The Seven Principles of Mastery: The Swordsman's Quick Guide, #1

By Guy Windsor

Guy Windsor has been training swordsmen and swordswomen for a very long time. This short book distills his principles of training swordsmanship into seven key ideas, divided into three internal principles, and four external principles. They are:

 

Internal:

1) Mindfulness

2) Flow

3) Adopt Useful Beliefs

 

External:

4) No Injuries

5) The Pareto Principle

6) Run a Diagnostic

7) Distinguish between knowledge and skill

 

This essential short guide describes each principle, and gives exercises for developing your ability to apply each of them.

Follow these for maximum effectiveness in your art, work, and life.

 

*This instalment of The Swordsman's Quick Guide has been included as a chapter in the author's book The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts.*

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spada Press
• Release date: May 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9798201862558

Guy Windsor

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 full-time 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 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.

Book preview

The Swordsman’s Quick Guide Series

Part One:

The Seven Principles of Mastery

Guy Windsor



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Get Part Two: Choosing a Sword  Free!

There are only a handful of truly practical books on HEMA: Guy Windsor’s are among the best.

-from Hugh B. Long’s review on Amazon

Click here to get your free copy of Choosing a Sword, an indispensable guide for every swordsman, which covers all major European sword types, for every style of HEMA.

The Swordsman’s Quick Guide Series

Hello, and welcome to The Swordsman’s Quick Guide series of booklets on various aspects of life in general and training historical swordsmanship in particular. My name is Guy Windsor, and I have been working on historical European swordsmanship, mostly from medieval and renaissance Italian sources, since the early 1990s. In 2001 I opened my first proper school, and have been making my living as an instructor (and writer on this topic) ever since. The instalments are intended to put my key ideas about a single subject together in one place for easy reference, and so they are not specific to one weapon, style, or system. As such, they should also be useful to most other martial artists.

In many cases, I cover the specific systems in detail in one or another of my books. For Fiore’s longsword techniques, you will probably find my The Medieval Longsword useful; for Capoferro’s rapier plays, The Duellist's Companion. In this series I will do my best to stay general, so that the fundamental principles are not hidden behind system-specific jargon and examples.

The ideas for which topics to cover in this series mostly come from the questions I get asked by my readers and students; so if you think of a topic you’d like me to include, please let me know! You can find me on the usual social networking sites, and also