Guy Windsor

GUY WINDS o R

Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms fulltime since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus 68 | UncagedBooks.com from the treatises for his students to train with,

and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi’s Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family. Stay Connected

swordschool.com

Uncaged welcomes Guy Windsor

Welcome to Uncaged! Your book, The Windsor Method is a self-help guide to solo training, can you tell readers why you wrote this book and what do you hope readers get out of it?

Thanks for having me, nice to be here. When lockdown hit my global swordsmanship community the skills of solo training became really important. It’s always been the case that martial artists (or indeed any kind of artist) need to spend time doing various kinds of solo practice, but it’s easy to overlook it when you have training partners to play with. Lockdown exposed a common weakness in the training of most historical martial artists: they didn’t know how to keep improving when they had no access to their regular classes. I already had an online course on the subject, so I made that available at a 95% discount (because money was very tight for most people at the time). That’s great for the specifics of sword handling drills, breathing exercises, and so on. But the underlying principles, the theoretical architecture for a successful practice, is better presented in book form.

The message of the book is simple: find out what works for you, and do that. Of course, I go into the specifics of how to find out what works, and how to incorporate it into your life. Surprisingly for most people who come across it, it’s not a sword fighting book at all: it’s about building a robust foundation of mental health and physical health, upon which you can build whatever artistic or martial skills you desire.

What behind-the-scenes tidbit in your life would probably surprise your readers the most?

I’m a baby whisperer. Seriously, hand me a crying newborn and I can usually feel what’s upsetting them and do something about it in seconds. It’s usually one of five things: they’re tired, bored, hungry, dirty, or sick. So, soothe them, play with them, feed them, clean them, or take them to the doctor (unless you know what’s wrong and can handle it). Sometimes, you’ll just need to hold them while they cry for an hour or two. Usually though, they just need to feel that everything’s going to be ok, which they get from your calm, confident, demeanour (whether you’re actually calm and confident or not. Fake it as necessary, just try to keep your heart rate low).

What are some things you like to do to relax when you aren’t writing or working?

Other than holding babies? I’m a keen woodworker, mostly with hand tools. I really like sharp steel, I guess.

I’m also currently learning to fly a light aircraft. This is not at all relaxing, but it’s astonishingly fabulous.

If you could have one all-year season, which would it be and why?

Summer. Ironically, given that I lived in Finland for about 18 years, and consider Helsinki my home town, I much prefer a long hot summer. Even though I’ll spend the whole of it in the shade because I melt in direct sunlight. I would guess it’s because I lived in Botswana and Peru, while going to boarding school in the UK. Going home three

How many hours a day do you write? On average, how long does it take to write a full novel?

This really depends. When I’m on a writing roll, I might spend four hours a day writing. But I often spend a month or more between books, or resting a book. To be honest I find the focus on ‘writing time’ to be misleading. Producing a book includes writing the first draft (which for me is the fun bit), but also editing it, writing the second draft, working with the professional editor, etc. My rule is that every day I push one major project (often a book, sometimes an online course, or something else entirely) one significant step forwards. On a stellar first draft day, that might mean adding 6k words. On a bad day, that might be just contacting my cover designer or layout designer and asking for a quote. Or editing a single paragraph. It all counts.

Do you prefer ebooks, audiobooks or physical

Physical books, all the way. I just can’t get on with ebooks at all, and while I do listen to podcasts (especially when woodworking), I’ve never sat and listened to an audiobook all the way through. Though I have produced a couple. I’m currently reading Sebastien de Castell’s Tales of the Greatcoats for fun, and Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying by Wolfgang Langewiesche, to understand how planes fly.

What would you like to say to fans, and where can they follow you?

Perhaps the best place to start would be my website swordschool.com, which has a ton of resources for anyone interested in swords and how they work. I don’t generally do social media in person, but I’m available to my readers and students through my mailing list which you can sign up for at swordschool.com.

Enjoy an excerpt from The Windsor Method

The Windsor Method Guy Windsor Martial Arts

The secret behind all great artists is how they practice. The Windsor Method: The Principles of Solo Training is the selfhelp book for people who want to add years to their life and life to their years.In this refreshingly straight-forward and gentle guide, bestselling author and world-renowned historical swordsmanship instructor Dr. Guy Windsor lays out the fundamental principles behind personal development and excellence in any field. How? By establishing a solid foundation, and a step-bystep approach to mechanics and training. This is The Windsor Method: use it to guide your practice and elevate your skills.

Excerpt

I am a swordsman, but this is not a sword fighting book. To excel in any art, including swordsmanship, we need a solid foundation of mental and physical fitness. Swords are cool. They are the shiny hook that pulled me off the sofa and into an active life. But they can also be a distraction that pulls us away from building our foundation. I have been training in martial arts of one sort or another for nearly forty years. In 1994, I co-founded one of the first historical fencing clubs in the world. In 2001 I founded my own school, and have been researching, training, and teaching swordsmanship for a living ever since. Through all these years, I have spent most of my personal training time on solo training. Even when I’m in a room full of people and swords and could do other things. If I neglect the real fundamentals, something will break.

| GUy WINDSOr |

Soon after the pandemic of 2020 began, my student Wout contacted me for some advice. For reasons unconnected with training or the pandemic, his right lung had collapsed. The doctors re-inflated it, but he was strictly banned from exercise for six weeks. He used some of my breathing training to help him cope with pain in the hospital, which the doctors encouraged him to continue. But other than that, what should he do? What kind of training is possible when all you’re allowed to do is sit around the house? I suggested meditation. If you can’t move at all, you can still build your ability to focus, expand your inner horizons, and improve your state of mind. If you are able to moderate your breath, you can practise breathing more efficiently. Breath is the only unconscious process that is easily made conscious. It acts as a bridge between your will and your automatic responses, allowing you some control over stress and your level of neurological and hormonal stimulation. Some breathing exercises require movement, but many don’t. We can adapt those that do; one of my students has his elderly mother doing variations on my breathing exercises while sitting in a chair. I’m told she loves them! If you can move your body and have a little bit of space to move in, you can work on strength, range of motion, and cardiovascular fitness. You can also look after your joints. This is why you’ll find me at the back of the plane on long-haul flights doing squats, push-ups, and stretches. Yes, I get funny looks, but one advantage of being a professional swordsman in the 21st century is that nobody reasonably expects me to behave like a normal person. Add a stick and a bit more space (neither of which are usually available on aeroplanes) and you can practice footwork, and putting your sword where you want it to go. Point control, cutting practice, power generation, and most sword handling drills just need a stick of the right length. Sure, it’s more fun to use a proper sword, but this way you get to work your imagination too, which allows you to practise your control of measure and timing against your imaginary training partners. Imagi-

nary partners have many limitations but they have two huge advantages over real ones: they are always available, and you don’t have to worry about their safety. Add a sword or other bladed weapon and you can train a broader range of handling drills; if you’re using sharps, you can do actual cutting practice, slicing through targets to improve your edge alignment. With one real-life training partner, you can practise all the techniques and pair drills. Add some protective equipment and you can practise coaching drills, do free-fencing, and — most importantly — get pushed a little outside your comfort zone, without having to do the pushing yourself. With multiple real-life training partners, you can experience a broader range of responses to the stimuli you provide. You may find that not everyone falls for your best moves, the ones that always worked when you just had one other person to practise with. With an instructor, you get a more carefully constructed training environment, one that is designed to keep you practising in that sweet spot between “it’s too hard, it’s frustrating”, and “it’s too easy, it’s boring”. If the instructor is doing their job properly you will grow apace in the Art. But sooner or later you will come across a limitation in yourself that requires something other than pair practice. Maybe your sword isn’t going quite where you want it to, and you need to practise point control in a simpler environment for a while. Perhaps your hamstrings are too short for you to lunge fully so you need to work on your range of motion. Or maybe you get stressed and flustered in competitive environments, and need to learn ways to calm down and mentally prepare. A very common problem that even high-level competitors experience is that their mental approach is not up to the task. Most of the best do some form of meditation to deal with that. The tools of solo training are clearly essential for all martial artists, regardless of whether they have access to coaches, training partners, and opponents. Often the best solution to a training problem is one from your solo training repertoire. In this book we will cover the principles of solo training, from meditation through to sword practice. If you practise an unarmed art, or a differently armed art, then these principles apply there too. I have organised this book in the order of constraints, starting with what you can do when all you have is your mind, and progressing from there. I have tried to avoid describing specific exercises, because they tend to be applicable to only some people, and some arts, and the goal of this book is to be useful to all martial artists. If you want specifics, you can find a list of resources, including other books and online courses, at the back of this book. And I’m happy to report that Wout has recovered from his collapsed lung, is fighting fit, training with me regularly, and is still meditating. It’s impossible to measure exactly how it contributed to his recovery, but at the very least it gave him a sense of agency at a very difficult time.

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All books may also be purchased by contacting the author’s website.