Registration for the fifth Vancouver International Swordplay Symposium (VISS) is now open! The event, which takes place from April 5th to 7th, is a conference focused around intensive three-day programs with an aim to help people along the path of mastery in the many disciplines of Historical European Martial Arts. This year the theme is This…
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For your Red Spur swordplay from the ground, we not only want you to have a full understanding of and ability to operate in the true fight, we also want you to be able to continue with a successful play even if you have lost the advantage. This is where the adaptive fight comes in.…
Read More... from The Adaptive Fight: when to hold and when to fold
Not irregularly I have had people say to me: I'm looking forward to starting into swordplay, I just need to get in shape first. This makes me very sad. Not only is swordplay a wonderfully fun and fulfilling physical activity, it is also a great way to build physical health and to do so in…
A good friend of mine is a special forces combatives trainer. I asked him how much of their training is devoted to full-speed and full-contact simulated sparring. He told me "no more than 5%". For him it was a matter of balancing value and risk. Full speed, full contact sparring has the value of exposing…
What workshops, courses, clinics, and intensives do you want to take in 2019? Take the survey and tell us what you want!
Read More... from What's Ahead in Mounted Combat in 2019? You tell us!
As most of you know we skipped Carosella in September due to the fact we were busy moving the Mounted Combat Program from Richmond to our new digs at Cornwall Ridge Farm in Langley. So as not to let 2018 pass us by without our annual celebration of all things horsey and swordy, we are…
This past week, at our 50-hour instructor intensive, I introduced a new batch of students, who travelled in from various places around the world to the method and benefits of slow sparring. Slow sparring is exactly what it sounds like: sparring done slowly. It has proven itself to me to be a tremendously valuable training…
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As practitioners of mounted combat, it is often useful for us to look to the classical riding instructors of the 16th and 17th centuries such as Antoine de Pluvinel, François Robichon de Guérinière, and William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. Fortunately these men all wrote books to which we can refer, and even more fortunately the…
There is plenty happening at the barn this month, and all of it safely out of the November weather, thanks to our beautiful indoor arena! If you haven't been to Cornwall Ridge Farm yet, now is a great time to check it out. Mounted Combat Mastery Mastery classes happen this month on the 11th…
One of the most quoted lines from Bruce Lee is "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." It's a quote that emphasizes the importance of focused practice and a high level of proficiency. But it is often used to…
Read More... from Bruce Lee's 10,000 Kicks and the Real Meaning of Mastery
In his book Mastery, George Leonard recounts a story about an Aikido class where his Sensei had them repeat a single technique for three hours. George was a fairly senior student at that time who had a solid training ethic. But this particular three hours represented quite a journey for him, and I found it…
A couple weeks ago at the closing ceremonies of the L'Arte delle Armi conference in Chicago I was asked, along with Duello Provost Matheus Olmedo, and Jacopo Penso and Moreno del Ricci of Sala Opera Nova in Italy, to put on a display of traditional Bolognese Assaults. Assalto: Provost Matheus OlmedoWatch this video on YouTube…
One of the most challenging things to deal with in sparring is the mental or emotional intensity of a very forward motivated opponent, someone who throws powerful blows, or someone who comes very ferociously. Commonly people respond in one of two ways: Freeze or pull away, failing to make a cover. Making a single simple…