Pain is the best teacher, ideally somebody else’s. With Steaphen Fick

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Today’s episode is with Steaphen Fick, who is a historical martial arts instructor and a fight choreographer, and also an old comrade in arms since we met in Edinburgh in the nineties. In fact, in this episode you will hear about a certain naked escapade involving swords in Finland in 1999. Click here for a picture of us, fully clothed, from the same trip.

Steaphen founded the Davenriche European Martial Arts School in Santa Clara, California in 2000 and it is still going 22 years later. We will be talking about how he managed that, and how he has built it up into having 8700 square feet of space to include swords, archery, axe throwing, and even airsoft. There is a lot in this episode about running a business, which would be of interest to anyone thinking of setting up their own school.

Academically, Steaphen is perhaps best known for his interpretive work on Joseph Swetnam. Swetnam may have been a horrible man, but he had useful footwork for when you’re standing on a moving deck of a ship and a different style from the Italians of the same period. We talk about how one would manage Swetnam’s 12 foot lunge, and here is the link to the Max Your Lunge blog post.