The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts

OK, caveats first. I've known Guy for nearly 20 years, fenced him, taken classes from him, taught at his school and stayed at his house. But I wouldn't have done all that (well certainly not the last two) if I didn't have a deep respect for him and his teaching. Guy goes that one step beyond most historical martial art practitioners. Most of us look at the old treatises, reconstruct a system and teach it. Guy lives and breathes this stuff, particularly the latter.In his book he talks about diet, breathing, physical training, including keeping your body healthy enough to keep training and a host of other stuff that most of us leave to our students to sort out for themselves, and that's on top of teaching us how to reconstruct a dormant martial art from an old book and teach it to others. He examines how people learn, why they learn, how different types of drill are useful in different circumstances etc. etc. I've been teaching historical martial arts for longer than Guy and I learned a stack of stuff from this book. I've immediately given it to my son and said "read this!"Honestly, I can't say enough good things about this book. Apart from everything else, it's exceptionally well written. I normally struggle to read more than ten or so pages of a book like this before getting overloaded. Guy's entertaining writing style allowed me to consume the book in three days. If you're new to historical martial arts, or if you're not, there's stuff in here that you'll find really useful. Get this book! Get it now!

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I like this book but it is not for everyone. The author is clearly an intelligent person who has been engaged in this activity, the practice of historical martial arts, for a long time and has a great deal of knowledge relating to it that he wishes to share, knowledge that he has picked up along the way. And with this book, he shares such knowledge, and he does so clearly and well. And I really liked the book. However, I think readers should be aware that some of this knowledge is far and wide reaching and may not be what they expect. For instance, to be good at historical swordsmanship and other historical martial activities, he says, one must be in good health and maintain good physical fitness and keep your body functioning well. No question there. However, I did not expect a section on nutrition and getting enough sleep when I bought this book. (And his advice of not checking social media for an hour before bedtime so that you don't get worked up over something is quite good and worth knowing, but I had not expected to find it here. ) Similarly, his advice on starting a historical martial arts club or study group contains much invaluable information on starting clubs or groups in general. All in all, a wonderful book that contains invaluable information and advice, but not what I would have expected.

I went into this book knowing NOTHING about swordplay, terms are not really defined as they are used, so I had to use context clues for a lot of it. The reviews and back cover said it was a great starting point for people interested in learning HMA but it feels like a better resource to elevate base knowledge. Don't get me wrong the non-technique specific advice was fantastic, but a lot of italian and old anglo-saxon terminology pops up (cool) and is never really defined (not cool) so for a bit there I had no idea what I was reading. It might have helped if there were more pictures to show what the sequences he was describing looked like, but with zero priory knowledge of fencing or HMA I wasn't able to picture it in my head. (There ARE pictures just not very many.)

Great starting point for sword martial arts. Good discussion of mental, as well as physical approach to sword work.