Swinging a steel sword at someone, even a blunted one, seems risky. That's because it is. How do we manage to practice an art that is traditionally deadly in a way that allows us to keep practicing it -- often rigorously -- for a long time? There are three primary ways that we mitigate risks…
A study group is a group of peers devoted to helping each other get better in a particular martial practice. If you don’t have an experienced and savvy instructor in your area, or you want to pursue learning something that is not offered by your group or school, or you simply want to get in…
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Training on your own and you can’t get that move right? Do it again. In class and you fail at a technique? Ask your partner to give you their part again. Sparring with a peer and they get around your defence? Ask them to back up and do it again. Do it again until you fully…
For many years I have kept a training journal. This is a log book of personal practice goals, training plans, progress toward those goals, and a ticker tape of general thoughts, comments, struggles, and successes. At its simplest, the journal is a way of keeping my training front-of-mind and it helps me keep continuity from…
Canoeing is one of the first physical activities I remember being captured by. I love the water, and there was something powerful and graceful about navigating a craft with a simple flat piece of wood through the chaotic eddies and currents of a river or inlet. This interest may never have taken hold if it…
Read More... from How Noticing Your Students Outside Class Can Make a Profound Difference
Practising does not always mean "working on". It’s important to give yourself time with the passions and skills in your life to just simply indulge in the activity. It's vital to allow yourself on occasion to indulge in pure enjoyment. This helps you remember why you do this thing in the first place, and can…
Read More... from Four Ways to Get Back to Enjoyment and Out of Criticality
Objective measures can be compelling. They’re easy to inspect and they can allow you to see progress in a way you can graph. However, often people choose the wrong goals to measure and this has a detrimental effect on their development. For example, when a student gets focused on winning or “getting hits”, a few…
Read More... from Seven Ideas for Setting Useful Sword Training Goals
Even if you’re part of a vibrant school or club and have lots of training partners to practice with, keeping a daily rhythm is an essential part of the path of mastery. That means you’re going to have a lot of solo training occasions to fill. Most partner drills don’t effectively translate into a solitary…
“Where’s the Fire?” asked Christopher Sommer in the last moments of a podcast I was listening to last week. Sommer is the Head Coach of the USA JR National Gymnastics Team and runs an online strength training program called Gymnastic Bodies (which is absolutely worth checking out). When I started listening, I anticipated hearing from him…
Read More... from Where's the Fire? A refreshing message from Coach Sommer
A few weeks ago I delivered a talk at TEDx EastVan. The talk focused on something I am passionate about: inspiring others to pursue and master movement. Swordplay and the Lost Art of Knighthood | Devon Boorman | TEDxEastVanWatch this video on YouTube In the talk I delve into why I believe it’s vital to…
Read More... from My TEDx Talk: Movement, Mastery, and Swordplay
The use of violence and the threat of violence to force someone to do something they wouldn't ordinarily do is not only universally regarded as wrong, it is also universally regarded as unavoidable. I just read a great article on Kotaku about the short series in Calvin and Hobbes that featured the bully Moe: http://kotaku.com/a-string-of-upsetting-calvin-hobbes-strips-told-a-bol-1777424191 So…
I have gone from being able to do 100 push-ups in a set to not being able to do one and back again. I spent years developing myself as a fencer only to have to tear down what I’d built and start from scratch. Years ago I could touch my toes without bending my legs, sometime in…
This past week during my polearms class one of my students, who is hard of hearing, asked me to put on a wireless microphone (worn as a necklace). This microphone connects to a receiver in his hearing aids that allows him to hear me more clearly regardless of where I am in class, which way…
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“You see first with your mind, then with your eyes, then finally it is in your body." -- Yagyu Munenori. Family Traditions on the Art of War, 17th century. Stuck In Your Head Whether it’s swordplay, dancing, or driving a car, when you first learn a skill it exists within the conscious learning part of the…
The path to mastery is as little as 25% technical, and 75% psychological. Not to diminish what it takes to learn and apply a martial art physically, but I have met very few students that I didn’t feel were physically capable, with sufficient practice, of mastering their arts. The real barriers to long-term mastery are…
Read More... from Share Your Struggles to Get Through Your Blocks
From June 3rd to 5th, Academie Duello will be hosting the first Vancouver Martial Challenge. This event is part of an alternative type of event I want to promote within the Historical European Martial Arts community: events that focus on combat within the realm of the martial art rather than the martial sport. Here’s a…
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The route from learning a new skill to pulling it off in combat is not a simple process. Though you can take many skills immediately into combat and make some progress, it is more effective to follow a formal process that targets the skill in a focused manner at each stage of its development. Stage…
One thing I’ve noticed among my Vancouver-based foreign friends is that so many of them have good, workable, English, but not great English. Many of these people have been speaking English for more than 20 years, they’ve put in tons of hours of practice, yet they’re not getting any better — one friend told me…
Read More... from When Getting Better Stops -- Overcoming Plateaus