of this event are to: Foster...
Historical European Martial Arts are one of the most rapidly growing parts of the Martial Arts world with new groups, sites, and schools opening up all the time in both the West and East. Yet for a...
The path of mastery has many dimensions, in spite of what pop-culture ninjas might suggest. One of my personal goals, reflected in Academie Duello, is to make the path of mastery accessible; To open...
I consider myself to be relatively lucky in regards to injuries when it comes to martial arts. I have broken some fingers in intense bouting, separated a shoulder while doing armoured combat, and...
Why do you practice martial arts? If it's for fun, once you've achieved a good level of fun, why seek to get better? If it's to win, why does winning matter? If it's for artistic or personal mastery,...