Sword fighting? Care to elaborate?
Longsword in the Liechtenauer/Künst des Fechtens tradition, mainly from the Freifechter Joachim Meyer's
A Foundational Description of the Art of Frencing anymore, although I started off learning from an earlier side of the German tradition with Sigmund Ringeck's treatise built from his gloss of Johannes Liechtenauer's zettel (and a lot of other stuff besides, once you get beyond the unarmoured longsword stuff and into all the harnischfechten, poleaxe, and such that were cobbled together from other sources). Also have some interest and a bit of knowledge in Fiore dei Liberi's
Fior di Battaglia, although given that there isn't a group near me that specializes in that, I don't have much opportunity to practice it.
Aside from that, I like Salvator Fabris's rapier system. It's fairly simple and to the point. I'm not smart enough for Thibault or any of the later
La Verdadera Destreza masters. I'm also working on some of the Iberian Montante material just for fun, focusing on Diogo Gomes de Figueyredo's treatise for now, but given that I've got a bad knee and that's a massive sword with a lot of momentum to be throwing around, I've not made a lot of progress with how slowly and carefully I'm taking it.
HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) is a good time. Combining being a history nerd (something that won't surprise anybody here who's seen me talk about how much I like playing on gut strings and historically informed performance) with physical sport activity and the sheer fun that is smacking other people with a sword.
But it's a great way to break fingers if you aren't careful, and would really get in the way of the whole bass playing and buying thing, which is probably what we should focus back on.
