Training Tips For HEMA/WMA
Some Ideas For How To Train, What To Train And Why
We all want to get better at what we do. There is a lot of decent knowledge and experience out there from which we can draw; that’s one of the great things about learning to fight with historical European weapons at this moment in time — we have such great access to other people. There are whole communities of knowledge and experience out there and we do well to draw on them to help ourselves out.
As I read through and listen to the many opinions on what works and what doesn’t, I begin to understand that there’s a need for clarity on one or two issues. There is some confusion and sometimes differing opinions on what’s “best” and what “works” to make someone a better sword fighter. This is a huge topic and one that requires a great deal of thought and time to understand the complexities in detail.
We all know that complex things can be distilled down to more simple constructs, snippets you can take away with you to do your best. So I hope that I can take some of that complexity — I want to let you see something of how much complexity there is in this question of how to train — and distil it down to some of the most salient points for someone trying to make gains in their training.
There are practical recommendations at the end, if you want to skip the theory. Of course, you may be disappointed in some of the practical recommendations if you don’t understand the theory behind them … so I leave it up to you to decide how you wish to proceed. I hope you enjoy yourself, whichever way you go!
Important Disclaimer
The suggestions, advice and recommendations in this article are just that — it is written for primarily educational reasons, to inform and grant insight into the science behind training. Suggestions herein are generalised and cannot be applied to your individual situation without much thought and consultation. Please seek out the advice of a qualified, accredited and experienced exercise, allied health or medical professional before commencing a new program or applying any of this information to your own training. I suggest seeking out an accredited exercise physiologist who performs a thorough risk and movement assessment for training concerns, and a sports medicine practitioner for injury and health concerns.
1. Specificity of Training
Specificity says that the body adapts very specifically to the demands placed on it. That’s why a sprinter doesn’t run the same number of kilometres that a marathon runner does. They still do aerobic work but nowhere near as much as a marathon runner.
It is well documented that what you train you gain and if you don’t use it, you lose it. How do we apply this principle to our training with swords?
What you train, you gain.
Transference
The closer a fitness exercise is to the real thing, the better the effect it has on the real thing. The effect it has on the body tissues is called the training effect and the process resulting in a training effect that applies to the real thing is called transference.
To understand it better:
Training effect: This amounts to the physical changes that occur within the body as a result of the exercise. It is the growth of muscle cells, the release of hormones, the stimulation of nerve growth, the activation of nerves and muscles, the increase in flexibility, balance or number of blood vessels in the muscles. There are so many changes that can occur from training.
Transference: This is the extent to which the training effect results in an improvement in the activity you’re training for. So, if I swim, there is little transference to sword fighting. If I chop a block of wood with an axe, there is greater transference to sword fighting. Some activities have greater transference than others, and are therefore related to the specificity of the exercise — if it has more specificity, it has more transference.
When we train, to get optimal results, we want to train things that have greater specificity and therefore transference. We want our training to count. Now, without getting too far ahead of myself, there are certainly exceptions to this rule. I’m not talking about those exceptions right now. I’m talking specifically about, well, specificity.
There have been many times I have read or heard spoken the statement, “The best training for swords is swords. So just do more swords!” There is an immense amount of truth in this statement and an important amount of misunderstanding.
The Truth
The truth is that the best way to learn motor skills and gain the fitness required to compete in real time against another opponent is to expose yourself to competitive engagements as regularly as you can. Competing makes you better at competing. This is the principle of specificity at play. The closer your training is to the real thing, the higher the likelihood that you’ll get better at the actual activity.
As an illustration, if I only swim laps in a 50 metre pool, and then compete in a longsword tournament, there’s a fair chance I won’t do so well in the tournament because swimming uses my muscles and nervous system differently to longsword. I need to place similar demands on my body to what it has in the engagement in order to get better — significantly better — at the engagement.
The Misconception
The misconception with the “swords is the best training for swords” advice is the incorrect belief that engaging with swords is sufficient for optimal engagement skills.
What I mean by that is that while engaging with swords causes your body to adapt for that activity, the body is designed in such a way as to respond best to gradual and increasing demands placed upon it. If it ceases to have newer, more demanding stressors, it will stop adapting – there is no longer a need to adapt. In fact, it will often adapt so much that it plateaus and may even seem to go backwards in results. When all that you do is train with your swords and your sword partners, while you will initially make noticeable gains, they will taper off.
The next effect of using only the swords as the base to your training is that you expose the body to the same demands over and over again. This leads to wear and tear, what you might call overuse of the soft tissues. Muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, fascia, all get repeatedly used, often without opportunity to recover. The tissues become exhausted, the central nervous system healthily starts sending out warning signals to change something and you begin to ache or have repetitive or long term injuries. With the human body, ‘more often’ isn’t always best. ‘More quality, less frequently’ usually is.
The brain yearns for novelty, it is healthiest when it is exposed to new things over time, and then once it’s use to them, it craves other new things. Gradual and increasing differences makes it healthiest. When it doesn’t get these things, it tends to give out pain and stiffness as signals that something needs to change – that something else needs to come into sharper focus. This pain and stiffness can be one result of only using sword training to get better at sword martial arts.
The Summary
The body craves novelty and reacts very specifically to the demands placed on it. The best training to adapt well to bouting is the training that has greatest transference. Bouting with swords has a lot of transference to sword bouting (really!) but it runs the risk of not adding enough demand over time, which can lead to regression and overuse injuries. The best solution is to find a way to gradually expose the body to increasing demands safely.
2. Fitness Elements
When we exercise, we work different elements of fitness. We won’t cover all of them here as there are so many.
The fitness elements are things like flexibility, strength, speed, agility, endurance, cardiorespiratory endurance, and power. It’s hard to draw up a list of the most important elements of fitness for WMA as there are so many different systems.
In any one engagement, you will be using many of these fitness elements. When we say someone is “fit”, we mean that they are “fit for a purpose”.
So one person (Mr Smallsword) may be fit for using a shorer, lighter and faster weapon, which means that they have developed certain fitness elements more than others and are use to using them in a certain context with a very specific skill set. Sub-maximal endurance in their forearm and wrist is high, as is moving the upper arm forward and backward repetitively with a light load slightly removed from their torso. Their thighs would also be of a certain endurance level and they would have a capacity to rotate the torso and pelvis in one direction more than others.
Mrs 14th Century Longsword, on the other hand, is likely to have developed other specific skills and elements, specific to a longer, heavier weapon with a thicker grip and larger cross guard. She would have more strength and power in her shoulders, a higher anaerobic cardiorespiratory fitness and greater strength and power in her forearms, upper arms and calves.
The skill we learn emphasises different fitness elements.
What’s The Purpose Of This Exercise?
So when we recommend an exercise to someone, what is it we’re recommending?
Perhaps an alternative way of asking that is to ask what the person is actually seeking through their exercise; to ask what the purpose of the exercise is.
- Do they want to increase how long their thighs can hold them up during practise?
- Do they want to improve their ability to hold a sword away from their body in a guard position?
- Do they want to increase the number of cuts they can perform before they feel fatigue and lose control of their weapon’s line?
- Do they want to finish a competition without being out of breath?
- Do they want to improve how far they can lunge and safely return to their active stance?
Each of these questions sheds a new light on the purpose of the exercises the person can do to enhance their training. Each of them emphasises a different fitness element. Let’s look at each of them in turn, with a view to understand fitness elements a little more.
Thighs during practice. This is an issue of endurance more than anything. Endurance is the ability to hold a contraction that is less than the force of your maximum contraction.
Endurance Contraction Force < Maximum Possible Contraction Force
More than that, its the ability to hold a contraction for an extended period of time. As a rule, the longer the time frame, the lower the force of the contraction.
So doing an exercise that provides more load than your body normally holds when fencing, but still significantly less than the maximum load your thighs can handle, would be the goal. Cycling at a reasonable load for 10 minutes three times per week would probably help with that. Swimming may help but not as much, because the load against your legs (water and gravity) is not great enough to stimulate an optimal response.
Hold sword in guard position. This is also an endurance fitness but it is a much lesser endurance exercise. The load is lighter and the demands of a longer duration because you rarely relax the arm muscles during the engagement.
The other factor here is that the muscles are mostly smaller and lots of the force they can produce is significantly less, by virtue of their size, their physiological makeup and their attachments. Combine these with the extended lever arm of the sword blade and you are placing a unique load on the upper limbs.
An effective exercise for improving this may be a bench press using a light weight that is still more than the load of holding a sword but not so much that it works power more than endurance.
Number of cuts without fatigue. This one is where more of your typical strength training comes in. Training your upper body strength, such as in doing bench press, push-ups, biceps curl and shoulder press and Reformer Pilates are all great ways to increase shoulder strength and decrease fatigue.
In this case, you want to increase the ability of the muscles to sustain fast contractions repeatedly and under load combined with increasing their efficiency at replenishing themselves between bouts. It’s common for people to think that the best way to improve this goal is to do more, faster, heavier and longer. The problem is that fitness is specific. And in these martial arts, you rarely (never?) swing a sword around without a break.
Specifically, you swing a sword around and have a little rest. So the best bet is to do exercises that have you do a number of repetitions, then rest to optimise recovery, then do it again. That sounds a little like traditional weights training to me.
Compete without getting out of breath. This one has to do with how your whole body accesses and uses oxygen. It’s what we call respiration.
Respiration can be thought of like this: the body uses oxygen to make energy available and in exchange it spits out water and carbon dioxide. The volume (amount) of oxygen that each kilogram of body weight uses in a minute (when working at its maximum) is known as your VO2max. Basically, the higher your VO2max, the more efficient your system is – the more “fit” you are.
The body has multiple chemical systems that work in synergy with each other to access that energy and use the oxygen. Being puffed at the end of a competition is simply your body trying to get more oxygen in to the cells because they’re not yet efficient enough to process what oxygen they do have. (They also may not yet have enough mitochondria to process the energy or enough blood vessels travelling into the muscles to supply oxygen. Both of these things occur when you do an appropriate kind of exercise). The body uses each of the chemical systems to a varying degree in every athletic activity, to get the most out of what oxygen is available. The varying demands of the different WMA systems dictates different emphases on the chemical energy pathways.
Endurance running (running for 10, 29 or more kilometres in one session) will increase your VO2max. But running is very different to swording (that’s a word, right?). Running emphasises one chemical pathway for accessing energy at the expense of the others.
Swording tends to use faster, explosive work for a short period of time. Then there is a slower time with recovery and then another engagement. So it makes sense that something more akin to that pattern will produce the best results.
What you train, you gain.
Interval training, preferably with running, lunging or squatting type of movements, would be a great solution because they provide a momentary burst followed by a rest period, repeated multiple times.
Lunge and return. The lunge is a power exercise. It requires the ability to lower your body on one leg with control while slowing it down. It requires the ability to press out of the lunge position to return to your active stance. It also requires adequate range of motion – or active flexibility – to perform it safely.
People often advocate squats to improve lunges. Squats are fantastic and they will help your lunge, but an even better exercise is … wait for it … a lunge! Also, single leg squats, 45 degree bench press and other exercises are useful. Bounding up long staircases is an excellent drill for improving power here.
The biggest issue is having the control and flexibility to lower yourself without harm and without breaking the shape of your body structure as you do so.
The Summary
Fitness elements are related to specificity. To get optimal results from your exercises, it’s best that they reflect the fitness elements that your goals demand. Just because an exercise targets a fitness element doesn’t mean it’s best suited for you; it needs to be closer to the actual skill you’re trying to improve.
3. Best All Round Exercises
Now, having said all of this wonderful stuff about being specific, not all of us have the luxury or resource to make things work to that extent. So are there certain exercises or activities that provide more bang for your buck and target multiple fitness elements? There sure are! Below is a very short list of some. There are many more out there.
The exercises chosen here are are staple part of many an elite athlete’s routine. That alone demonstrates the value of these exercises and their transferability. The key is not the exercise so much as the manner in which the exercise is practised. One athlete will perform the exercise with a higher load, another will perform it with a greater or lesser number of repetitions, and another will have longer or shorter rest periods between sets. Engaging the help of a strength and conditioning coach, an Accredited Sport Scientist or an Accredited Exercise Physiologist would be the best course of action for refining your training.
The Important Note. An important point here is that this article has focused largely on the specificity of training. I am reluctant to give out generalisations about which type of exercise is “the best” for sword training, HEMA or WMA, because there are so many factors to take into consideration. Your body’s unique physiology, your training history, your injury history, the system you’re training, the weapon you’re training, how often you’re training, and your access to facilities all come into play. The specificity principle can also be a burden!
For this reason, I have decided on a small number of suggestions for you to research. These suggestions tend to give the best overall response — you will develop the most number of fitness elements that apply to WMA with the least likelihood of harm and the benefits will noticeably carry over into most other areas of life. Again, seek out professional coaching to learn these the safest and most effective ways possible. The internet is great for learning information but terrible for most people to learn movement technique. If you enjoy using your body, a great exercise coach is an investment to prioritise in your budget.
I have included recommendations for the frequency and number of each exercise type. Please do not perform all of these exercises in one week. Seek out the guidance of a strength and conditioning coach who performs a professional movement analysis, risk screening and activity analysis, to select the best ones for you. The recommendations are general recommendations. I suggest you find a coach who can give you training frequencies that suit your goals and lifestyle.
Squat
This is the quintessential element in any training routine. Front squat, back squat, deep squat, potty squat, box squat, goblet squat, there are so many version of a squat!
The squat works leg strength, endurance and power. It increases trunk stability under load, should range of motion, back endurance, hip range of motion and breath control. It will help with lunging, leg endurance, speed, and wrestling.
Don’t be deceived. The squat is an extremely complex and subtle exercise and done correctly it is an intense workout all by itself. Learning to squat well will most likely hurt your brain as much as your body and it is a lot of work. Put some squat into your training — two or three times per week — doing two to three sets of eight to ten repetitions — and your whole being will thank you.
Time per week: 2
Sets: 2–3
Repetitions: 8–12
Lunge
The oft-forgotten sibling of the squat, the lunge is vital for a fencer to practise and perfect. The lunge also comes in many colours: static, dynamic, lateral, walking, agility … Start with the static and perfect it before moving on to anything else.
The lunge also works hip and knee power and endurance, balance, agility, hip range of motion, and can be excellent for the fencing lunge depth, returning from a lunge, stepping accurately and with balance, agility, and posture.
As with the squat, don’t be deceived. The lunge is a complex exercise that requires focus. An alternative to the squat is step-ups. I have a long stairway near my local athletics track and I use the steps there to practise a similar action — stepping up and down to keep stability in my hip, knee and ankle joints. Do lunges one to two times per week, because your fencing probably already ha a bit of lunging in it. Use the weekly practise to have a perfect lunge with the intention on the highest quality form combined with increasing balance and endurance.
Times per week: 1–2
Sets: 2–3
Repetitions: 8–12 both sides
Deadlift
The deadlift is by many considered the king of exercises. It is a truly magnificent exercise. Not the king, in my opinion, but certainly royalty.
I class the deadlift into the same family as the squat (royalty!). You have to perform some kind of squatting mechanism with your lower limbs and keep a neutral and stable torso as you do. One major difference with the deadlift is that you have to perform a significant pulling action with your pectoral girdle and arms. This makes it an intense lift.
Through the deadlift, you will increase power and strength in your hips considerably, increase hip range of motion (great for recovering from a lunge), improve back strength (including the vertebrae and ligaments) and postural control, increase shoulder strength and stability and feel a whole lot better. This is truly a great experience. Your whole being will thank you for it. Your speed, ability to withstand clashing against an opponent’s body, and strength in the cut and thrust will noticeably increase — if not by you, then certainly by your training partners.
As always, this is far more complex than it seems. You need to get the lower squat range of motion into your body. It’s extremely important to have a mindset of slow progress with the deadlift. Emphasise quality and control over how much weight you lift or whether you increase your weight enough over time. If you focus on the quality, you will continue to increase weight. If you focus on the weight, chances are you’ll either give up from discouragement or injury in the not too distant future. Please believe me. I’ve rehabilitated too many people who go too hard too soon on exercises like this. It’s not worth injuring yourself. Please find a qualified and experienced coach to help you out.
Do it well and you’ll do it forever.
Times per week: 2 (or 3)
Sets: 2–3
Repetitions: 6–8
Bench Press & Friends
Arms! Shoulders! Stability and strength in these is vital for what we do. So why wouldn’t you bench press? The bench is a subclass of exercises known as the chest press. It’s that pushing away from you action (pressing) that straightens your upper arm with the hand furthest from your body to the front. Pushups and standing cable chest presses are other ones.
You can do many versions of a pressing action with the upper limb. My favourite for increasing straight strength is the dumbbell bench press. It provides you with strength in a single arm press (think sword thrust and the full extension of a cut) motion. It also increases rotational stability (which you experience a lot of in sword and unarmed martial arts).
My absolute favourite is a standing cable, single arm chest press in a lunge stance. This is gold for what we do. It increases shoulder and torso strength, rotational stability, pushing strength, shoulder stability, and faster cutting speed.
Times per week: 2–3
Sets: 2–3
Repetitions: 8–12 both sides
Cable Row & Friends
This is the opposite of the bench/chest press and also one of my absolute favourites. Absolute. Favourites.
If you strengthen the pressing actions, you need to strengthen the pulling actions. Strengthen your back. Strengthen your ability to throw an opponent over your shoulder. Strengthen your ability to pull back from an engagement quickly. Strengthen your ability to resist being thrown or pulled. Strengthen your ability to change direction (and the line of attack) quickly.
Spend 12 weeks with a cable row, lunge and squat in your routine and your finesse will be noticeably better. After that, exchange a deadlift in place of the squat every second conditioning session, and your power and speed, and capacity to move in the fight, will satisfyingly improved. I invite you to give it a go.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, quality of form should reign over quantity performed.
Times per week: 2–3
Sets: 2–3
Repetitions: 8–12
Sprints
The first real sporting love of my life was Little Athletics. I was always a sprinter and a jumper. I still love sprinting — if you’re running and you hear a bell, then you’ve been running too long, in my books. If we put my personal bias aside for a moment, then we can discover some amazing benefits from sprinting.
Sprinting, especially between 50m and 100m, uses the same energy system used for sudden, explosive engagements. When we compete with a weapon, of course, it’s not as explosive as a sprint, it’s not 100%, but it’s also not the constant lengthy run of a marathon. By training your sprint power and endurance, you improve your ability to sustain a lengthy bout. More to the point, you improve your ability to sustain a lengthy tournament with multiple bouts.
Sprint training is not about getting faster. It’s not about beating a world record. It’s about producing strength, speed and form in the midst of fatiguing and physically demanding exercise. It’s about teaching your body to use its energy and oxygen stores much more efficiently. It’s about enabling your body to do the things you train it to do without losing form.
So often we compete but our form doesn’t look anything like it does when we practise. I hear so many comments about you can never look in a tournament like you do in the arena. I don’t agree with you. Sure, competition is messy, but does a, elite, pro footballer, ballerina or gymnast look great when they practise but mediocre when they compete? I’m not going to answer that. I don’t think I should need to.
So with our martial arts. Teach your body to hold form precisely while it fatigued and when it matters, it will hold form precisely. Sure, it will change somewhat but not nearly as much as people say. Not nearly as much.
Sprints teach the body to keep form even when you’re tired. So sprint a little slower but keep your form. We also know for certain that the body needs a certain amount of time to replenish the stores of energy and rebalance the chemical systems. The more we train with this mind, the better our body’s efficiency at using oxygen becomes. The better it is as using oxygen, the better it handles the stress of an engagement and the less exhausted we become, thus being more in control of our body. Sprint training is known to improve cardiorespiratory fitness considerably, even our endurance. So when you sprint, have the right rest period between sprints. It’s usually a minimum of four minutes.
Also, sprint training takes its toll on your body. You don’t sprint more than once per week, especially if ding lots of weapons training. You also need to have a decent break between training blocks, so have at least two weeks between sprint-included training routines.
Gradual sprint training is fantastic for what we do. I’d say sprinting is the king of exercises. Like with the deadlift and squat, there is a world of technique to be covered in sprinting. Even just one session with a sprint coach can change your whole mindset.
Time per week: 1 for four weeks, then break for 2 weeks before repeating
Sets: 1
Repetitions: 6–12 runs, up to 100m. Must have 4–6 minutes break between sprints to optimise chemical balance and efficiency.
Important: The goal of sprint training is to optimise the body’s ability to recover and perform with equal skill, quality and control again the next time. The goal is not to prove anything to yourself or someone else, nor is it to pump out as many sprints as you can, nor is it to “feel the burn”. I freely say to you that if you sprint and compromise your form for the sake of getting out more, having less rest or feeling more of a burn, then you are training foolishly and reversing the benefit of the sprints that did have great form. So don’t do it. There are no shortcuts with sprint training. None.
Intervals
Intervals are related to sprints. You may have heard of high intensity interval training (HIIT). There’s a host of research coming out about it and the benefits it gives are impressive. But as with all things, do nothing in excess.
Interval training is, like sprinting, an intense exercise. The idea is that you do an increased intensity (think higher speed or heavier load) of an exercise in short bursts, with a rest break between them. The burst of exercise is usually timed, as is the rest period, and there is a number of bursts (intervals) of exercise that the person does.
You can use intervals training with practising your basic cuts: Perform perfect overhead cuts to the right for 30 seconds; have 120 second break; perform overhead cuts for another 30 seconds; have 240 seconds break; perform cuts for 30 seconds; have 120 seconds break … and so on.
There are many ways to do interval training. the biggest thing to note is that intervals are not to be done every time you train every exercise. It is best to seek the guidance of an exercise professional.
Times per week: 1–3
Sets: Variable — Seek professional guidance
Repetitions: Variable — seek professional guidance
Balance Training
Balance training is about being able to maintain a smaller or compromised base of support for random periods of time without compromising your structural frame. What?
It’s keepin your form and staying in control of your form in space while changing how your body contacts the ground. So if you go on one foot, you base of support has been reduced. If you pass the rear foot forward and pivot the front foot, you have reduced your base of support even more. If your opponent rushes at you and pushes you backwards, causing your stance to narrow, your base of support has been compromised.
Increasing balance through single leg stance drills, balancing on unstable surfaces (safely!) and having partners deliberately challenge your balance while practising, you can improve not just balance and reduce risk of falls, but you will also increase strength and agility. This is good. Very good. It increases your chance of success at stepping offline, countering attacks and withstanding assaults from your opponent.
The key to balance work is this: be very mindful of the process (pay attention to the sensations coming from your body) and be exceptionally patient with yourself (expect yourself to fall over, since that’s how the body learns to balance. If we didn’t wobble, the brain wouldn’t learn how to not fall!).
So do some balance drills!
Time per week: 1–2
Sets: 1–3
Repetitions: 5–10
Gymnastics
There is so much that’s great about gymnastics. Range of motion, stability in motion, relaxation when you don’t need to be stiff, upper and lower body strength, grip strength, agility, speed and power.
Find a gymnastics gym, get a great coach and see how your body begins to find martial arts so much more fluid and natural.
Times per week: 1–2
Sets: Not applicable
Repetitions: Not applicable
Reformer Pilates
All right. I confess. I’m biased with this one. I have owned and operated two Pilates studios. I’ve had floor Pilates, Reformer Pilates and Yoga Wall Pilates classes in my studios. I’m bit of a fan of bodyweight work and I’m bit of a fan of Pilates.
But not your average, everyday fitness centre Pilates. No sir. And not your average Physiotherapy based Pilates. No sir. Not them. I mean Studio Pilates, where there’s one to four people in the class and the instructor is interested in progressing you through your goals more than in progressing you through the Pilates repertoire.
In one session, you can significantly improve your arm, shoulder, abdominal, back, hip, thigh and calf strength. You can improve your lower limb, hip and thigh power. You can improve your cutting and thrusting speed. You can improve your balance and lateral stability and rotational power.
Beware of people who say that Pilates will significantly improve your flexibility. While it can, the way most people teach it, the gain will be marginal. If at all possible, seek out a professional who has studied under Anthony Lett in his Innovations in Pilates method (I have an interest: he was my instructor and trained me up in his method, and I centred both of my studios around his work, with my own adaptations). I’m immensely proud of his work, and it’s like the missing link in the Pilates repertoire — flexibility applied to the rest of it. Or perhaps encourage your instructor to look into it. Books and online tutorials are available. Combine a great Pilates instructor with this flexibility work and your body will move like a tiger.
Shameless plug is now finished.
The Summary
There are many exercises to enjoy as you improve your conditioning for WMA. While there are exercises that are specific to the WMA skillset, there are some that have enough transference that they can be recommended for most students. As always, I recommend you to seek out the guidance of an exercise professional, such as a strength and conditioning coach, Accredited Sport Scientist or Accredited Exercise Physiologist.
Final Thoughts
There is much more that can be said about exercise and WMA. There are a great many resources already out there. I hope that this one provides a little more insight and help for those of you trying to find the best way forward for a fantastic hobby and sport.
If you’re interested in more information about frequency and intensity of exercise, you can check out my article, Swordplay Need Physical Conditioning, Too!
About Stuart
Stuart is a Behavioural Exercise Physiologist and the Head Program Developer at the Glen Lachlann Estate College of Arms (GLECA). He has almost 30 years of martial arts experience and twenty years in the health and fitness industries.
