New Year's Resolutions - Some Words of Advice

It's the time of New Year's Resolutions, have you already set yours? Personally I don't set New Year's Resolutions.  Not that I don't like the idea of resolving to do something.  What I don't like about New Year's Resolutions is that they only come once per year. So many New Year's Resolutions are forgotten or…

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"Yeah, but when will I use fencing in real life?"

Brilliant stuff today, great for the novice and experienced fencer alike.Occasionally, when I talk to someone about fencing the conversation turns to applicability outside the salle. "It's just good for killing people with a sword. What are you going to do when you don't have your sword?"There's so much wrong with that (besides the grammar).We…

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Use goals to check up on yourself, not beat up on yourself

We've been talking a lot about goals at the school and on the blog over the past few weeks and its led to many interesting discussions on the impacts, both positive and negative, that goals can have in your life. One of the core reasons to set goals and work to achieve them, is to…

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Some thoughts on setting goals, fencing and otherwise

It's been a while since I've written about goals. Goals are something that are always on my mind in one form another. I revisit them frequently, set out plans to achieve them, and often completely overhaul them. Sometimes I forget them for a time, get lost into the activities themselves, or just find myself drifting…

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Over to the CFAA

A really good post today taken from the Chivalric Fighting Arts Association by Maestro Sean Hayes of the Northwest Fencing Academy in Eugene, OR.  Here's the post. It's specifically on developing tactical skills with the longsword. The second half is specific to that but the first half applies to any martial art.   I'll summarize:  …

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Closure: Collapse the Possibilities, Go All In

Keeping your options open is an attractive concept and feels like freedom. It permits room for debate, changes of opinion and forgiveness. In most circumstances, I believe that the gentleman and the rational person avoids taking sides until the most information is analyzed. I believe in science. I wanted to get that messiness out of…

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Compassionate Demand - Pushing your boundaries and enjoying it.

Last night in class I brought up this idea of being a combination of demanding and compassionate with yourself when learning something new. If you want to become an excellent practitioner of something (and that is a worthy goal) then you are going to need to call on yourself to do something you can't yet…

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Video Lessons: Rapier cuts, refused, and two swords plus longsword thrusts

The core theme of this week across all class is strategic constraint. In Green cord (level 1) we explore the constraining capacity of the cut with the rapier, in Blue (level 2) how to create dominant positions when the sword begins from a withdrawn position, and in Red Cord (level 3) we explore how to…

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Is Goal Setting De-Motivating?

Our very own Rosie Jones came across an interesting article from a website called the the99percent (unrelated to occupy wall street) that contrasted the idea of focusing on goals vs focusing on experience or process. The findings suggest that focusing on the process or the feeling in the experience (ex. enjoying a good workout) was…

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This week in class at Academie Duello - Vids

This post provides links to videos for every lesson we covered in the Mastery Program at Academie Duello for July 16 to 22. This week Green Cords (level 1) learn about control of the opponent's sword and take advantage of their opponent's movement to strike. Blue Cords (level 2) continue their work on provocations by…

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Intention

Next in our series of guest bloggers today: Matheus Olmedo. Matheus has been with the Academie for about a year now and has quickly risen through the ranks to become a senior Blue cord as well as an instructor in the Warrior Fundamentals program. During 2011 Matheus was at the studio usually more than I…

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