Hi!

Tournament Takeaways
I’m back from a wonderful trip to Potsdam, where I competed in both sidesword and rapier at the Torneo di Spada. I took no action shots at the event, but used it as an excuse to buy a new sidesword. My friends at Malleus Martialis hooked me up with this beauty (their Marozzo no. 3 sidesword trainer):

I’ve written up the tournament experience in a 3000 word post, which went live on Patreon last week, and is now up in the Training and Conditioning section of SwordPeople. I will get it up on my blog as soon as I can, but we’re in migration limbo: the current versions of the Swordschool website, the wiki, and my blog have been downloaded from the current host and uploaded to the new host, but it’s taking a while to get everything working properly. Until the migration is complete it would be foolish to add new material, as it would inevitably introduce errors. This is why there have been no wiki updates lately either.

My main takeaways are:

1. My conditioning is up to scratch.

2. I can still fence.

3. Tournament rulesets reward specific fencing approaches.

4. The organisers are heroes who should be paraded through the streets.

If you want specifics, go read the post!

I’m working on a “how historical martial artists can use tournaments in their training” post, to cast my experience in a more usable form. I’ve no idea when that will be ready! Some time after the migration is complete.