Guy Windsor
I’m here today with Xian Niles who is a fencing instructor and martial artist and the founder of Spada, a recreational Bolognese fencing study group in maritime Canada. He’s also the founder of The Niles Fencing Academy in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Without further ado, Xian, welcome to the show.
Xian Niles
Thank you.
Guy Windsor
So my first question, just to orient everybody, is whereabouts in the world are you?
Xian Niles
I am located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is a maritime city on the eastern seaboard of Canada.
Guy Windsor
What do you mean by maritime city in this context?
Xian Niles
Maritime, in that a lot of the provinces so New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, had extensive naval trade and warfare preparation back in the early 18th century. So a lot of the culture is now somewhat seafaring or there’s remnants of a seafaring culture.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so it’s a term that they use in Canada to sort of describe those states that are on that particular bit of Canada because they have this naval background. Okay. I did not know that. And this is why I bring people on to the show, it’s because I find out all sorts of stuff I didn’t know before. So I guess that’s what it means, the Bolognese fencing group in maritime Canada. It’s a generic term. I had no idea. I thought maritime was the name of a town. So it operates in that region, which is the bit of Canada that kind of faces Europe, because that’s where all the trouble comes from. Now, it was actually one of the regular listeners who recommended you for the show. So thank you to Andrew for suggesting you. And he said, you really want to get Niles on the show because he’s got a very interesting sport fencing background. And I’m thinking you represented your country at fencing in the Pan Am championships?
Xian Niles
I did two. And Pan American Cup.
Guy Windsor
So firstly, which country?
Xian Niles
Barbados.
Guy Windsor
Really? So is there a lot of fencing in Barbados?
Xian Niles
There is a very good fencing program. Obviously, we’re a very small country, we only have about 300,000 people. So it’s tiny. But I would say it’s pretty solid. Right now, one of our competitors, Sanojah Gilkes, she’s ranked 175 in the world for female epee. So she’s doing quite good.
Guy Windsor
Given that Barbados has the population less than that of a normal sized town in Europe or America. That’s actually quite impressive.
Xian Niles
Yeah. The amount of people in the pools in fencing in Barbados is very small.
Guy Windsor
It is quite difficult to get very good when you’re not surrounded by lots of other people doing the same thing.
Xian Niles
So what happens is a lot of people end up going to various universities abroad and then joining fencing programs at those universities. When I left Barbados, going through the program at home, I went to Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and I joined the University fencing club there and I worked with Sean Berlin and Florian Friedrich who were two Canada coaches. And prior to that, I was working with Bob Kiss back home, and it was pretty much fencing out of Canada and going to events that kind of brought me up in terms of skill level and everything.
Guy Windsor
So what made you choose Dalhousie?
Xian Niles
Well, I went to Dalhousie initially, for the engineering sales pitch that came to the country. That’s basically what happened. And I then switched out of engineering and went into theatre.
Guy Windsor
Oh really? So you went from basically how to build stuff to how to persuade somebody that you’ve built something when you really haven’t.
Xian Niles
Pretty much yeah.
Guy Windsor
So why theatre? I mean, I can guess.
Xian Niles
Theatre, because I got involved in the set design aspect of it and the stage management portion. And prior to that, my associate degree was in art was back home. So I’ve always been kind of like an artistic oriented person. And it just made sense at the time and I was still able to build things and as you said, pretended to build some things without all the liabilities of actually building it.
Guy Windsor
So how did you get into an engineering program with an arts degree?
Xian Niles
So, back home, you have a specialisation. So you would specialise in art. And then you still have to do a curriculum, all the other subjects. So mathematics, science, biology, everything. So based off of those grades, I then was suggested to by my parents to go into engineering. And when I went through the qualification process at Dall, I made it in and that was it.
Guy Windsor
You didn’t enjoy engineering that much, though, I take it.
Xian Niles
The workload was fine. But I think at some schools, I can’t speak to all, but at some schools, I think there’s sort of a very toxic atmosphere of weeding people out or creating so much pressure in courses that you sort of put people on mental break, so to speak, and it’s very, very damaging for a lot of folks. And, you know, we’ve had professors tell us in the middle of orientation, it’s great that we’re getting certain numbers dropping out right now, we’re going to keep weeding out people until we get the best of the best. Yeah, we’ve had that.
Guy Windsor
You see that in martial arts schools, too. Like, there’s basically two approaches to the beginner’s course one is, and this is my approach, is it’s a funnel, where you want to get people from as wider background as possible in, and sort of help them down to the middle bit. And then they kind of go through the funnel. So they get as much support as they ideally need so that they can do the thing. Whereas other schools, schools that particularly are interested in, like, winning trophies, they have a filter, where the beginner’s course is there to filter out everyone who’s unlikely to win a trophy. So usually emphasizes things like fitness and speed and endurance. So, that way, you only get the people who are likely to end up doing well in competitions, rather than everyone who can benefit from the art, you just have those who’ll benefit the school by getting medals. So it sounds to me like they run the first year as a filter. That’s not very pleasant.
Xian Niles
It was not pleasant at all. And that’s what kind of prompted the switch because it was too much. You know, watching too many people go through mental challenges and actual crisis and stuff like that, it was just too much. And especially for something that you’ve completely paid into, you paid money to do this thing. And professors are getting up and saying, yeah, this is good.
Guy Windsor
I mean, you’d think you think that the exam requirements to get in will be a sufficient filter? You have to have this level of math, you have to have this level of physics. You have to understand the sciences to this level to get in. And if you do that, then we can train you up to be an engineer.
Xian Niles
That should be the thing. But no, there was more of a “Oh, you got in, great. So now we’re going to overload you with work, and we’re going to put unrealistic time demands on you. And then we’re going to keep doing that and upping the pressure until you either break or you stay in and if you stay in, then you’re the people that we want.” If you break or you say this is not for me, because I’m making an informed decision to kind of protect my sanity you can get out.
Guy Windsor
That’s not good. But I take it theatre was a lot more welcoming. So what sort of theatre stuff did you do?
Xian Niles
So you know, we did your standard Shakespeare, some Oscar Wilde, those kinds of things. You find a lot in the city here. There’s a lot more of talking plays than there are action plays. They like a lot of dialogue here.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so Strindberg, that kind of thing. Beckett. I prefer an action play myself. So you went and got a degree in theatre. Now we are going to get back to the fencing championships in a minute. But I’m curious. So did you then go into professional theatre?
Xian Niles
I actually went into film and I was working in film for a bit before the government, previous two governments actually, not the current people in power, decided to axe the film tax credit that was giving a lot of people chances to come and produce stuff in the province. And at that point, I quickly had to go find some other work. And I ended up working in mental health security at one of the local hospitals.
Guy Windsor
So you were basically one of those people who when someone who’s having a mental health crisis and starts flailing about and being dangerous to themselves and others, you step in and handle it.
Xian Niles
Pretty much. Yes. You have to go through quite a bit of training for it.
Guy Windsor
That’s a really sophisticated level of martial arts actually, if you think about it. Because the person you’re dealing with is not responsible for their own actions. They may have malicious intent or not, but that’s irrelevant. You have to contain the situation without getting injured, without injuring them. That’s hard.
Xian Niles
It is very, very difficult, extremely difficult. And there have been some instances at work, I no longer work there, instances that weapons were involved, and you have to navigate those situations and try not to get harmed yourself. And it’s very, very difficult.
Guy Windsor
What sort of weapons are we talking about?
Xian Niles
Knives, improvised stabbing implements, you know, shivs.
Guy Windsor
Okay, this interview has already gone off into areas that I was not expecting. This is great. I love it. So what sort of training did you get to deal with those sorts of things? And how is it different to the martial arts stuff you’ve done?
Xian Niles
Well, a lot of the martial arts stuff I had done up to that point was kickboxing and MMA.
Guy Windsor
Totally inappropriate for dealing with mental health patients. You’re not allowed to punch them in the head.
Xian Niles
No, you’re not. You’re allowed to wrestle them, though. But a lot of the philosophy here was crisis de-escalation. So you use a lot of verbal skills, to try to contain a situation, if possible, and kind of steer a conversation in such a way that even in distress, the person would be like, you know what, maybe this isn’t a good idea. Maybe I should listen to the nurses. Maybe I should listen to the staff and stuff and whatever. So it was interesting. You learned quite a lot. You also learned that, when it comes to trying not to actively harm someone, you need more than one person to deal with a human being who doesn’t want to be controlled, you need at least six to 12 people to control one person. And when I say one person, we’re talking like your average, five foot 10, 212 pound male. It takes a lot. It really does. Because there’s things that you cannot do. So, a lot of it is trying to immobilise a person in such a way that they can then be restrained.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so, I mean, I’ve done a fair bit of fencing one against many. And if the many are acting separately is not that hard. But if the many are acting as a team, it is very, very difficult. So do I understand correctly then that a lot of your training was how to work as a team of six people to control? What are these six people doing?
Xian Niles
So this the smallest team would be three, okay, smallest team would be three. And depending on the level of escalation, you would then request for more people to come and assist you. The thing to understand is that when you have someone who is in acute distress, and they could have a litany of issues that are currently happening with them, there is a part of the brain that we, in our right faculties don’t have activated all the time. And that’s the preservation of life mechanism, that’s what it was, at least colloquially termed to us. And essentially what that means is, is that your brain shuts off all of its limiters. So you imagine it’s a car and it takes off all its limiters and now you get everything at full throttle. So all of the strength of that person comes out. And it is frightening to see what that does to say somebody who is five foot one, 120 pounds, and you can see the amount of damage they do when the brain is saying it’s either now or never. These people, even though we’re not coming to harm them, were perceived as a threat. So now everything is engaged. And a lot of the tactical stuff was trying to communicate with the team on which limb or appendage to immobilize so that you can start to kind of control the situation, depending on what was presented to you. Obviously, with weapons, there’s things that change, your decision tree then changes. So you always had someone who was in command, I was actually the leader for a lot of that stuff, especially in the mental health facility. I ended up in that role until I eventually left that position. So a lot of it was making calls and deciding okay, when was something too far beyond us, and we would have to get police with more tools to deal with something or if we could deal with it ourselves.
Guy Windsor
Wow. Okay. That’s real martial arts, actually.
Xian Niles
Yeah. I’ve been in martial arts now for, I would say the majority of my life. I started with the introduction to karate at about six years old. And then through that karate program, we got a bit of Japanese swordsmanship and daito ryu aiki jujitsu is what we got as well in that karate program.
Guy Windsor
That’s handy.
Xian Niles
Yeah. And we learned quite a few things in that and then just kind of snowballed from there. And I’ve been in and out of different things, and I kind of just settled on combat sports. And you kind of realise how difficult it is to subdue somebody when you are not allowed to do things to incapacitate them.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I mean, if you can choke them out, or if you can break an arm, everything gets a lot easier very quickly.
Xian Niles
Yeah, very quickly. But legally you can’t do that.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. And also it’s in this situation entirely unethical. Because the person is not in their right mind, the person is not fully present.
Xian Niles
No. And when we talk about crisis, we’re talking from anything from possible suicide attempts to people who are just being disorderly with staff. And sad to say that when you’re on one of those active attempt calls, it can get quite serious and quite hair raising. Traumatic, to say the least, for everybody involved.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. So did you get any kind of post traumatic counselling yourself?
Xian Niles
Privately? Yes, privately. It was not included in our thing.
Guy Windsor
The look on my face was like, what?
Xian Niles
Yeah, there’s some things that would shock you when it comes to some employers, depending on the field.
Guy Windsor
Okay. All right. So you’re doing martial arts with as a kid, and then you got into fencing? And so what exactly are the Pan American Championships?
Xian Niles
The Pan American Championships are essentially, everything from North America to South America is what the Pan American Championships are. And all of the nations who have fencing programs, then attend those. There’s a championships and there’s a games. And sometimes if you don’t go the championship, you can always go to the games, provided you qualify. And you can do the fencing portion at the Pan American Games there. The Pan American Games has a lot more sports at it. So we’d have like boxing, cycling, essentially a mini-Olympics, so to speak. And a lot of the times the Pan American Games are used as Olympic qualifiers for some sports. They do stuff there, but the Pan American Championships is essentially a Grand Prix for fencing, essentially. So when I say Grand Prix, you have all of the fencers show up from across that region, and they’re vying for either gold in sabre, epee, foil, or team events and team events being the epee, sabre, foil, same weapons. And that’s basically how most major fencing tournaments are set up. So if you go to Doha, Qatar, all those places, they’re all set up in the same sort of fashion. And sometimes they’re called events or sometimes are called grand prix. It depends on the organiser.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you were representing Barbados? What weapon?
Xian Niles
Epee.
Guy Windsor
Oh, you’re an epeeist. You’re not the first epeeist we’ve had on the show. I speak as someone who did a lot of foil. Quite a bit of sabre, and very little epee.
Xian Niles
I can fence all three. Because when I was competing back home I did sabre and epee. When I went to Canada was mostly epee and the club I was at, they also did a lot of foil. But epee for me at the time, just came naturally, because I started fencing at 13. And it came naturally then. And it made a lot more sense in terms of how the game played, where in the original rules, and those rules only changed back in like 2005, epee bouts are very low scoring. A lot of it was trying to figure out the other person and getting your one touch or maybe doubling out, the double has always been there. But in 2005, they changed the rules to where you no longer could play the clock, so to speak, you now have to get into this, we must have contact, we must have fencing, if not, you’re get called a passivity.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so before that there was a time limit. And you could run the clock out. So if you’re one hit up, you could run the clock as long as you need it and win on that one hit. And just for non-sport fencing listeners, doubling out means let’s say you and I are fencing epee, you’re one hit ahead, you know you can get double safely. In other words, you are not going to score without me scoring you then trick me into getting double, double, double, double, double. So you win by one point. So that’s doubling out. And again, this is this is one reason why I never really liked epee that much. Doubles are rewarded, whereas the right of way weapons foil and sabre doubles are thrown out.
Xian Niles
They’ve always thrown out, funny enough, even in epee, there’s still an internal clock in the sword, the mechanism when they register a point. You can still get a lockout. So in other words, if you are just a fraction of a second slower on that double touch, it doesn’t register.
Guy Windsor
Is it point two five of a second? I have to score 0.25 of a second before you score for my hit to count.
Xian Niles
So it has to be within that timeframe. If not, the point will not register. And that’s why even though you have the double situation happening, it’s almost what they call simultaneous attack. It’s never going to be attack after blow.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. So it has to be done, literally in the same tempo, in the same quarter second.
Xian Niles
And a lot of the strategy once you’ve got enough points on the board, so let’s say, most Olympic matches are to 15 points. Once you get to about 10, it now becomes an uphill battle for your opponent, if they’re in a deficit, to reach that without you just doubling them on every shot up until that. That’s part of the real battle in epee is to see who can get to about 10 first, and then the rest is left up to chance.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, epee is sort of presented as this more realistic version because the whole body is a target area. And doubles count. It’s like closer to the true. When actually, when the swords are sharp, people don’t fence that way at all. No one ever deliberately goes for a double when the weapons are sharp.
Xian Niles
No, they don’t. But what you find with the sharps is that sometimes people try to counter into an attack. And I only say this because part of the reason why I got into fencing is because back in my part of the world, we still settle public disputes with swords or sword like objects. And there’s some things as children you should not witness but unfortunately, that’s just a part of life. And that was one of the reasons why I got into fencing because I thought oh, if it’s close to what I’ve seen in real life, which is horrible and you know, Pirates of the Caribbean, or something of that nature, then it should be okay. It should be all right.
Guy Windsor
Am I right in thinking that the weapon of choice is a machete?
Xian Niles
It’s a machete or some kind of fabricated machete / sword analogous thing? Let’s call it that.
Guy Windsor
Machete-like objects. So in Barbados when you were growing up, people were fighting with machetes for real. And you saw that. In the historical martial arts world this puts you in a very small minority, which does not include me, because I have never seen people trying to actually carve each other up with blades in real life. And I have no intention of ever seeing that. If I get all the way to the end of my life without ever having to fight for real or witness the real thing, I’ll be perfectly happy. So, again, I didn’t know this before we started talking. And now we really have to dig this out. This is very useful to historical martial artists everywhere. So firstly, what is the context of these fights that you’ve seen?
Xian Niles
Most of the time, it’s what you would call legally as an assault. Basically, you might have an aggrieved party, who is looking for some kind of restitution, it could be from someone talking to someone that they didn’t like, or someone cheating them at something or whatever have you, machismo type situations and whatever, right? Or even sometimes family disputes, which is even worse. And a lot of people back home the general culture is you’re armed in some fashion. That’s just a general culture. You arm yourself, and you will never know who has something, you never know. You never know. So the general rule of thumb is don’t piss people off, because it could go quite south.
Guy Windsor
And assume that everyone is armed.
Xian Niles
And yeah, just assume that everyone is armed and assume that some people who have just bad intentions. And also assume that if you got into an altercation with someone and provided that you weren’t drawn upon, in that altercation, that person is going to go back home, grab their weapon and come back for you. That is a thing that happens quite a bit. Fights aren’t done until they’re done. And done, done.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so there’s a cultural expectation that one person will severely injure or kill the other.
Xian Niles
Yeah, there is a cultural expectation, if it gets to that point. A lot of the times, it doesn’t get to that point, thankfully. But when it goes there, there’s no coming back. There’s no tapping out. Nothing like that nature. Imagine it’s a pub fight. And there’s no, we’re going to duke it out. No one’s knocked out. But you know what? Good on you, buddy. You represented yourself, I represented myself. Yep. And we just go our separate ways.
Guy Windsor
I know a guy who literally got the shit kicked out of him in a bar fight. And that whole time he had a very large knife down his trousers, and he left it there. Because if he pulled it, he reckoned someone was going to get killed. So he took the kicking, and that was that.
Xian Niles
Exactly. And you know, back home, if you don’t have a knife you will try to find some kind of a brick or something.
Guy Windsor
But let’s say one person has a knife and the other one doesn’t. Are they likely to wait until the other person has a knife?
Xian Niles
No, absolutely not.
Guy Windsor
It’s not a duel, it’s a regular fight.
Xian Niles
Yeah, when it becomes a duel it’s when somehow both parties have produced these things without any knowledge of the other and now it becomes an actual duel and when we say ‘duel’ I say it as the term that we know from historical martial arts, but for the context of back home it’s not really a duel. It’s more of like attempted murder.
Guy Windsor
A duel, as far as I’m concerned, is prearranged in a particular place with particular weapons. And there are social and other strictures that are kind of fairness like you can’t bring a friend unless your opponent has a friend in which case they can all fight but the numbers have to start out equal. So this is not it at all. This is basically more like street thuggery with big blades.
Xian Niles
Pretty much or some kind of situation because the thing is too, a lot of people keep these things as personal defence weapons even for like home situations as well. So let’s say you have someone who’s trying to burglarize your property, whatever, the expectation is you’re going to run outside with this sword and you’re going to tell them hey, go away, whatever that kind of thing. But when you do watch out for fights, if you ever witness them, it is usually between two parties who have commenced to just hacking each other to pieces.
Guy Windsor
Is there any, like skill involved? I mean, do people train for it?
Xian Niles
There are tactics that they do, I wouldn’t say there’s training, at least not that I know of. We do have a martial art at home, which is a type of stick fencing that is very close to Highland Broadsword. And there’s a whole litany of stuff on how it got there. But away from that, when you see these people doing this thing, or you watch this type of attempted thing, you find a lot of times people will either wrap their hands with some kind of cloth, as a parrying device, they might have a stick to catch the other blade, to parry the other blade. Or they might wear something on their head to not deflect, but at least absorb a shot to the head or whatever. There’s thought in it. But you would hear things, you know, old folks talk about, well, if you’re going to go fix somebody, which is what they’re talking about, if you’re going to fix it, you want to coat your blade in garlic, so that the wound doesn’t coagulate and it keeps running.
Guy Windsor
Does that work?
Xian Niles
It does. It’s terrifying. It really is.
Guy Windsor
Wow. That’s kind of mean.
Xian Niles
It is very mean. It is very mean. It’s not play.
Guy Windsor
If you coat the blade in garlic, the cut will clot less quickly.
Xian Niles
It will clot less quickly. So depending on where you hit them, it’s just going to be like a wine casket, which I’ve seen. Which is not pleasant.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so when you witnessed this thing happening, what were you doing?
Xian Niles
So I’m not going to talk about all of them. I’ll talk about one of them, because there’s some of them that I don’t think would be very listener friendly. Let’s put it that way. This one isn’t so listener friendly either. But I was 11 years old when I saw this. I was going to grab some school supplies. And it was during summer I was with my brother and my aunt. And we were in the city as many other families were, going to collect school supplies for the next term, term beginning in September. So we’re all on summer break. And I remember we were walking towards one of the communal bus stands, which is called the Lower Green bus station. And we were going there to just get a ride home. And as we’re coming down one of the alleyways there was a gentleman who was standing on the wall, kind of, you know, perched precariously on the wall just looked as though he was minding his business. He had one of those accursed, Hawaiian anime shirt, things flapping to the wind. That’s the only way I can describe it. He had a vest underneath, and he was wearing a hat. It’s weird looking hat thing. And I said, oh, it looked like a beanie. But it’s actually not a beanie. It’s a type of, I guess, like a felt, or some kind of thing that they put on their head.
Guy Windsor
Difficult to cut through.
Xian Niles
And as a child, I didn’t really cue in on any of that. It’s just whatever. We just see this guy there. And as we’re getting close to the bus stand, this white Toyota Corolla beams out of a side gap, as we say, and parks, just in front of this guy. And two people get out of the car. One of them immediately starts arguing with this man. And he starts arguing back. The other person, I guess, was probably just a friend or someone who was in the car. The conversation started getting more and more erratic. And I guess there was some words exchanged that weren’t very pleasant. And I’m assuming that something happened between the gentleman who was on the wall and this person’s relative, one of his relatives, something happened. And he went back to the car door, and he drew from the car door. And of course, when you start seeing glinting steel, everybody’s like, oh my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my god, everyone starts to run. So of course, I’m running with my brother and my aunt, and we’re kind of getting pulled along at this point, because we’re both little kids. And we’re looking back at stuff and buddy, who was pulling the stuff out of the car, he turns around, takes what looks to be a stance of some kind, and I only know this now I’ve kind of read some of the manuals or whatever. And he precedes to swing. And the swing is not like your standard, big hacking cleave, it looked like a wrist, something. And the other day, who was on the wall, dodged and then drew his and then became this Ting Ting Ting. But as you heard this Ting Ting Ting Ting there was a lot of whack and whack in between the ting. So they were both hacking each other. Sad to say. And the guy who was on the wall took such a drubbing that he fled. And he had just lacerations all over, it was really, really bad, really, really bad.
Guy Windsor
He was still able to run away. So he hadn’t like had a hamstring cut or lost a hand.
Xian Niles
He didn’t have any of that stuff. A lot of what he seemed to have was kind of what appeared to be like chest damage, part of his cheek was hanging off. So, he’s running. And he’s got some other superficial blows, it looks like the guy who was attacking him from the car, he was the least worse of it. So he clearly knew what was up, or was able to defend himself a bit better than this guy. And I will never forget this old lady who was in the bus with us, we managed to get on the bus at this point. And the bus driver, one of them was telling you get on board, get on board, these psychos are, whatever, blah, blah, blah, and stuff. And he’s yelling, you know, whatever. So we are on the bus and this old lady, and this is sort of the cultural expectation. She yells out of the window to this guy who is kind of walking out after trotting away. “And you’re going to let him disrespect you like that. Are you going to let him disrespect you like that? You better go in there and finish that.” That’s what she said to this guy. Because we have this very, very, like hardcore mentality when it comes to this kind of thing. And everyone in the bus that was telling this old lady to shut up. You’re going to get him killed. He’s half dead already. There’s no point to this.
Guy Windsor
She’s yelling at the guy who’s running away, get back in there and finish it.
Xian Niles
Yeah, get back and finish it. You’re a man, aren’t you? And that’s what she was telling him. And so then he then turns around, and decides to go back in.
Guy Windsor
Oh, my God.
Xian Niles
So at that point, the guy who was at the car who was I guess he was cleaning off the sword at this point, okay. And he looks around and sees guy walking towards him, the same man who took the drubbing. And he said, no, you can’t be serious. You really want to die, don’t you? And that was it. So at that point, the fight commenced again. And it was this very quick, boom, boom, parry and it was ‘swack’. And he slumped. And as we’re pulling away from this horrific thing, all of us in the bus going oh, my God, ah, you know, it feels like screaming at that point. They weren’t screaming before. They were kind of screaming before. But of course, when you see someone drop on the floor, and they’re not really moving, there’s that bit then. And I realised, this is not cool. This is really not cool. And that experience, and then some others, put me towards I should probably learn how to deal with some of this. And I thought at the time that Olympic fencing was the solution. In my brain, I thought at the time, because they came, they did a demo at my school. And I said, oh, this looks cool. And maybe we can learn something, because they described it as a martial art, and that there was a sport element to it. So I said, oh, maybe we’ll learn the actual martial art and then we’ll do the sport thing as part of it.
Guy Windsor
Actually it’s all just the sport these days.
Xian Niles
It’s all just a sport. And I was quickly disappointed. But I kept with it. And then it took me to some interesting parts of the world, I must say.
Guy Windsor
Now the obvious question to a historical martial artist, is we’ll come back to the fencing in a minute. The machete fights that you witnessed in Barbados. What does that tell you about the historical arts that we study and the sources that we get them from?
Xian Niles
I will tell people there is a difference in knowing boxing from watching it on TV, there’s a difference in knowing boxing from seeing boxing firsthand. And there’s a difference in knowing boxing from doing it. And I kind of have a heretical view of some of the things that people do now.
Guy Windsor
We love heresy on this show. Tell us.
Xian Niles
So, and I know a lot of people might not jive with it, but I don’t agree with Messer fighting. I don’t agree with it after witnessing what I’ve witnessed throughout my life. I don’t agree with it. Because a lot of the situations.
Guy Windsor
Let’s be precise. What you’re not agreeing with is the way some people these days fence with Messers. Okay, what’s wrong with it?
Xian Niles
One is, if the weapons were longer, I could see some of the actions being taken to secure the line with the windings and stuff like that, I could see that happening. But with the weapons as they stand, the current size that they’re being used,
Guy Windsor
Which is probably accurate, or I mean, the historical record shows a range of Messer lengths. The length that people are fencing Messer with these days is well within the historical range.
Xian Niles
Well, yeah, so it’s well within a historical range. But I think the people themselves have changed in terms of size. And it makes sense, okay, if you have a bigger sword, per the person’s actual body, to do the things that they’re doing are describing in the manuscripts to a degree. But when you have a shorter weapon, where it is thirdly, hit or not be hit, it then turns into stuff that I’ve seen as a youth. And I can tell you from experience, a lot of the stuff that happens, does not happen in that fashion. And that’s why I don’t generally agree with it, and I have a heretical view when it comes to it.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so let me just summarise what I think you just said, and you tell me if I’ve got it. So you think that Messers were longer in proportion to the person holding them in the past? The ones we’re using now, because we are on average, taller. Which I’m not certain about, but I’ll take your word for it for now. Because we’re on average taller, the weapon is proportionately shorter than it should be. Which means that a lot of the actions from the manuals don’t work the way they should, because the weapon we’re using is too short in proportion to the person holding it. Is that correct?
Xian Niles
Yes.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So would a solution be to simply have slightly longer Messers?
Xian Niles
For me? I generally don’t do it. Part of my heresy is I do specific sources. Because I look a lot of context and the context of some of these arts and you build a picture around the world that the art sits in. So for me, I am more interested in efficacy and military type things, things that can be applied in an actual situation. And that’s more informed from my martial arts prior experience and stuff that I’ve seen. But I think one of the solutions they could use is if they use something akin to a slicer, because I look at Messers as a type of proto sabre. I look at it that way. I know people look at them as giant knives. But I look at them as a proto sabre. And when you do sabre or you looking at some sabre sources there’s a lot of actions that can happen from the sabre that generally line up with what they’re talking about in the Messers, but they weren’t because of the length of the weapon. Not so much the small proportion. And I think when you get into more of that tiny sword category, baby sword category, you start getting more hackey, hackey, choppy, choppy.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I had this great long conversation with a philosopher called Damon Young, and he was on the show. And then I accidentally left the microphone running. And we ended up just chatting for another hour about what is a sword. And it led into all sorts of interesting territory for us that ended up being like a kind of inbetweenysode for the podcast, because we then accidentally had recorded this conversation which I thought people would find interesting. So my view of what makes a sword is when the blade is so long, it makes sense to divide it into strong and weak because you’re going to be doing parrying actions or binding actions that rely on that kind of leverage distinction. When it’s shorter than that it’s a knife. And the way you use a knife is fundamentally different, I think, to the way you use a sword. You don’t, for instance, try to parry close to the hilt ever. So it sounds to me like your approach to the Messer thing is if it’s shorter, then forget about all the windy bindy sword stuff and use it like a big bowie knife. And if it’s longer, use it like an actual sword. But what’s happening is people are kind of falling in between the two, with the length of the weapon. So they’re trying to do swordy stuff with a weapon that’s a bit too short. Or they’re trying to do knife stuff where the weapon is a bit too long. That’s interesting. And of course, Messer is the German word for knife. But they also have the Grossmesser, the big knife. And some of them are actually too handed. And they’re still Messers. So the term, knife, is not really specific to the length of the blade.
Xian Niles
No, and I don’t think that they were that concerned with it either back then. I don’t think they were that concerned with it. One of the things that I tell people, especially when they come to kind of building up a historical source and context is what we get hung up on a lot is a lot of nomenclature, because of how our world exists now, and our world right now is very scientific. It’s a lot of sciences dominating. And with scientific thinking, comes a lot of specificity and the need for precision. That is a thing. Well, back in the day, the highest form of education, for a lot of these folks was actually more humanistic in its language, and in its approach, so and that’s why they would study the classics, like Plato, and Aristotle, and all these other things, and that kind of thing. And that was the highest form of education for the learned folks, the other folks who weren’t learned, possibly craftsmen and trades and those guys, you know, masons and stone workers and stuff, they had their own craft, and they taught apprenticeships based off that craft. And you can say it was more scientific, but they have their own language to determine what you use and stuff like that. And I think part of the reason that we run into a lot of these sort of nuanced arguments is because we’re approaching something from a scientific reference point. And some of us, not all of us, some of us are not trained to look at the humanistic code behind what people are saying.
Guy Windsor
I mean, you see this in the way people can get very prescriptive about what a sword blow is. If it’s like three degrees past the vertical, is it this or is it that and it’s this obsession with precise classification. And on the one hand, I am completely nuts about precision like your foot should be exactly where you think, your measure should be exact. Your control of the weapons should be exact. Your placement of the weapon on your opponent should be exact. But that doesn’t mean that every blow you ever do should fall within one of the seven canonical blows. You strike at the angle that’s going to do the job you wanted to do to and you strike it at the target that you want to hit. And whether that looks exactly like something from the treatise or not isn’t actually the point.
Xian Niles
No, it’s not.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so what’s historical systems are you focused on and how does this apply to that?
Xian Niles
So a lot of what I do at the academy is we offer four weapons. We offer smallsword, broadsword, sidesword, or longsword, technically great sword but let’s just say longsword because you can’t use great sword trainers in sparring in a safe fashion at full contact, generally,
Guy Windsor
So you don’t do longsword as in like Fiore’s longsword or Liechtenauer’s longsword, you’re doing two handed swords like the Montante or the Zweihander.
Xian Niles
So funnily enough, most of our stuff is actually Vadi. But as we know Vadi uses quite a big weapon.
Guy Windsor
Kinda.
Xian Niles
And that’s it. I have run the general assumption.
Guy Windsor
Just for the listeners, I am listening, he’s in headphones in my head. I’m now going to go and dig out something from my fencing bag. Ignore the noise. Please continue.
Xian Niles
Yep. We know that for a lot of Fiore references, either big or short weapon or weapons of various sizes. I have kind have gone the route of Vadi using a sword that is generally large. It might not be huge as in like a Montante up to the chin. But it’s pretty long.
Guy Windsor
Vadi says how long the sword should be.
Xian Niles
Exactly, he does. He does say it has to come up to the armpit. So I think in proportion to the person using the weapon,
Guy Windsor
The sword should come to the armpit of the person using the weapon. So the sword that I’m currently holding is approximately one inch. I mean, it’s kind of there. But maybe an extra inch would be okay. And the handle should be a span, which is from the tip of the finger to the tip of the thumb. The crossguard should be the same. So this crossguard is slightly long, and I’m holding my beautiful green handle longsword from Malleus Martialis. I will stick pictures in the show notes of me holding it in various places. You’ll see what I’m showing you. So this is this is about the right size for Vadi. Maybe a fraction short.
Xian Niles
And we found that kind of the happy medium is your general standard Feder length, the pommel comes at most to under the armpit for a lot of people, practitioners now.
Guy Windsor
This sword that I’m holding is about an inch longer than I really want it for Fiore’s stuff. And I’m actually planning to trim the blade down a little bit.
Xian Niles
My working premise when I when I teach this stuff is Vadi’s using, typically, because it’s not strict, but he’s typically using a quite large sword large in terms of something like a Fiore size weapon.
Guy Windsor
It’s a little bigger than the long sword we seem to think Fiore is using, although Fiore himself doesn’t actually give any dimensions.
Xian Niles
Exactly. He doesn’t give any dimensions or specifications, except for the sword and armour type.
Guy Windsor
Even then he’s not giving the length.
Xian Niles
So I look at the Vadi as a kind of very early great sword source. And when I say early great sword is if we look at the swords that were found from the Mary Rose collection, the two handers, they kind of fall into some of the parameters that Vadi’s talking about. Now some of them are a bit bigger than that, but they’re about there. So I look at it that way. And I found that his source or his work as a source is probably the most complete in terms of concepts on fencing principles that generally translate into everything else that we do. So I’ve also looked at taking a little bit of Marozzo and the Anonimo Bolognese and kind of adding it into some of the stuff that Vadi’s talking about but very small, not a whole lot, because you really don’t need to add a whole lot to Vadi.
Guy Windsor
I think the montante we see in Marozzo is a lot bigger than the sword we see in Vadi.
Xian Niles
Oh it’s a lot. Absolutely.
Guy Windsor
The difference between Marozzo’s montante and Vadi’s longsword is much bigger than the difference between Vadi’s longsword and Fiore’s longsword.
Xian Niles
Yeah. And one could argue that but I think for us in terms of the principles that he’s talking about, you do generally need a large-ish sword, generally just putting it out there. But we also do a lot of the Highland sources, the Highland broadsword stuff, we do a lot of that.
Guy Windsor
By Highland broadsword, do you mean the basket hilted broadsword or do you mean the claymore?
Xian Niles
The basket hilted Broadsword. Yeah, so we do Highland Broadsword.
Guy Windsor
That’s not directly related to the Vadi longsword?
Xian Niles
No, it’s not direct. But this is again, part of the heresy. I tend to look at fencing manuscripts for generic principles. And because I view it as all one functional physical language and if you can kind of line up different techniques from different time periods and you can kind of start to see similarities, not exact copies of each other but similar approaches and stuff like that.
Guy Windsor
Okay, at the end of the day, all swordsmanship is exactly the same. Which is don’t get hit, hit the other guy, control their weapon, hit them. If their sword is coming towards you hit it out the way, as it’s moving away from you hit him. But every historical fencing system and every model martial art too, you have basically a system of movement. So a bunch of movements that you’re supposed to be able to do and supposed to be able to use, and a set of tactical preferences, all to direct it towards an overall strategy of how the fight should go. So you can draw lots of comparisons between for example rapier and longsword and rapier and smallsword and smallsword and broadsword and broadsword and longsword, and so on. But if you try to use, as I did back in the very early 90s, if you try to use a longsword like a fencing sabre, things will go very badly wrong very quickly,
Xian Niles
Yeah, so I’m not saying generally like that. I’m talking about the tactical decisions, not so much the actual technique or the application of, you know, because there are different physics involved in the whole game. So that’s why I said, I kind of look at things that tell me that this person was doing it for real or that kind of thing. That’s what I’m kind of looking for us.
Guy Windsor
I’m a Vadi person. I published a translation and interpretation. And so what, in your opinion, from your reading of Vadi, what makes you think he’s done it for real?
Xian Niles
So when you read the introduction, and there’s a lot of info in his introduction, and the stuff there, right. There’s a lot of stuff.
Guy Windsor
Do you mean the introduction? Or do you mean the 16 chapters?
Xian Niles
I call it the introduction, but it’s all the stuff before you get to the Giocco Stretto, the illustrations.
Guy Windsor
He doesn’t call them the Giocco Stretto. So let’s call them plays with the longsword.
Xian Niles
I know he doesn’t call them that.
Guy Windsor
But just because I’m a pedant and a bit of an academic and this is one of the sources I’ve published on. He does have an actual introduction. And then he has 16 chapters about long sword which are not the introduction.
Xian Niles
I call it that, but I’m what I’m talking to all of the texts before the Giocco Stretto.
Guy Windsor
So what in that text makes you think he has done it for real? I’m not suggesting he hasn’t. I’m just curious to see what bits of text you think.
Xian Niles
In his stuff you have at least I want to say… again, this is part of the heresy. There’s about 15 concepts that you can pull from all that stuff that he’s done before.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I’m not sure where you’re getting that number from, but I’ll let it slide.
Xian Niles
when yeah, there’s about 15 concepts when you when you sit down, you listen to the advice. One of the things for me that makes sense is his advice on answering wide blows with what one would call thrust opposition in modern fencing. So essentially, kind of like the exchange of point or the particular context of the exchange of point is someone’s coming at you kind of wide. And you’re just shortening your response by thrusting at them, passing offline, as he describes to do, and what have you.
Guy Windsor
The Scambiar di Punta, the exchange of thrusts. I’ll translate that as thrust rather than point but it’s ambiguous in the text. Okay.
Xian Niles
Yeah. And that response that he’s giving is actually bang on.
Guy Windsor
It’s straight out of Fiore.
Xian Niles
Yes, exactly. I’m saying that there’s some things in there that makes me, like I said, the way how he talks about answering certain strikes with another strike. So for example, use your middle blows to kind of beat away thrusts and possibly fendentes as well. That’s also out of Fiore as well. There’s this continuation from that source into this one, because it is later, we know Vadi is later than Fiore. And the thing is, a lot of it is very, very… there’s no fluff to it.
Guy Windsor
There’s no fluff to it?
Xian Niles
Hold on. When I say there’s no fluff to it, is if you get past his use of language, which is expected of that time, what you see is very, very, simple advice. It is very here’s how you do the thing. This should work. And if not, you can do that. Or if, for example, I want you to feint, but I don’t want to want you only to throw blows on one side, I want you to throw blows on the other side. It is very, very, very simple advice. It’s not, it’s not rocket science, so to speak. It’s not overwrought. The way how it’s laid out is very, very systematic, as is his predecessor. If you if we want to assume that he’s generally borrowing a lot from what Fiore talked about. It’s very laid out. And he gives you some really interesting things to play with, so to speak. So that’s what leads me to think that there is some visceral knowledge there, rather than someone seeing something and then writing about it
Guy Windsor
It is funny, because everything you’ve just said, is the stuff that makes me think he’s less likely to have actually done it. Just because I mean, like, it’s quite specific, it is quite didactic, it is quite artistic. And he very rarely mentions actually hurting the opponent.
Xian Niles
On the inverse of that. We can look at say something from Manciolino or Marozzo, where there’s a lot of actions where they double up on cuts to the arms and the head and stuff like that. And we all know from if we were using a sharp weapon, and this part of the hand or whatever they’re striking is exposed, you don’t need to really double up in that fashion. And I’m saying that from seeing it firsthand, you don’t really need to double up in the way that they’re describing. And I think they’re writing in a different way than we think that they’re writing or it is generally held. But again, I don’t want to digress too much into the into the viewpoints, because that will be another discussion for itself.
Guy Windsor
For I mean, I do think we could quite happily sit down and talk Vadi for a couple of hours.
Xian Niles
Yes, for sure. We do Vadi, we do the Highland stuff, we do Fiore as an early context of the two handed sword, just a very early context of it, just establish some universal principles, like, what we would later call in the sidesword sources the falsa manco. That kind of, you know, the back edge beat, that kind of thing. We look at Degrassi, Lovino, at the Anonimo as most of the corpus for what we do for sidesword. I tend to stay away from the Manciolino and Marozzo folks because I also have some views on those guys. We don’t do any of the Bavarian stuff.
Guy Windsor
Who do you use for small sword?
Xian Niles
Olivier and Lonnergan.
Guy Windsor
Fucking Lonnergan. Okay. I’m Angelo and Girard when it comes to smallsword.
Xian Niles
Yeah. But smallsword is very niche. I find we do a lot more lessons on sidesword, broadsword or longsword.
Guy Windsor
I love smallsword. Getting back to our talk about Messers, one thing that everyone is doing wrong these days is they’re using long smallswords and they are fencing with them like they were foils. Those weapons should be shorter and you should be in there really fucking close. And you should be stabbing people like it was basically a bowie knife crossed with a knitting needle.
Xian Niles
Listen, I have handled a couple of actual smallswords, the historical ones, not a pleasant weapon.
Guy Windsor
I have one on my rack. This is from about 1720. And yeah, the blade is not terribly long, I actually happen to have a tape measure right here. From the shell guard to the point it’s 31 inches. So it’s short. Yep. And it’s mean, and when I pick it up, I just want to murder people with it. It’s an evil, evil weapon.
Xian Niles
They’re very specifically designed for one purpose.
Guy Windsor
And they get they get totally underestimated by people to do things like rapier and longsword and whatnot.
Xian Niles
That’s the same way how people don’t believe you can block a longsword strike with a broadsword. But you can.
Guy Windsor
If you do it correctly, but it’s difficult. Yeah, it’s a challenge. But so for smallsword, how do you stop your sport fencing getting in the way of your smallsword? Because there’s a lot of crossover, there’s a lot of similarities.
Xian Niles
A lot of crossover.
Guy Windsor
It’s very easy for small sword to turn into epee.
Xian Niles
And I find when you when you look at, because I still use mostly a sport pedagogy, not the techniques from sport fencing. But I use a sport pedagogy in when I’m teaching all these various weapons in terms of just using a common language, and not overly speaking Italian.
Guy Windsor
So you use modern sport terminology to describe to describe actions. This is a parry riposte. This is a compound counter riposte.
Xian Niles
Yes, that kind of thing. So that we’re all on the same page at the academy, at the club.
Guy Windsor
I was tempted by that in the early days. And I decided not to. I keep them separate for both basically, for academic purposes. Just make it really clear that we’re doing Fiore today, or we are doing Capoferro today.
Xian Niles
When I’m teaching, I kind of break that down as I get that as a segue as this is what we’re doing today. But I found teaching ways to keep things in a language that people can understand. And it helps their progression a lot quicker.
Guy Windsor
To pick up the skills of fencing, that is definitely likely to be quicker. It does come at a cost of immersion in the history culture.
Xian Niles
For me, I am not totally big on to the complete immersion anymore. I used to be, I used to be big into the immersion aspect of it. And now it’s more of just producing people who can fence and if they can understand basic principles and how those same principles apply to different weapons, then they should be able to use them.
Guy Windsor
It’s funny, we’ve sort of gone in opposite directions because I started out much closer to that. I wanted to teach people to fence with a longsword, with a rapier, with whatever else. And as I got more into the research, I got more into the no, I want to have very clear silos of these different styles, which they can then draw from later. And obviously, every fencer develops their own fencing style effectively. But yeah, it’s funny, I started out close to where you are now and I’ve moved in a direction that’s more historically separated.
Xian Niles
Yeah. I don’t tend to look at it from that separated view, simply because I find there are principles, let’s put it this way, that like you said all swordsmanship is basically the same and there’s principles that kind of translate through the ages so to speak, in various weapons and once you understand which what frame a weapon exists in in modern terminology, you kind of understand how you should use it. That’s the way I’ve approached it. So we look at, for example, I tell people and there’s a term that you hear a lot, longsword as a weapon operates in what we would call in modern fencing “opposition”. A lot of oppositional attacks. Once you understand that longsword operates in opposition you kind of know, here is my general how to use this there.
Guy Windsor
Are there any weapons that don’t operate in opposition?
Xian Niles
There are a lot of weapons that you don’t have to use opposition, but opposition is there. That’s the way I look at it.
Guy Windsor
To my mind the ultimate opposition weapon is rapier. Longsword there’s a lot more non oppositional stuff. What would you say is the weapon that uses the least opposition?
Xian Niles
The weapon that you can use at least opposition with is sidesword.
Guy Windsor
I can see that.
Xian Niles
You can use the least opposition with sword. The reason that I say that longsword operates a lot in almost purely opposition is because of the is the speed it takes to recover on blows that you cast. So it’s better to kind of shorten those blows into an oppositional attack, which then allows you to lock out and close on the opponent, very similar to rapier, you find that longsword and rapier kind of have a similar focus, whereas the rapier is opposition to thrusts, it could be opposition in answer to a cut, it could be opposition even maybe some blows are fighting for opposition, so to speak. But when you commit in longsword, which might be slightly different than rapier, the commitment always comes with opposition, so to speak, it’s a little weird spot.
Guy Windsor
It doesn’t.
Xian Niles
Well, the way I teach it. That’s just the way how I teach it.
Guy Windsor
The way you teach it, maybe. The way I see it in Vadi and Fiore, I wouldn’t necessarily agree.
Xian Niles
Totally, there’s things you can do to people that you don’t even need to have opposition for. You just go whack them. And that’s done. But a lot of the times, when you’re in tournament settings, which you know, we are a competitive club, a lot of people try to strike you on afterblow or double, that kind of thing.
Guy Windsor
Okay, okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. Tournament longsword is all opposition all the time. Right. But that’s not all of the stuff that we find in Fiore.
Xian Niles
No, no, no.
Guy Windsor
So you’re, you’re borrowing a lot of your pedagogical approach from sport fencing, actually. So I’ve always done that too. And the best thing I ever did for my abilities as a teacher of historical martial arts was go on a five day intensive residential foil coaches course run by the British Academy of Fencing in about 2010. Transformational. It changed the way I teach everything. Because it’s just so clear how you actually develop skill in your student. But before that, I had this sort of, I wasn’t 100% distinct between teaching and developing skill. So basically getting knowledge and skill properly separated. Like when you teach them something for the first time, that’s one thing, but when they already know how to do it, and you want to make them do it better. That is something else altogether. So one question is actually on my list of questions. And we’re sort of jumping around quite a bit. Just because we keep going off in really interesting tangents. Like I had no idea we were going to be talking about machetes today. Okay. What is Storica Defensa?
Xian Niles
So Storica Defensa is a sports league that I am spearheading with J Mass in Manitoba, Dr Patrick Bratton and Dr Jim Emmons in USA, in the United States. Right now, we are offering kind of a universal pedagogy based on using sport fencing terminology to apply to various historical sources of our various specialties, as a reference point for people who are just getting into it, or wanting to see how do I do this video type thing. And we’re running a league that essentially is having a reformation, so to speak on how we do tournaments with a safety focus. So when I say safety focus, we’ve managed to try to address some of the problems that create things like concussions and being able to enforce rules, judging, that kind of thing. It is not very different from what is currently out there. It’s really not, what is different is more of the effectiveness of the practice that we’re doing. That’s basically it.
Guy Windsor
So what is different about the practice that you’re doing?
Xian Niles
For example, one of the things that we do is we’ve we have a different set setup, in terms of what size piste, we call it a piste. Actually, in the in the documents is termed as a barrier. We try to use the historical term barrier. But we’re doing something in 25 by 30. So it’s quite big. And both fencers for example, start with an advanced lunge range of each other. So they start pretty close. And part of the reason for that is that we wanted to get away from the walking into a ring so to speak, as you see a lot of tournaments people actually have to walk in and enter. Because we want people to be able to fence how they naturally fence you have so fencers who are very backfoot oriented. In other words, they like to play distance games. You have people who are very aggressive, and it goes into a more interesting play. It goes into this very interesting play back and forth with allowing people to really fence the way that they do, instead of feeling compelled to get into a situation where I have to try to jump at somebody. And you find, for example, like longsword, that’s high risk territory for people because they might miscalculate that initial step at a distance or measure. And then the other person is on top of them, the rather being able to retreat they try to fight back in some kind of oppositional blow or whatever have you. Because if they were to retreat, they’re deducted a point from fleeing out of the ring. But we all know that fleeing is part of the art, you know, when you are in a bad spot.
Guy Windsor
Historically if your back touches the barrier, you’ve lost.
Xian Niles
Exactly.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so what specifically are you doing about concussions?
Xian Niles
We have a use of force protocol. Okay, so we’re looking at what is an accepted touch for us in the league. And if you go beyond that, then you start to draw penalties. You only have two possible penalties you can take. So if you if you whack somebody really hard in one match, and it doesn’t immediately cause a concussion, it’s more than say, like a shoulder or something, or even the parry was too hard on the sword, you get a red card, and you’re warned about the escalation, that red card stays with you for the duration of the event, it does not just keep for that match. So then if you have another match, after that, let’s say a pool or something, and you do the same thing again, you get a second red card, black card, rejection. So that’s it. If the person manages to hit a, let’s say, they hit us a shot that’s kind of approaching that territory that is too much, you end up with a yellow card, so you get a warning. But it’s more on the fencer now to remember to not escalate any further. And if there is concussions, which we have not had, in any of the things, if there’s a chance of that, which really shouldn’t happen, then of course, we have medical people on standby to deal with that assessment and stuff. But the real thing with this is that we’ve done a lot in minimizing the chance for that happen.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, and the thing is, once you’ve been hitting the head hard enough, there’s not much you can do in the immediate aftermath to reduce the concussion. It’s all about that force not entering your brain. So you’re not anything specific to the rules themselves.
Xian Niles
No, not really, we still use weighted targets. For some weapons, some weapons don’t have weighted targets. When we say don’t have weighted targets, we’re saying everything is one point, you know, if you’re doing something like rapier, a thrust to the head is three points.
Guy Windsor
Which encourages a lot of thrusts to the head.
Xian Niles
It can encourage it. But at the same time, we have thrust to the body, we have thrust to the arm and the hand. Or blows, let’s just say blows. But what we do with terms of judging and reffing is we’re looking for particular sounds. So one of the sounds we’re listening for, which is a kind of clue as to if it is too much, is on a cut, we want to just hear a simple tack. That’s just a simple tack. If we hear a big crunch. No, you got to go. That’s it. Same thing with the thrusts, anything that gives you minimum flexion on the blade is counted. And when I say minimum flexion we’re talking about, we don’t want to see a full crescent moon, we want to see just enough to say how the point has fixed into the other person’s jacket or something.
Guy Windsor
Great. And this is pretty much what I do, more or less. So I completely agree with what you’re doing. The one of the downsides of that minimal flex problem is that people tend to snipe from out of measure, and they can only just touch the opponent. And so it can lead to this fencing from too far away. How do you deal with that? Or do you just accept it?
Xian Niles
Well, it depends if it’s a cut that’s coming from outside of measure. We tend to accept that because you just got hit with a sword and you probably just got hit with the last three quarters or last third of the weapon which is most dangerous point.
Guy Windsor
This applies mostly to the thrust.
Xian Niles
Yeah, for the thrust bit, unless that thrust actually, let’s say, someone was coming at you, and you’ve made a thrust to the head, unless your arm has arrested. So there’s no flexion on the sword, but your arm is stopped in motion, just like, boop, I touched you. Unless that happens, and I’m just giving the most generic example of it, it would be counted on the discretion of the judge.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So if I thrust at you, and I hit you and the judge thinks, actually I’m at the extreme edge of my range, and that kind of just made a small hole in your shirt, they’ll throw it out. So I have to get closer but not hit harder. Okay. So again, this is pretty much how I deal with it, which is basically it’s down to the discretion of the judge. And in fencing situations where we’re in the salle and we’re training, and you have a judge, the judge’s job is to make better fences, not to not to establish who would really have won.
Xian Niles
Exactly.
Guy Windsor
So how is the how is the league going? Your Storica Defensa.
Xian Niles
It’s going quite well. We have several events this year, that are slated on the docket. We have a broadsword challenge that will be happening in my neck of the woods in May. We also have another broadsword, longsword and I think smallsword event happening in Manitoba where people are going to be flying in for that. Last year, we ran a very successful sidesword tournament so we had a sidesword event that was essentially one day was single sword, second day your secondary weapon of your choice, so you can use sword and buckler, use sword and dagger. We didn’t get into double sword because we thought was a bit too unfair. Sword and cloak we also decided just for safety reasons we probably weren’t going to allow that but we allowed all manner of parrying dagger.
Guy Windsor
It’s funny I know exactly what you mean. But the average non-sword person’s going “A cloak’s more dangerous than a dagger?”
Xian Niles
Yeah, so we allowed all manner of bucklers. Some people even had targas, they had targas as well some people have even had small strap on targes, it was all manner of stuff. So it was extremely difficult to judge but we managed to pull it off.
Guy Windsor
At the end of the day really the fencers themselves, if you have the right people there and they they’re there for the right reasons. The judging is kind of not the point.
Xian Niles
Exactly. We’ve gotten a lot of really good reviews on all of the stuff we do. We have mandatory video review all of our events so we encourage challenging calls. So if you don’t agree with a call that was made against you or for you, you’re allowed to challenge, we freeze the clock we then run video footage and then we resume the match depending on review. That’s what we do. We do have rules on doubling so you know you can double out of a match. If you go in there you decide to have a slugfest, well not really a slugfest but you just do sloppy fencing and end it with five doubles in say longsword. Oh, bye bye. See you later. You know you got to go. But for the more fast weapons, so like, let’s say the broadsword sabre stuff you have up to eight. People generally don’t get to eight because there’s a warning before they get there. Just be listen, you have to tidy this up. This is getting a bit out of control.
Guy Windsor
So if we get eight double those two both lose. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. All righty. So there are a couple of questions I asked most of my guests. And one is what is the best idea you haven’t acted on yet?
Xian Niles
The best idea I have not acted on yet is a team event for youth fencers. So youth and kids, that’s run over two days and with multiple weapon choices. And points are accrued like a relay. And essentially, it’s a team building thing for little kids and youth.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I’ve asked this question to nearly 200 people now and they’re often fairly similar, quite often it’s a book they haven’t written or whatever. This is entirely unique. So can you just explain exactly what you mean by the event and how it works as a relay or how points are recruited that kind of thing.
Xian Niles
Basically, on a given day, for kids we’re using mostly nylon, nylon weapons, so plastics with appropriate protection. On day one you’d have longsword, you would have sword and buckler, or something that fancies that particular child adolescent. And they would prepare for the event like anybody else. But they know that this is my event, I go in, I do sword and buckler, and if I win, or if I lose, then it either helps my team or drops the team down. And essentially, it’s like just different things just like you would do it on a children’s game day. So you have like sack races and all those other things, but you have everybody’s playing their part. I was even thinking of doing safe spear fighting. So you have a very floppy things at the end of the spheres, and you have the youth trying to spear fight and stuff like that.
Guy Windsor
Just put a pool noodle on the end of the stick.
Xian Niles
Day one would be all single combat. Day two would now be paired combat. So you would have a pair of people going up against a pair of people. And essentially, that’s where the real fun stuff for the crowd would be in looking and saying, oh, cheering on these two people to work against these other two people. So I’m not advocating for buhurt by the way, I’m not saying that you want children to do buhurt, no. But it’s going to be just two of these things for the students, and what happens at the end is depending on how the first day goes, and the second day goes, then you have a tournament champion, and the tournament champion would be everybody who contributed to that match. So even if you went in to say you had your longsword event on day one, and you didn’t do so great, you still got some points for the team, and it keeps adding in total. So it goes away with being a winner.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Okay, so why haven’t you done it?
Xian Niles
Well, where I am right now, there’s just not a lot of folks to do it. There’s not a lot of students, there’s just not a lot. I’m hoping over time, it will be a thing, and we can finally get the clubs to come together and, and try to run this thing, and actually give them something that they can then own rather than just generic fencing. So all of us, we read fantasy novels, and we envision ourselves doing various things. And sometimes the confines of here, come do this fencing class might be a bit much for some for some children, or for some adolescents. They want to just do their thing, and they want to do the thing and get good at it.
Guy Windsor
Interesting. Well, I hope you manage to pull it off because it sounds fascinating. Now my last question. Somebody gives you a million dollars or similar large amount of fictional money to spend improving historical martial arts worldwide? How would you spend it?
Xian Niles
One, establishing a universal pedagogy for everybody to follow. Establishing a universal pedagogy. Hold on. I’m not finished the answer.
Guy Windsor
You’ve prepared this, sorry, sorry.
Xian Niles
So establishing a universal pedagogy. And then changing the way how fencing, historical fencing at least is perceived to the wider audience of the public. And finally, addressing the issue of accessibility for people of various backgrounds, to engage in historical fencing. Unless it’s an extremely large sum of money.
Guy Windsor
You have as much money as you want. It’s imaginary. Well, those are the three things. Okay, so let’s start with the first one. A universal pedagogy. Now, there are some terrible instructors out there. And there are some great instructors out there. Not all the terrible instructors are similarly terrible. And not all the great instructors are similarly great. So why a universal pedagogy? And how on earth would you enforce it?
Xian Niles
So the thing for that is, knowing that there’s some people out there who cannot teach and there are some who can. Let’s put it this way, if we keep focusing on teachers who cannot perform, or teachers who do something very well, we end up in the no man’s land that we’ve been in for the past 25 years. What we focus on are the students, the people who are coming to the sport because, for example, or even the art for some of us, because you know, I am myself a very sports oriented but there are other folks who are very art oriented. And what I want to address is a commonality between the sport version of it, which also still does the art and the people who are doing the art exclusively and kind of bridging the gap between those two groups. And also giving the person who is the viewer or the occupant, the person who’s coming out to solicit services, an understanding of when I walk through this door, this is what I shall expect. And if the person isn’t meeting this basic expectation, then I go solicit my services elsewhere. That’s basically it. We want to have a universal pedagogy, because it also helps too with insurance for some groups, depending on where they are geographically.
Guy Windsor
So basically, by universal pedagogy, do you mean a set of instructor certifications that people can train for and get?
Xian Niles
Yes. That’s part of it. But also too, the language that we’re using.
Guy Windsor
On the language side of things, I would be horrified if you ever succeeded. Let me justify that. Because for a lot of historical martial artists, sport fencing terminology is simply inappropriate. Any given term has a set of references. Some are pretty generic. Everyone can agree what an attack is. But the sources themselves often use terms which are part of modern sport fencing terminology, such as counter attack, or contratempo, which are not the same things. And if you are teaching, for example, Capoferro’s style of rapier, and you import a term like contratempo from modern sport pedagogy, but it means something different, you are actively preventing the student from understanding the source that you are working on.
Xian Niles
In that instance, you would no use the sport variant. We are looking for common things. We are not looking for switching out one for the other. For example, if we are looking at Italian fencing, the discussion of tempo is very specific to Italian fencing. Yes, there’s some variation between some masters on what they are talking about.
Guy Windsor
And there’s a lot of variation over time.
Xian Niles
And there’s a lot of variation over time. So in that instance, what you are looking for is a best approximation of the thing, but taking the source as the starting point, not going from the other way. Not going so here’s the Olympic fencing version of this and now here’s where we find the approximation in the historicals. No, no, we start with historical stuff. And here is the approximation, as close as you can get it, it’s not going to be exact, but as close as you can get it so that they have some reference point there, instead of going off and say, well, here’s how you do it in Olympic fencing. And this is what it means in that because we all know that time changes everything a lot of times and you know someone’s definition of stretto tempo versus mezzo tempo is going to be different depending on who you’re reading. Or when someone talks about a parry, one of the most infernal things that I find, especially when people try to discuss German fencing, and I just say German, I don’t like using nationalistic names prior to the 17th century, but that’s just me again, that’s part of the heresy for me.
Guy Windsor
Call it Liechtenauerian then.
Xian Niles
No, exactly. Liechtenauerian stuff, people talk about the zornhau and how it can’t be a parry or they say, well, you must strike this thing without parrying and they go into the big long verse or whatever. And anybody with fencing knowledge, anybody knows that you cannot do this.
Guy Windsor
You stick your sword in the way of the other person’s sword.
Xian Niles
Without a parry, you have to parry.
Guy Windsor
There I think is a question of intention. But I guess if you describe this on how as a parry, that is wrong, because its intention is not a parry. It’s much closer to a counter attack. If you’re going to use a sport fencing term, counter attack is more correct than parry.
Xian Niles
Right. It’s more correct.
Guy Windsor
But it’s still not a counter attack, precisely, because the point doesn’t land at the same time as the blades meet.
Xian Niles
Okay, but there is something I’m going to mention about that after this chat that might turn your gears a little bit on what I’m getting at. But essentially we’re using the historical side as the benchmark, so to speak, and we find something close to it. So we get the universal thing. So people can look and say, okay, I guess this is somewhat similar to what they’re talking about here. It’s not exact. So then they’re encouraged them to go look at the source and see what the source is talking about, to then get a better understanding of what’s going on. Rather than just assuming from the get go, oh, this is what it means.
Guy Windsor
I have a question. Why use modern sport fencing terminology rather than using modern terminology from any other combat sport. Boxing, for example?
Xian Niles
Because you have to understand, so this gets into my thing. So when I find when people try to describe what fencing is, in the 21st century, historical fencing, or even Olympic fencing, you find that the definitions kind of go wonky, depending on person, they kind of start to go south. So you have the Merriam Webster version of what fencing is based off of the Olympic process. But then when you ask people what you would determine fencing as like, what would you define it as? They will say, it is just defending yourself with a sword, or it’s me using a sword to attack somebody, that’s what they’ll determine it as, when the definition for our scientific reference point exists all throughout the books, and it’s quite staring you in the face. I personally tend to tell students that fencing is actually a science, we all know it is that, but it’s a science of using position with a sword to offend or defend myself from harm.
Guy Windsor
But like, I mean, Silver would disagree with you straight out the gate.
Xian Niles
Silver would, right.
Guy Windsor
And the English word ‘fencing’ comes from the word ‘defense’. A more strictly accurate use of the term, I would suggest, a definition of fencing is “to defend yourself with a sword.”
Xian Niles
Right. But when we look at in terms of the 21st century, what we’re doing.
Guy Windsor
I don’t even use the term fencing, usually, because most people hear fencing and they think tighty whities. Exactly. So I say, historical martial arts. Then when they go, oh, yeah. What is that? And I say, well, I mostly do Medieval and Renaissance Italian martial arts. And they go, oh, and then I say, yes, mostly big swords. And that that is sufficient. So because the term ‘fencing’ is problematic, we can end up down this this this linguistic rabbit hole, for quite a while. That would be fun to do with a glass of wine at some point if we’re ever in the same part of the world. So what was your second thing that you would do with the money?
Xian Niles
So the first part was pedagogy. The second part was, I believe, establishing some standards across the board for various events, or various things. So when I say standards, I’m not saying like, an overarching controlling arm thing that comes down and says whatever. But basically, the general thing like, you know, don’t be a dickhead to somebody, treat your students with respect. Or when you come to events, make sure that there’s some kind of safety mechanism, things that are kind of happening right now in terms of like weight and stuff like that for weapons and accepted touches. My biggest thing is, if I had to define what we do to an insurance provider, or somebody who is legally focused, and they’re looking for how best to answer the question to somebody else, what is happening here? How would they define it, I look at it from that lens, how would they define it? And what is the inherent risk in that thing? And that’s probably the reason I think that suffers with the marketing aspect of this is that a lot of people have a general layman’s understanding of what it is that we’re doing. They don’t know exactly the specifics of it, but they have a general understanding what it is. And if it is a general understanding, it’s usually skewed by something else.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. And it’s funny, like 20 years ago, no one had any idea what historical martial arts were or any of that sort of stuff. These days because of YouTube channels, or various other things a lot of people have some basic idea of how you fight with swords, and it’s kind of historical. So you would say you would do something about the public perception of historical martial arts.
Xian Niles
Yes. I would do something with the public perception. So that would include changing some standards. How would you convince a parent who’s putting their child into hockey with all the risks of hockey to put them into historical fencing, which has less risks, how would you compare to compare to hockey?
Guy Windsor
That’s a good question. I have had this conversation, actually, because I used to live in Finland. I ran my school in Finland. And ice hockey is a big thing. It’s a sport in Finland. Like in Canada. And Finns and Canadians fight each other ice hockey all the time. I say fight. And I mean, fight, not play. Fight.
Xian Niles
Yeah.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. So I can basically point to, in my school, compare the safety record of my school with the safety record of any ice hockey club in the world, where you will find that in 20 years, 23 years now, we have had one ambulance called. And that was because a young woman had an epileptic fit for the first time in her life during class and had nothing to do with the training. Zero ambulances for training injuries.
Xian Niles
And that’s the thing. So we know that in ice hockey you have breaks and concussions and God knows what else that happens there. But the general perception for people is that it’s accepted. It’s part of the whole this part of the process, and insurance companies are willing to take on that risk.
Guy Windsor
Why the hell does ice hockey get insurance? It’s insane.
Xian Niles
Exactly. And it because it comes down to that discussion of perception. You’re fighting people with swords. And they’re thinking in their head, oh, wait, hold on a bit. I’ve seen swords on TV, I know what a sword can do. And you’re not one of those mall ninja people are you? And that’s a generic thing. So like, for example, when I was applying for insurance for my academy, I had to be very, very specific and what I was doing. I couldn’t say, oh, I’m doing historical martial arts with the grappling and all that other stuff, because it’s like grappling? Daggers? And it’s like, no, well, we’re doing we’re doing historical fencing. That’s what we’re doing. So kind of like the Olympics. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, cool. And then the conversation starts to change a different way. Now, I’m not saying that you’re going to win everybody over. But one of the things that we have to figure out, not globally, but you know, in the general diaspora is how it is that we change the perception of what it is that we do in a way that not just the folks who are parents of neurodivergent folks who come out to this, because we have a lot of neurodivergent people involved in this thing. And a lot of neurodivergent children are very attracted to swords.
Guy Windsor
Very attracted to swords. I’ve noticed that too. Bring them on. They make fantastic students if you give them the right support.
Xian Niles
So the question is, how do we then change the perception of this thing, where it’s like, hey, you have a kid who is neurodivergent, you have a kid who is very specialized in one niche thing, here’s this super sport for them, because we’re all superheroes, we all do this thing and come out. And that’s the marketing bit, and that’s what I’m saying. And the last bit with the with the money would be the accessibility. Because, as we know, to get good gear for what we do, or to get good weapons is you have to invest quite a bit. The money barrier is tremendous. And especially some of the brightest and best students that you could have don’t always come from socio economic backgrounds that can afford this type of thing.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it’s very, very frustrating how people’s access to the art is limited by things like the financial circumstances they’re born into.
Xian Niles
Now, funny enough, it is a parallel to the historical reality of what we do. Right?
Guy Windsor
Well, yeah, absolutely. This art, as Vadi says, is only for rich people. He doesn’t say that. He says, like kings and courtiers and nobles and lords and dukes.
Xian Niles
High-born young men, you know, and you read the Bavarian stuff, same stuff. Fiore said the same thing.
Guy Windsor
We’re trying to eliminate the social bias that was entirely supported by our historical sources. Because they may be right about how to fight with swords, but they’re absolutely fucking wrong on the social stuff.
Xian Niles
There you go and that’s why peasants weren’t allowed to engage in the tournament scene back in history. But again, that’s one of the things is changing that changes perception, and then changing the levels of accessibility and finding it was economically viable and made it in a way that for manufacturers to produce a standard set of gear across this space. And that gear was designed for people of different shapes, different sizes, different shapes, but you know that, but they knew what the economic turnout would be for that, they knew what the cost is to produce it, what the cost is to get it back. And then you could have some kind of competition between prices between one manufacturer versus the other. But for the consumer, they would know, this is the generic price range. It’s kind of like, okay, I’m going to get an 18 ounce pair of boxing gloves. I know, despite the brand, what the boxing gloves are.
Guy Windsor
The issue really there is entirely economic. It’s like really, a pair of very small fencing gloves should cost 10 times as much as a pair of normal sized gloves. And a very large pair should cost 10 times as much as the normal sized ones as well, because of the economics of scale. For ethical purposes, they really should all cost the same. So you’d be using the money to basically to subsidize the production of gear that is suited to people whose body size and shape is less commonly represented at the moment.
Xian Niles
That’s the thing you would have to make it economically viable for the manufacturers, and for the students. So that that will come from leaving not a permanent subsidy, but a partial subsidy enough that there’s enough for the thing.
Guy Windsor
If the gear was at the extremes, if you like properly subsidized, it would encourage people of those sizes to take up the art. And I mean, the bell curves being what they are, there are still going to be more people within a certain size range that exists that the extremes of large and small. But if those tails are fat enough, there’s enough people in them that the equipment can be produced economically anyway, think about in terms of where we fit. Our equipment needs, all historical martial arts, the world over, our entire combined equipment needs is not a fraction of the combined equipment needs of one sport, like, for example, American football, or, ice hockey, because the number of participants involved
Xian Niles
Right, and if you look at what it costs for a student in Canada, so let’s just say, a high schooler in Canada to get a full hockey kit for a couple months of playing. It’s over $1,000.
Guy Windsor
That’s cheap, compared to what fencing is like.
Xian Niles
Well remember, hold on, that’s every season, so over time, if the child is growing, they need new equipment. If the equipment becomes damaged, they’re going to have to get new equipment. And this can be very expensive. Whereas if you had historical fencing gear that was designed in a way that it could grow, or there was an acceptance for growing with the individual to a degree, you would only pay one lump sum and that money, or that gear would be used for as long as that person fits into it. And then you could easily just sell it to somebody else, and you get some more return off of that, you know, that kind of thing. That’s why I encourage students when they buy gear now is that unlike other sports, when you buy stuff, like your padded jackets, and whatever, unless something goes awry, you should get at least two to three years use out of it.
Guy Windsor
At least. I mean, my steel gauntlets I’ve had for at least 15 years, my leather plastron that I use for longsword and rapier and all the other things I’ve had since 2006, I think.
Xian Niles
So it’s kind of just convincing people that, hey, when you invest in this gear, it should last you at least two to three years.
Guy Windsor
It also depends on the kind of gear and another approach is to encourage low gear fencing. I mean, some of the best fencing I ever do is with maybe just a mask and a sword.
Xian Niles
Yeah, there’s that too. But then of course, you have to explain that to, you know, it depends on your demographic. If you’re in a very litigious part of the world, then you have to explain it to insurance companies.
Guy Windsor
Although I mean, karate people spar with sticks and no protective equipment all the time.
Xian Niles
But the perception is the perception. That’s the battle, is the perception.
Guy Windsor
So correcting the general perception of historical martial arts will actually also therefore go a long way towards correcting some of the inequities in how accessible it is.
Xian Niles
A lot of the problems of historical martial arts now come from perception by the wider public. And that’s what I have found, it’s not the gospel. That’s what I found. And that’s what I’ve as led me to try to start up the Historical League and all those kinds of things, because I want to try to help change that perception, I’m not going to change it all by myself, but at least I can get the ball rolling. And if I can get the ball rolling, we can get more people involved in trying to change perception and encouraging folks to look at this from a different way and to actually get it legitimised. In a sense, then, the dream of some people where HEMA will be at the Olympics, or whatever they want to do, we’ll see that it will come, it’s not going come immediately.
Guy Windsor
To me that’s horrifying. The Olympics are the place where martial arts go to die. Jesus. Well, just look at this shit show that every martial art in the Olympics turns into. But here’s the thing. Back in the 90s, and even into the early 2000s, we were entirely dependent on sport fencing equipment suppliers, for all of our protective gear and whatnot. So the existence of the Olympic fencing enabled the creation of historical martial arts. And if historical martial arts end up in the Olympic longsword or Olympic rapier, I would literally pour bleach onto my eyeballs before I would ever watch it. But, if that happened, it will create a much bigger market for equipment, which would have knock on positive effects for those of us who want to do it for real. So for that reason, only, if historical martial arts goes to the Olympics, I want nothing to do with it myself. I think it’s a horrible term bastardization of the art that I love. Yeah, it will have beneficial effects. But it will also have knock on perception problems. Because then people like me who are doing the historical stuff, will have people approaching them saying, I want to get into the Olympics, I’m like, well, okay, I can’t help you with that. I have no interest in that.
Xian Niles
Here’s the thing, you might not be able to help them with that based off of your choice, or you can show them things, here’s things that you can do, that will help you in this regard. But go over to that person, they can help you with this. So that becomes more of a networking between people.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I do that with other martial arts anyway, somebody comes along and, and from the way they’re moving, and how they, how they approach things, honestly, you should probably try escrima. And so they’ll send me an email two weeks later saying, Guy, I love escrima, I’m very sorry, I’m quitting historical swords because I’m doing escrima. That’s what I thought would happen. Good for you, you found the martial art you enjoy. Excellent.
Xian Niles
Because ultimately, as a teacher, my job is really to get you to put your foot through the door yourself. It’s not to force you through the door, I can bring you to it. I can open the door for you. But you have to take the steps through and if it is that you decide to go a different path and not my door. That’s totally fine. At least I’ve passed agency on to you enough that you can go make that decision for yourself. I think that’s one of the whole points where it’s just like, you know, I can’t teach you how to fence. I can’t. I can teach you using somebody else what to do with your sword. And you’re going to then learn how to fence from that. I can show you techniques. I can show you things, but you don’t learn fencing for me you learn fencing from your partner, from the people you spar, tournaments.
Guy Windsor
You learn fencing for the people who cross swords with. And actually that’s why one of my sport fencing coaches, Professor Bracewell. He spent the first year of his fencing training, only crossing swords with his fencing master. So there are none other kinds of beginner sloppiness ever crept into his art, so he never had to be corrected later. And it is, in the one hand a disastrous way to teach people because it basically massively limits the number of people you can get into the door. The teacher only has so much time. But there are massive advantages to the student if you can spend like the first year just with a teacher.
Xian Niles
And that’s my thing. So what I do is all I do with my fencers is I just correct position, I correct errors and position, I just look for things that they are doing, that might be disadvantageous to them at a particular moment, and just go from there. And then on the same caveat, I will then help them find a game plan, if they’re more interested in the tournament stuff. I help them find a game plan that works for them specific to their natural proclivities. I tell people that all the time, you can’t fence like me, you can’t. And I would never try to fence like you, you have to figure out how you fence and how that works. And I think there’s support for that in the sources.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. Every practitioner creates their own style, in a sense. It’s like, everyone speaks differently. But you and I are both speaking English, although we learned English in different countries.
Xian Niles
And that that then comes into my one of my big overarching heretical viewpoints is that I am really teaching you the language of fencing and you’re having a conversation with someone else. And you can either speak succinctly or you can speak verbosely. The choice will be yours. If you want to be verbose or succinct, I prefer succinct. You can be as verbose as you want.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, and there’s supporting the historical sources for that too. Like they have the ways of finishing a fight in one way even you have ways of putting on a great big display of sword fighting prowess for the benefit of the watchers. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been great to meet you.
Xian Niles
Great to meet you as well, finally.
