“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…
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Any skill you want to keep should be rehearsed weekly. Any skill you want to improve should be practiced daily. Spaced repetitions In the case of learning new vocabulary, or memorizing names, we have a lot of good data from psychological studies. It is well known that there is a certain frequency of reminders that…
This week I have been leading an instructor training intensive at Academie Duello. 50 hours of instruction in Italian swordplay technique, theory, and teaching methodology. So far it is living up to its name — intense — for both the students and the teachers. That's not a statement of distress, simply one of fact. The…
I had an interesting conversation with my student Dieter last night after class. Dieter is a Green Cord (first rank in our mastery program at Duello) who recently challenged and did not pass his test for Blue Cord (second rank). Not passing the Blue Cord test is not uncommon, our philosophy at the school is…
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