Consolidated Review: "The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts," Guy Windsor (Spada, 2019)

Guy Windsor's The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts is a useful addition to any swordsman's bookshelf - not merely because Windsor himself is a world-class swordsman, but because one of the things he does well in the book is break down how to develop a training program, both at the individual and club level, from developing a core drill to developing a whole curriculum of instruction.

The book is divided into three components.  First is "Theory," which deals primarily with how to choose a historical text, how to analyze both an original and a translation, and a framework for what matters in the text.  Windsor, as he discusses in his Fiore Translation Project and its associated From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice, tends to build a three-part context - historical, fencing, and martial.  Thus, an outside-context text is likely not to inform what you know about a system, a text that is written primarily about rapiers is probably of little to no use bare-handed or with a longsword, and a text that is written primarily aimed at duelists is probably of limited use on a battlefield.  The theory section also contained a great deal of information about fencing (in this case, "fencing" means "dealing with swordcraft") theory in general, which may be too high a level for a casual reader but, after the whole book, is worth a re-read to see what you have picked up.

Where the book is at its very best is on the boundary line between its theory and practice sections.  The idea of creating a core drill that distills what the student has to know out of a system is a critical lesson, and the way Windsor develops this theme into the four-part drill is something I literally went from book to back yard to implement in the same day, it was that fundamental and immediate a lesson.  Establishing that his training process worked as advertised was a key component in selling his case as a trainer.

I draw this in comparison to another recent read, Paul Porter's The Bellatrix System, which was my "historical" text for evaluating whether Windsor was on the right track.  Windsor's emphasis on process over product made sense of much of Porter's work; where Porter spent a lot of time talking about variations on a single shot, for instance, Windsor's four-part drill adapted very rapidly to accommodate all of the variations I could throw at it without bogging down in the minutiae of the variations the way Porter did.  Windsor also spends a great deal of time on the subject of controlling variables and "tuning" in a way that, from my own experience, adapts quickly to multiple skill levels on the field, a subject I wish Porter had spent more time on, as I know he has a wealth of knowledge on the subject - but they were books with a different purpose.

The other area that I found Windsor was absolutely spot-on with was his discussion of how to establish a training group.  In my case, I just draft my two older children, and we go out in the back yard several times a week and run slow drills until "slow" is in the eye of the beholder; most people need more work in finding training partners.  His method is basically as follows: Think of the problem you want to solve; now think of the problems you have to solve to solve that problem; now solve them, bit by bit, until you're running at full speed over the entire thing.  This approach is both how he has the drill section organized, and how he has the "how to start a club" section organized.  It is not "here are the providers that I recommend" or "here are some resources," but "here are the likely issues you will encounter, and here are some approaches to solving them."  This is, in my experience, much more likely to produce an effective and sustainable solution to most problems than a prescriptive approach.

The weakest area of the book, in my estimation, was the "attributes" section - remember, Theory, Practice, Attributes.  This read much more like "this is what worked for Guy Windsor," which is a valuable perspective, and it did a good job of selling why he believed his approach worked, but at the same time, when discussing physical attributes, it is impossible to write a book of three hundred pages and give useful advice to all comers.  He did three things effectively in this section: first, he sold me on his fundamental humility and honesty; second, he described breathing exercises and their importance both to him and to martial arts in general in sufficient detail to get the average fighter down the road; third, he gave copious in-line references for areas where people might wish to do their own research, and encouraged that research.  I would have preferred the references also be collected at the end of the chapter or section, or even in the (excellent) references section at the end of the book; pulling them from the middle of an article breaks flow.

There is much more I could say on this book, but what the average reader of reviews needs to know is this: Windsor has a very sound grasp of historical swordsmanship, how to teach historical swordsmanship, and how to develop an entire program of instruction.  In that regard, the book is exceptionally solid, and while it is not itself a fencing manual, fechtbuch, or even philosophical text, I would consider this a worthy addition to any martial arts library for what he has to say about instruction, program development, and how to mentor new instructors.  I would go so far as to call it foundational - as in an entire structure could be developed based largely on what Windsor has to say in this book.