Elizabeth Scott is a historical martial arts and armoured combat practitioner on foot and on horseback, which is extremely cool, as well as being an orthopaedic surgeon, which is arguably even cooler. Her latest venture is Sprezzatura Sports, a company providing health and fitness training for sports fencers and historical martial artists. Of course, her main claim to fame is having appeared on this show before in episode 114.
Things have changed for Liz since our last conversation in 2022, as at the time of recording, she was preparing to move herself, her dog, and maybe her horse over to the UK to start a master’s degree in Sport, Strength and Conditioning at Loughborough University. It’s just Liz doing the degree, not the dog or the horse.
In our conversation we talk about recovery from injury, how to stay injury free and take care of our bodies as we age. We also talk about training for historical fencing, training for tournaments, and dealing with both the mental and physical sides of tournament fencing.
Liz is a mounted combat enthusiast, and we discuss vaulting onto your horse – while in full armour – and how this was an essential part of the medieval training, despite seeming pretty impossible to us modern folk.
And as promised, here's Bear:
Transcript
Guy Windsor
I'm here today with Liz Scott, who is a historical martial arts and armoured combat practitioner on foot and on horseback, which is extremely cool, as well as being an orthopaedic surgeon, which is arguably even cooler. Her latest venture is Sprezzatura Sports, a company providing health and fitness training for sports fencers and historical martial artists. Of course, her main claim to fame is having appeared on this show before in episode 114, so without further ado, Liz, welcome back.
Elizabeth Scott
Thank you. I'm happy to be back on the show.
Guy Windsor
Well, it's nice to see you again. Whereabouts in the world are you these days?
Elizabeth Scott
So I am currently in Durham, North Carolina, so east coast United States, although, interestingly, I am actually moving to your end of the woods at the end of the summer. I'll be relocating to the UK, probably in September.
Guy Windsor
Now, why on earth would you do that?
Elizabeth Scott
Very good question. From a professional perspective, I'll be doing a master's degree in sport, strength and conditioning for a year in England. But I also love going over there for reenactment, for the historical riding and the HEMA community. So it's a net positive, I think, in multiple respects.
Guy Windsor
So, you've got a Doctor of Medicine from Duke. You've done an orthopaedic surgery residency at University of Iowa. You've got an orthopaedic sports medicine fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, international travelling fellowship with the Hip Preservation Society, one could reasonably argue that you are massively overqualified already. So what do you expect to learn on this particular course?
Elizabeth Scott
As we'll get into talking about, about a year ago, I started Sprezzatura, which really is aimed at sports performance and wellness for fencers, but both Olympic and historical fencers. And so I've really dived deep into prevention, prehab, if you will, and what we can do to maintain our bodies and keep us out of the orthopaedic surgeon’s office. And here in the United States, our approach to sports medicine is one that is both pre and post injury. But I've gotten to the point where I really, really enjoy that aspect of getting to help people, not just fence better and move better and prevent injury, but really take their bodies to an elite level if they're able to. And although, yes, there are online certifications you can do, and books you can read and things, I realised I really wanted to step away from my clinical practice, you know, my full time job of being a surgeon, and be able to dedicate time to it. So that's sort of where I've ended up saying, all right, I think the best way to do this is to bite the bullet and go back to school for a little bit and give myself the time and energy to devote just to that.
Guy Windsor
Honestly, it is extremely impressive that you would feel that you needed to learn more stuff at your stage of education, and also that you would go and get an actual proper degree in a related field, just because you want to understand that aspect of that. I mean, honestly, most doctors I've met are pretty convinced they know everything already.
Elizabeth Scott
This is true. I don't debate the statement.
Guy Windsor
That is fascinating. And of course, you know, most of my life is prehab, right? And an unfortunately large proportion of it is also rehab, because, I've lent my body to beginners to practice joint locks on for like, 30 years, and there's wear and tear and whatnot. So I do a bunch of prehab stuff every day. I do a bunch of like, I mean, currently I'm not injured, which is amazing. It's great, but like, maybe an hour, hour and a half a day is going to trying to stay in that state. So I will be very, very interested to see what you come up with after you've done your Masters, so that I could maybe get that hour and a half of tedious shite down to about half an hour.
Elizabeth Scott
In some ways, Guy, I think you're the you're the exception, because you're doing what your body needs, right? But too many of us like to kind of just ignore things and put things off and duct tape ourselves together, so to speak, until we're broken. And that's not good for the HEMA community. We need people to continue to be able to do what they do for a long time. Our community, in some ways, is still young. I mean, we are on to the second or third generation of practitioners, maybe, but it would be really nice if people stick around and stop quitting because, you know, their shoulder breaks into 1000 pieces, or their knees are too arthritic to do it anymore.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. I mean, the thing is, I've always been fragile. I mean, in my early 20s, I had such bad tendinitis that I couldn't swing a sword, and it was a kung fu instructor friend of mine who fixed my wrists with massage and these weight exercises with like, small hand weights. And when I keep up my maintenance routines, my wrists are immaculate. I can do push ups on the backs of my hands. No problem. I can hit stuff all day, no problem. I can type, no problem. If I neglect my maintenance for a week, things start to turn to shit. So I'm actually, fortunately fragile, because I can't do the just duct tape it and go on. It just doesn't work. No, when I injured my knee, three or four years ago, on a hike of all places, doing absolutely nothing in particular. I just pulled something on the inside of my knee. It wasn't a question of, well, you know, just take some pain killers, because no, it just won't work. It's not the pain that's stopping me from doing it. It's like my whole body saying you just simply can't do that.
Elizabeth Scott
A lot of us learn through injury, you know, we're fine until some really dramatic thing happens, and it changes our life. But it's much better if we can just get this learning along the way.
Guy Windsor
There's no teacher like experience, but it's good to learn from other people's experience. So did you have a similar injury?
Elizabeth Scott
Well, I'm more like you, Guy, that I did competitive dance for over a decade and had many, many lower body injuries from that, and then from martial arts as well, as you know, I think the last time we talked on this show, I was coming off of a thumb injury. I dislocated my thumb doing some armoured combat training, of course, in gloves that were two sizes too big for me, and valuable learning lesson from that. Thankfully, that has fully healed. I am 100% from that. But I mean, really I'm, unfortunately, a frequent flyer for the orthopaedic department, and that actually, that fits with if you look at the background of most orthopaedic surgeons, it's because we were injured at some point, possibly in our youth, and encountered a doctor that that meant a lot to us. But yes, I have my own share of stories, thankfully, at this point, I am also 100% right now, which is a great place to be in. It's now my full time job to try to make other people the same way.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, now that you're teaching people how to stay injury free, you're kind of obliged to set the example. I mean, accidents could happen to anyone, but like, how you respond to the accident, what you do about it, how you how you train out of it, how you adjust things to take it into account, and what you do to prevent it happening again. You have to set an example to your students, right?
Elizabeth Scott
Yes. And I mean, I feel like every coach should feel the same way. We are an example to our students in the way we conduct ourselves in class and at tournament, and the way we approach material and then the way we approach our health and safety, I think, is paramount.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. I mean, my attitude when I started my school, which was enabled by the fact that I learned this stuff about how to fix my wrists, was as a martial arts instructor, I will probably hit the optimum balance of youthful vigour and experience around the age of 60. That seems to be like the sweet spot. So my job is to peak at 60. I'm now 51, so I'm now thinking my job is really more to peak at 70, because I need a bit more experience.
Elizabeth Scott
You need to keep pushing that out. It's very important.
Guy Windsor
It's been a constant throughout all of my training that I'm not trying to get good today. I'm trying to make sure that I am capable of peaking at 60 or 65 or 70, when, when I'll have enough experience to actually be properly useful to my students.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the right approach. And that's something that the older we get, the more obvious it becomes. I think the younger we are, the more we tend to care about aesthetics when it comes to fitness and wanting to look a certain way or lift a certain amount, but then the older we get, the more it's about is, is my body allowing me to do the things that I want to do? And I maintain that's the most important.
Guy Windsor
I grew up in the 80s with Arnie Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone movies, and what's his name? Chap who does the splits? Jean Claude Van Damme. And they are not normal physical specimens, so I felt fat and weedy my entire life. And there’s two ways you can go with that. You can argue, well, I'm fat and weedy, so I can't do it, or I'm fat and weedy, so I better watch what I eat and lift some weights.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a very, very good point. Is that there's no gatekeeping in what we do that everybody is suitable for martial arts and learning historical martial arts. And my job is just to help people get from point A to point B. And what point A and point B are for each individual is very, very, very different, right? I have A tier fencers, gunning for a top 25 and then I've got folks I work with that haven't literally ever stepped foot inside a gym in their life, and two very different approaches. But, all able to benefit from taking the time to take care of their bodies.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, so this is the whole Sprezzatura thing. Now, you hadn't started Sprezzatura when we were talking last time.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, it's something that I finally established as a business about a year ago. It's something I'd been thinking about for a long time, and helping friends with on the back burner, just here and there. And then I said, Wait a minute, I've actually got all these skills. Why don't I just make it available to anyone who wants it, instead of a friend of friend, kind of thing.
Guy Windsor
Is it in person or online, or what?
Elizabeth Scott
Right now, it's entirely online on purpose to try to make it available.
Guy Windsor
So when you go to the UK, you can carry on looking after your clients. I was thinking about, hang on, if you've got a practice over in the States, how are you going to take a year out and keep it? But if it's all online anyway.
Elizabeth Scott
It's all online. So I do kind of at the lowest rung. We have something called HEMA Fit, so that's a twice weekly exercise class entirely for historical fencers, really aimed at making it accessible to people so they don't need special equipment. You can do it in your house. You just pop on the video or do it live when I do it twice a week.
Guy Windsor
Top marketing tip. Just mention the time and the time zone, so that anyone who's listening, who happens to think, Oh, that would be convenient might.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, right now, it is 8pm eastern time in the United States, Tuesday and Thursday.
Guy Windsor
That's no fucking use. That's one o'clock in the morning. I’m not training at 1 o’clock in the morning, I’m sleeping at 1 o’clock in the morning!
Elizabeth Scott
I will not be working out at one in the morning in the UK. So the time zones will shift, but immediately afterwards, it's available for on demand. So I have folks that are every time zone imaginable, that do it on their specific days of the week.
Guy Windsor
So you record every session and put it online. Yeah, that's funny because I run a probably similar thing, which is not intended as a class for other people. It's intended as a way to make me get out of bed and do the right stuff. I call them Trainalongs because people can come and train along with me at a time that works for me. And yeah, we've had people from New Zealand and during the pandemic when some people weren't sleeping properly, they were getting up at three in the morning and coming along with the classes. That's not good, yeah. But so is the time zone suits me rather than everyone else, but it seems to be okay for Europeans, and it seems to be okay for people in like Australasia. But I've recorded like 40 of them and put them online in various places. But just as a technical thing, I'm thinking maybe I should do the same for my Trainalongs, because they just might be useful to people. What is the exact technical process that you record them and upload them?
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, so I run it live through Zoom. Folks who do it live, just hop on a zoom link, that's straightforward. And then alongside it, technically, what I actually do is I record it simultaneously, really just with the iPhone, because the camera is so good, I have a much higher quality video, and then I edit that and upload it that night.
Guy Windsor
So do you use a separate mic, or is it just the phone?
Elizabeth Scott
I have two separate mics, one for the recording and one for class. But I found that that that gives me the best quality. And then if you're taking it live, there's music and stuff, and then I kind of have it set up so you don't really catch the music when it's recorded, so you can get your own music on.
Guy Windsor
That's better. Also, there are copyright issues.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, that way it gets around copyright issues, but I have the rights to use the music for the actual live fitness class.
Guy Windsor
Okay, certainly good. And then where do you host your classes?
Elizabeth Scott
People can sign up directly through my website, and then I send out a class calendar so people can just add it to their own. And yeah, so it's, it's all just through sprezzaturasports.com. And then also folks who do private training, private coaching with me, I give them access to the On Demand stuff.
Guy Windsor
But where are your videos hosted?
Elizabeth Scott
So two places. One is a service called Gumlet, that's just a big uploading service. So I just pay for lots of gigabytes of data, and then I separately have them also uploaded. There's an app that my private client clients use. And also within that app, I actually upload it there as well. So it's all like self contained, which is nice.
Guy Windsor
I use Vimeo for the same sort of thing.
Elizabeth Scott
Very similar to Vimeo, Gumlet is just a competitor, basically.
Guy Windsor
Okay, yeah. Because the actual, the technical side of hosting these things can be challenging because we're talking about large chunks of data.
Elizabeth Scott
I mean, I also have 50 plus classes, and so it starts to become a lot of gigabytes, very quickly.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. I have 450 videos on my Vimeo thing, and they're all private links. Well, not all of them, but most of them are unlisted. So I can embed them in places, but that's not a bad idea. So maybe I should start videoing my morning trainalongs, recording them and putting it on my SwordPeople platform for people,
Elizabeth Scott
I'm sure it would be useful. People would like that.
Guy Windsor
Hmm, so how much of your HEMA Fit classes are like swordy stuff, and how much is more sort of generic calisthenics?
Elizabeth Scott
It's probably like 75/25 so I try to put in some fencing footwork at the beginning. Of course, people do all different weapons. So footwork is going to be different depending on your weapon, but I try to pick concepts that are like more challenging footwork, things that I know people need to work towards developing. And then I'd say about 75% of it is calisthenics, stretching, balance work, explosive power work, it's like a little bit of everything to try to try to help people have it all contained in 60 minutes.
Guy Windsor
That’s the trick. Because, I mean, if I just go through all my physio stuff, which I don't do. I mean, I usually do my physio stuff before the class starts, because it's not particularly useful to people who haven't got the same kind of physical history. I can easily spend on a Sunday morning, two hours just doing physio stuff before I get to anything interesting.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, I would love a two hour class. Most people would not sign up for a two hour class. 60 minutes is like the sweet spot, I think, for most people's attention span.
Guy Windsor
For an exercise thing. But like, if I do all of my foot stuff and all of my knee stuff and all of my hip stuff and all of my back stuff and all of my shoulder stuff and all of my elbow stuff and all of my wrist stuff and all of my finger stuff and all of my neck stuff and all of my jaw stuff. That's two hours before I've even done a proper push up.
Elizabeth Scott
Do you do that every day?
Guy Windsor
No, no, no. It sort of depends on what the most recent injury was. At the moment there was a restriction in my neck, technically not an injury, but incapacitatingly painful, and I couldn't move. So it is like an injury, and so I'm prioritizing neck stuff. But then my knee got a bit wobbly, so I've thrown in the knee stuff as well. So that's about 20 minutes. And then the rest of it, I can do more. So that gets me ready for the class, and I can do sort of the regular classy stuff, which has like joint mobilization stuff, squats, push ups, lungey things. And because I'm not actually running a class, I'm not at all prescriptive about what people do. So I have one student who comes quite often. She lives in Finland, and she had a car accident about a year ago, which messed up her shoulder. So she still has a bunch of shoulder physio to do. So there's usually a section in the middle where she's off doing her shoulder stuff while I'm doing my shoulder stuff. And if someone else has their own shoulder stuff as well, they can do their thing. So quite often it's more like parallel play. We're all training together, doing what we need to do, but we're not all doing the same thing.
Elizabeth Scott
I think that's really valuable. Really for me the HEMA Fit class is designed for folks that are kind of just dipping their feet into things, right? So they're needing to learn a lot of new skills and a lot of new techniques. And then my goal is that they take away the things that are most useful for them, the things that they find they need to work on the most. And, yeah, for my folks, you know, like your student you describe who have something complex going on or very specific limitations with their physical fitness, that's really then where I dive into private training, where I custom build the program. So obviously, not everyone's appropriate to do the same 60 minute fitness class, but at least it gets people starting to work on the things that are most common issues in fencers, like shoulder tightness and hip tightness and poor balance, or not being able to move with agility and speed so things like that.
Guy Windsor
So let's say I was to book you for a private session, which is not impossible. Where would you start?
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, so of course, I can't lay hands on you. So usually I start with essentially, a conditioning test that I've have written up for folks that looks at all of the sort of big things, their cardiovascular conditioning, some basic body weight strengthening things to look at one side versus the other side of their body, is there a deficit in one area, as well as their mobility, their shoulder and hip mobility and things like that. So we start with that. And I usually interview people for 15 to 20 minutes to learn about what they are doing currently with both their HEMA training and their conditioning work. And then based on that, I build them a program.
Guy Windsor
Interesting. We should maybe do that, and maybe we should video it. No, seriously, video it and put it online. Because I'm just thinking, because historical martial arts as a modern phenomenon was mostly sort of early 90s is when it kind of began, people like me, who were then in our 20s. And we're now in our 50s, some of some of my friends are in their 60s or 70s, and there's an entire cohort of people who might find it particularly interesting and useful. And I have no privacy issues about injuries or ranges of motion or fitness levels or anything like that, because I publish my exercise stuff anyway.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, that could be interesting. The challenge is, of course, every body is unique. So, yeah, what you need is different than the next guy who's exactly your age.
Guy Windsor
But the specifics aren't the interesting thing, it is the process by which you, with your experience and background, figure out across the internet, what someone who you've never met in person can currently do and should be doing later, because that's interesting.
Elizabeth Scott
I agree. Do you want me to grab my dog? I feel like he's barking and can you hear him?
Guy Windsor
Yeah, we can hear him.
Elizabeth Scott
Okay. Hold on one sec.
Guy Windsor
Go sort your dog out
Elizabeth Scott
It's not a real podcast, if my dog doesn't join in.
Guy Windsor
Oh, aren’t you sweet? What's his name?
Elizabeth Scott
His name's Bear.
Guy Windsor
Hello, Bear. He looks a bit like a bear.
Elizabeth Scott
That’s exactly why.
Guy Windsor
Okay, now you're going to have to send a photograph of Bear for the show notes, because otherwise all the dog people listening would be like, we want to see Bear. Okay, so you have historical martial arts people, and you have sport fencers. I started out in sport fencing back in the 80s. What is the fundamental difference in how you would train people?
Elizabeth Scott
Ooh, yeah, that's a really good question. So the biggest thing that comes to mind off the bat is that sport fencers are participating in a very asymmetric sport. So it's similar to someone who is a purely rapist or purely saberist, where they're just doing one handed they're only ever one foot forward. And so that creates a ton of asymmetry in the body. Specifically opens you up to some specific issues with one hip having this problem and the other hip, my front hip has this problem, kind of thing. So that's a big portion of what we look at with sport fencers. But then also, they spend a lot more time working on explosiveness, because they can literally explode into each other and pass them. And it's called a flesh, right? It's totally safe and normal. And in historical fencing, where our weapons are different and our safety equipment is different, our kind of rules around what is considered unsafe or safe is different, so we sort of train towards different movement patterns, but a lot of it also is very similar. We're using a lot of the same muscles. We're strategically thinking very similarly, and our footwork is different, but it's also not that different.
Guy Windsor
Sure, the overall goals in sport fencing are the same as the overall goals in tournament historical martial arts: win the tournament. Whatever wins the tournament, gets the point. Whatever gets the point according to the rules is by definition correct, whereas someone who's more purely historically minded and is more interested in figuring out how it was done, rather than how it should be done now, in that tournament coming up next week, they're going to have different challenges. I'm just curious as to if you've noticed a real difference between the populations, because I've lived in both and the historical martial arts people I tend to hang out with are very, very not similar to the sport fencers I used to hang out with. Whereas the tournament fencers I know, are almost indistinguishable in their attitude and kind of general way of thinking about things from the sport fencers I used to hang out with. So what have you seen?
Elizabeth Scott
Interestingly, I would almost classify it into two other different buckets, which would be like people training for tournaments, whether or not they're historical or sport fencing, and then like people who do the thing because it brings them joy and they like the movement and blah, blah, blah, or the research side, or whatever. I find that sport fencers training for tournament and HEMA fencers training for tournament are actually same thing. They're all working on the mental mindset piece and the tactics and not gassing out because their tournaments long and it's a lot of the same pieces.
Guy Windsor
And the requirements on your physiology are completely different. The hardest thing I remember from sport fencing tournaments back in the day, and I was never particularly good. I represented my university. That was the level I got to, and you're sitting around bored out your skull at a tournament which isn't being very well run, and suddenly you have to appear at this pool with all your gear on, and then you're sort of waiting and then going, and then waiting and going and waiting and going, and basically being able to actually use the downtime to actually rest is, like one of the critical things.
Elizabeth Scott
Honestly, HEMA tournaments are not that different, where sometimes you've got a pool and you fence for a minute and then you stop, and then you fence for a minute, and then you stop. And so that self regulation of being able to bring yourself down and quickly get into rest mode and use that time, but then amp yourself right back up, back to 100% when you step in the ring again, that's a really hard skill for all kinds of tournament fencers.
Guy Windsor
Okay, I know how I do it, but how do you teach it?
Elizabeth Scott
Good question. So a lot of it comes down to the person's natural style. So some people have a really easy time regulating down, but then amping up is the hard part. Other people are amped up the entire time and really need to focus on the down regulation. So we focus a lot on creating, I don't want to call it ritual, but creating certain things that you do in a certain order that help you with either of those two processes that you repeat every single time to just, I don't want to say, trick your brain into doing it, but to fall into your usual pattern. And really it comes down to practice. If you don't practice the thing, you can absolutely not pull it out at the last minute at tournament.
Guy Windsor
So what do you do to ramp people up?
Elizabeth Scott
A couple different things. It can be physical. So it can be a physical cue, like jumping up and down, or a certain breathing pattern, or something like that, coupled with very specific imagery. I do not recommend people getting imagery based on like. I want to win or like this is the thing I'm aiming for, right? We want to not worry about external outcomes, but focus more on, like the internal feeling. So sometimes I'll have people create again, like a set of images of them, basically, being a badass, or them, as Batman, or whatever it is, that sort of amps them up and puts them in that mindset of a of a really high quality competitor or hero.
Guy Windsor
I use the Rocky IV training montage in my head. Works every time. I saw it when the movies when I was like 14, and it's been with me ever since. So how do you get them to ramp down?
Elizabeth Scott
So ramping down. Obviously they're not going to, you know, be fully de-gearing, so there's not that much physical stuff they can do. A big one is breathing patterns. So box breathing or there's a ton of different breathing patterns people will do, but picking the one that that works for them, spending a solid 30 seconds to a minute practicing that, and then also making sure then that they practice that. I have them practice it when they're exercising in between set three and set four of whatever thing they're doing, or in between one part of the exercise and the other to practice. All right, my heart rate's super high. I want to try to get it down as quickly as possible, and then amp back up. So it's really, it's practice.
Guy Windsor
And box breathing, for listeners who may not know it, is…
Elizabeth Scott
Oh, so box breathing is essentially where you breathe in, hold, and then breathe out with the same number of beats or same amount of time. So it could be four seconds in, you hold, and then four seconds out. So it basically makes your inhale and your exhale the same length of time, prevents you from hyperventilating or forgetting to breathe. And it's also very calming to the nervous system.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I use a variation on that. Well, basically just lengthening the out breath if I want to bring things back down.
Elizabeth Scott
It's, honestly, a skill that I really feel like every human should learn, because it's also very helpful for any other reason in life. If you're really amped up, or you're starting to have a panic attack or something like that, or in a really stressful situation, I use it in the operating room if I have something that's going wrong and, you know, there's a critical emergency, I just sort of naturally shift into that sort of box breathing pattern to clear my mind and focus so I really do believe in it,
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I've used it when getting into a little bit of trouble while flying solo in a plane, coming into land, and it's getting fucking scary.
Elizabeth Scott
100% Yeah, that would be terrifying to me. I don't know how you do that.
Guy Windsor
I've got a total of like eight hours of solo flying. So not very much, but oh my god, it's the best thing, and it is for me, super scary because I'm scared of heights. But actually, for me, because I'm scared of heights, the most reliable trigger for a panic attack is bouldering. So I go climbing, indoor climbing fairly regularly, and every now and then I get myself into a sticky situation, and it's just overwhelmingly terrifying, right? Which is perfect. It's the most useful thing, because it's genuinely terrifying, but it's not actually that dangerous. If I did just fall off, then I would just hit the great big mats. I could break a leg, maybe, if I was really unlucky. But 999 times out of 1000 people fall off the wall and they're completely fine. It’s like, full on, oh, you're going to total panic. And there's no way up or down unless you do it yourself. And so, like, how am I going to get down from here? Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh fuck. While I'm hanging on for dear life. Okay, heart rates coming down, okay. I can think about things. Maybe I can reach that thing with my foot, maybe, okay, and then get myself down that way. And I find having that environment where it is actually physically, reasonably safe to trigger a panic attack, perfect training environment for other situations, like tournaments or whatever, where you might be absolutely terrified, but you have to get it under control.
Elizabeth Scott
Fully, fully agree, yeah. And I find that a lot of the fencers who do struggle with that sort of tournament anxiety, tournament nerves, being overwhelmed, they haven't had those opportunities in life elsewhere to practice that skill before. And as you said, that's a great example of a way to practice it that has, honestly, nothing to do with martial arts, right? But it's instantly applicable. I'm a huge fan of Brene Brown's books, totally unrelated to fencing, but she says courage is a muscle. And I use that phrase a lot that, yeah, courage is a muscle. It's something that no one's magically good at. The more we work at it, the more our threshold for what is scary or what is overwhelming goes up.
Guy Windsor
But also it needs to be rested like a muscle. We can wear it out.
Elizabeth Scott
Absolutely. And many of us in the modern world do live in that over stimulated, over anxious, 24/7 life, right? That we don't even realize that we need that rest.
Guy Windsor
It's a funny thing, we live in a fundamentally safer situation than humanity has ever done, and yet we're more worried. It's extraordinary.
Elizabeth Scott
We will always find something to worry about, right?
Guy Windsor
I'm not saying that people weren't worried. You know, 100 and some years ago, children were dying of starvation related diseases in Britain and America and all over the place, right? Nowadays, it's very unlikely that your child will die, certainly in Britain, I can't speak for America, but it's very unlikely that your children will die of starvation related diseases. Actually getting food into the children is relatively trivial for most people. What is there to worry about?
Elizabeth Scott
I mean, it brings up a very interesting point that we are 21st century folks learning a much, much older art, where the things that we are worrying about, the things our bodies struggle with, that for someone in the 1400s or 1500s was very, very different. And again, that's part of why I founded what I do is because we have keyboard warriors, right, where we're all bent over and hunched over, and we got all these back problems and shoulder problems.
Guy Windsor
Sorry. Can I just say, one of one of us is standing at an adjustable height standing desk, and one of us is sitting in a chair.
Elizabeth Scott
I am sitting comfortably in my chair. Yesterday I had to stand all day at work, so I am enjoying my Friday sitting, thank you.
Guy Windsor
Fair enough. But yeah, a lot of my job is getting people who have never walked 10 miles and thought nothing of it, never ridden a horse, right? Never done any of the kind of medieval, normal physical moving around stuff to do medieval martial arts. There's always some preparation required. I mean, people's hips are just fucked. How did they get like that?
Elizabeth Scott
You know, my clinical career as a doctor, I am a hip surgeon. That is primarily what I do. And the number of times I've joked with people been like, has your hip always been like this? Like this has been your MO for the last 30 years of your life. And the answer is, usually, yeah, you know. But again, a lot of times we don't call on upon our bodies to move and do these things until we pick up something like historical martial arts. And yeah, unfortunately, it means that we lack the bodily preparation that just came with growing up and living in a medieval world.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. I mean, it's astonishing to me that, I would say, most of the students I've trained over the last 20 odd years, they can't just sit in a squat, not even for a minute.
Elizabeth Scott
Unless they're Asian, in which case it was drilled into them from an early age. But for Western Europeans, heck, no.
Guy Windsor
Again, most of my students over the last 20 odd years have been Finns or Americans. And I mean, some of them, their footwear doesn't allow them to squat. They're wearing boots or whatever, that don't allow the ankle range of motion you need to be able to get down into a squat. And I'm like, how can you go through your day without ever needing to squat? Like, what if there's something on the floor and you need to pick it up?
Elizabeth Scott
That’s why they have back problems, Guy, they just use their back. It's fine.
Guy Windsor
But I have back problems because I have a ridiculously long spine. I'm just under five foot nine. In proportion to my back, I should be six foot three, and in proportion to my legs, I should be about five foot three, so I have a ridiculously long back and short legs. And that that causes all sorts of issues. So even being able to, like, squat down everything, I get all these back problems. So I don't understand how people who can't squat can even get out of bed.
Elizabeth Scott
It's incredible. There's a level of fitness that we achieve now in the modern day, you know, with time and training and fencing, and then you look at stuff like Pietro Monte and his descriptions of all the horse vaults. And you're like, whoa, okay, that's like, a whole other level.
Guy Windsor
And Marshall Boucicaut, Jean le Maigret II, Marshall Boucicaut, was supposed to be on a vault onto a horse without using his hands. What the fuck. How do you even do that? In armour.
Elizabeth Scott
I love Monte. I'm a huge Monte fan. But he talks in detail about, not just like, oh, you should be able to vault, but like, you know, you should be doing these vaults regularly to train for armour. And have a horse setup, and you're at your place that you can go practice all these vaults on all the time and again. Like we look at it and it's to us, it's like, so far removed from anything even being remotely possible, but it's in so many sources, right? Talking about this horse vaulting, but it was clearly done, like it's not a joke, it's not an exaggeration.
Guy Windsor
Okay, just for people who don't know what it is, could you describe exactly what we mean by horse vaulting? When I first came across it, I was like, No.
Elizabeth Scott
So, from a war standpoint, a martial standpoint, the idea is that you can get on and off your horse quickly and efficiently by yourself in or out of armour. Keep in mind, yes, their horses were a little bit shorter than what often we think of as horses today, so a little bit closer to pony size, yes. But also, the people were also a little bit shorter than many of us are today. It all kind of equalizes. But either way, the idea was that you just throw yourself on the horse and go. But then it also became a form of gymnastics. To actually work your strength and mobility and agility by practicing, then some elaborate sort of show off vaults on and off your horse. And so they jump on from basically every side imaginable, and do some twists and turns and then possibly jump off. And so that starts to look a little bit, you can imagine, like men's gymnastics pommel horse. That's exactly where it comes from. So that sort of gives you a context for what we're talking about, but then keep in mind they're doing it in armour. So I train a lot in armour, like I'm in my armour almost every week, and I train my horse almost, you know, I ride my horse all the time, but there ain't no way that I'm vaulting on him in my armour anytime in the next millennium.
Guy Windsor
No. So what's going to happen with your horse when you come to England? You're not bringing him, surely?
Elizabeth Scott
I'm looking at bringing him. I may invite the bullet and do it, because I've put a lot of work into him. He really likes mounted combat. And so I'm looking at bringing him. If I can't, then I will find a horse there that I can ride, and I'll be quite close to Dominic Sewell’s place, he runs Historic Equitation, so I will have lots of access to horsey stuff. And that's one of my big goals while I'm there, is to get a lot better at jousting and mounted combat.
Guy Windsor
Those are good goals. If you can't bring your horse over, can you find someone to look after him for a bit? Or would you sell him?
Elizabeth Scott
so I'm very lucky that Helen Ingersoll, who has keeps my horse here for me, on her on her property, she adores my horse, and he adores her. So if I needed to, I could absolutely create an arrangement and probably find someone to lease him to help kind of recoup those costs. That would make me sad if I can't bring him, she would be thrilled, but we'll see where it goes.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you think maybe you could, you could keep him at Dominic's place?
Elizabeth Scott
That's our planned arrangement right now. It's extremely expensive to send a horse.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. I have friends who moved over from Texas to Cambridge, which is not far away, and they brought their dog and their cat, and that cost a fortune.
Elizabeth Scott
Thankfully my dog’s easy. My dog can go under the seat. But the horse, I mean, every day all over the world, there are horses getting exported via boat or air from one country to the other. There's a huge market of horses that come out of Germany and Spain and Portugal and things. So my horse is actually Portuguese, so he came from Portugal to America, so he's done it before. It's not easy. It's a lot of stress, a lot of worry, and not an insignificant chunk of change to do it. But it is also doable,
Guy Windsor
And then, of course, you have your own horse to practice all your mounted combat on.
Elizabeth Scott
Yes, and that would be the goal, is to also to get him a lot more used to jousting, and then be there with people that also spend a lot of time doing mounted combat. That's always the problem is mounted combat, just like fencing, it's a group exercise. So if you don't have a partner, there's only so much you can do.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. So obviously you have to consider nutrition with this. So what we eat now is very different to what people ate 500 years ago, and I don't think it would be in our best interest to go back to a medieval diet.
Elizabeth Scott
No, I agree with you. I think using all of our available resources and available foods and quality of foods today is important. You know, as far as diet in general, what I recommend is the same tenets for any athlete, so ensuring that you're getting an appropriate amount of food, that you're not under feeding yourself for the amount of exercise you're doing, fruits and veggies, whole foods, real foods, trying to cut out as much of the like bars and gels and things like that. And try to actually eat three square meals a day, appropriate amount of protein and things like that. It's not rocket science, but it's something we all struggle with.
Guy Windsor
My basic feeling is food shouldn't come out of a box.
Elizabeth Scott
Exactly, less barcodes and more real, real items that need to get prepared.
Guy Windsor
If it has an ingredients list, it's not really food because you buy ingredients.
Elizabeth Scott
I mean, obviously fresh food has an ingredient list too. But, yeah, we want to move away from industrialized, highly processed foods as much as possible.
Guy Windsor
How do you feel about supplementation?
Elizabeth Scott
I think some supplements are excellent, especially if they are lacking from your diet. So for many of us, things like Vitamin D is very important. We're all deficient in this current day and age.
Guy Windsor
I’m not. I've been tested that I get enough vitamin D.
Elizabeth Scott
You’re in the minority then, in fact, so in America, like we figured out that it's cost effective to actually just give people vitamin D instead of testing them for it, because everyone's low.
Guy Windsor
Wow.
Elizabeth Scott
And then we can get down into rabbit holes about creatine.
Guy Windsor
I like rabbit holes. I take creatine. I started taking creatine because I'm not particularly interested in bodybuilding or anything, but I'm 51, sarcopenia is a thing that's going to start happening, whether I like it or not. So I need loads of protein, I need to lift weights, all that sort of thing. And everyone I know who lifts weights seriously takes creatine. And there's been a bunch of studies came out fairly recently. People I listen to who do the science stuff, like Dr Rhonda Patrick, for example, suggests that people taking creatine are at less risk of types of dementia, heart disease. So there's all sorts of unexpected knock on benefits to creatine.
Elizabeth Scott
Yes, but if you studies look at the amount of creatine that was used to find those differences, and it's like 10 or 20 times the amount that most of us are taking. So it's not like one to three grams a day. It's like, we gave these people like 30 grams a day, it's like, massive amounts of creatine. So definitely take that with a grain of salt.
Guy Windsor
Sure. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, I take about 10 grams a day.
Elizabeth Scott
I do recommend you know if you are on it long term, and you're taking a fairly hefty amount, it's probably good to be getting your kidney function checked intermittently, because if there's going to be a negative side effect on your body, besides, like GI distress, it's going to show up in your kidneys. So my general approach to it is, it's definitely not a have to take by any stretch of the imagination. It's relatively safe to take. I think just starting with one to three grams a day is a very, very reasonable place to start and check that you don't get a bunch of side effects from it. The main thing to know is that the data on like, what it does to you, a lot of that is based around lifting slightly heavier, it's based around lifting weights in the gym, right? So it's not based on dynamic sports performance. When we start to look at what does it actually do to a soccer athlete or a fencer in terms of their performance, the results really, really drop off to be almost entirely negligible. So collegiate sports teams, professional sports teams, they're actually not pushing athletes to take creatine, because they just don't see those effects pan out when it actually comes to the team or the individual’s performance in sport. So just something to be aware of. It can be interesting to try and play around with, especially if you're gunning for a PR, but in terms of what will, hat it will actually do to your fencing in the ring or on the strip, likely negligible.
Guy Windsor
Oh, yeah, I'm taking it to basically help with my project of not losing muscle.
Elizabeth Scott
Well, the most important thing is that you're doing exercises to maintain that muscle. I see behind you, you've got your whole setup there, all the weights. It looks like a nice place to play.
Guy Windsor
The only seat in my study is a weights bench. So when I'm tired and I am working in the afternoon, I slide the weights bench over and sit on that if I really need to. But yeah, it's standing room only and a shit ton of weights which do actually get moved. The only one that I very rarely use is the 24 kilo kettlebell, because for the things I'm doing at the moment, it's a bit too heavy. It's like a forest of weights. I love it. And my wife and I do weight training in here, like, couple of times a week. It's something I didn't really need to do until relatively recently. So I started it a bit over a year ago, because I noticed that basically jackets were getting a bit loose and trousers were getting a bit tight, and now trousers are getting a bit loose and jackets are getting a bit tight, and that's what we want.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, that's exactly what you want. And it is important to note that really, strength training for many people, is the missing piece of the puzzle if they're not already doing it throughout our whole lives. And as you mentioned, like there are some, there is some real data about these little drop off points we have in the course of our lifespan. You know, one that's probably in your early to mid 30s, and then another one that's kind of later in your 50s. And these are points where we start to see drops for females in bone density and for everyone in muscle mass and things like this. So, nipping it in the bud and staying true with straight strength training and taking care of your body is one of the best things you can do for yourself for long term.
Guy Windsor
Okay, here's a totally unfair thing, right? My wife and I went for DEXA scans last year just to kind of get an idea of where we are in terms of body composition and whatnot. Yeah, and here in the UK, if you're at risk of osteoporosis, you can get DEXA scans on the National Health Service, because that's the one thing that they care about when it comes to DEXA scans. Of course, most people who are doing it privately are mostly interested in fat deposits, but I have been, like, training regularly and eating lots of protein and cheese and stuff with calcium and all that kind of stuff since forever, and my bone density is in the 50th percentile for my age group, which is pathetic, right? My wife, she does Pilates, and she has chronic kidney disease. She has like three quarters of one kidney total, and so she has to be really careful what she eats and that sort of stuff. And she's a menopausal woman in her 50s, bone density: 95th percentile. How the fuck did you manage that? I suspect genetics.
Elizabeth Scott
Yes, genetics does play a large role. It is true. That is true and lucky her. You didn't ask her if she would give you some of hers, right?
Guy Windsor
I mean, she would. She absolutely would. Should I actually be in any way concerned about being in the 50th percentile intensity or given my weight lifting and general exercise and everything else, it's not a problem. What do you think?
Elizabeth Scott
I don't necessarily think that's a problem. You don't want to be significantly below that. But it is an average, right? Which it's for people your gender and your age. And I think it might be worth talking to your doctor about now, when does that need to get checked again, based on that finding. But typically, unless you meet the criteria for osteopenia or osteoporosis, there's not a special treatment for it, other than maintaining what sounds like a very good program that you're already doing, which is great.
Guy Windsor
Jolly good. And so, are there any supplements that you do actually recommend, other than vitamin D?
Elizabeth Scott
For folks who have a not great eating pattern, I do recommend a multivitamin just to meet deficiencies. Calcium and vitamin D, and then beyond that, there's really no special supplements that are going to do massively great, great things for people. There maybe is some data for older fencers. So like 40 plus.
Guy Windsor
Go sort the dog out. It's fine.
Elizabeth Scott
Oh, it's inevitable. He's always quiet, except now. For fencers who are 40 plus, it can be useful to look into the like beet supplements. So like beet elite, or one of these other, like beet whatever's, there's some really good supplements.
Guy Windsor
Do you mean beet like the plant?
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, beat like the food, it's extracts of beets. Basically even, like, beet juice has some of this in it?
Guy Windsor
Is there a reason not to just eat the beets?
Elizabeth Scott
Um, it's one of those things where, of course, the amount of beets you would have to eat would be, I hate beets, no way in heck I would be eating a giant bowl of beets after I exercise. But assuming you're like me, you will choose a beet supplement. But the idea is that it basically helps you with recovery, and again, particularly that data seems to be particularly strong for older athletes and endurance athletes, so it may be something you want to try. Just see if it helps you kind of feel better day to day in your recovery periods. But apart from that, I mean, again, there's really not any magic to all of the compounds and things out there that the amount of quote, unquote benefit you're going to get is so negligible compared to just taking care of yourself and exercising and eating.
Guy Windsor
yeah, I mean, it's like, eat properly, move a lot, sleep well.
Elizabeth Scott
Who cares about supplements if you're not doing those things.
Guy Windsor
Interesting, yeah, because there are an awful lot of sort of personal trainer types who are very happy to sell you an awful lot of pills. I don’t like the idea of it.
Elizabeth Scott
And to be quite honest, it's because they're trying to supplement their income, right? Like they really are just trying to get by. And it's not damaging to you to take all those different things for the most part, but it's sure as heck not going to give you some kind of magical benefit that's any better than just doing the work.
Guy Windsor
Damn. Very annoying. I was hoping you had a magic pill for me. Liz.
Elizabeth Scott
I know, I know, maybe one day, yeah.
Guy Windsor
If everyone ate, ate right and exercised properly and didn't get into car crashes, you'd be out of a job.
Elizabeth Scott
I would be, I would be, so there's that.
Guy Windsor
So you're not going to practice medicine while you’re over here.
Elizabeth Scott
No, no, I'm not going to be credentialed in the UK to practice medicine, so yeah, don't come to me expecting me to fix your ACL, but if you want to talk training and sports and HEMA and recovery, I'm all about that.
Guy Windsor
Fair enough. Brilliant. So okay, you've been doing a lot lately, we haven't really talked about much about the riding and the armoured combat stuff. So you're training that over in the States at the moment?
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah. So I have a small group of people that we meet weekly to do armoured training. So I'm sort of the instructor coach for that, and that's all on foot, but just getting people used to armour. And, you know, looking at plays.
Guy Windsor
I mean, 90% of armoured combat is getting used to wearing the armour and making sure it fits properly.
Elizabeth Scott
Exactly. And then I continue to ride and train my horse. And we've had opportunities to do mounted combat here, and it's gone very well, and he likes it. But again, it's hard to have a substantial community of those people. We all seem to be very far apart from each other. And you know, as you probably can tell, even as a non-horse expert, when you start to look at the plays, things get very complicated very quickly, meaning you really do need to be a very good rider in order to pull them off and not be distracted by the getting your horse to do the thing. It's a lot.
Guy Windsor
I've done a little bit of mounted combat stuff, and I've done a fair bit of riding back in the day. It's been a long time. And the last time I actually fenced somebody on horseback it was Jennifer Landels, who is a professional riding instructor and very, very good at that sort of thing, and also teaches the mounted combat stuff. And thing is on foot with a sword, I am 99% sure I could take her, no problem, right? Because that's where I live. On horseback, she sliced me up like a cheap salami. She was on her horse. I was on one of her horses. She was on her horse, and, yeah, the horse was basically, kind of doing what I was telling it, but I hadn't ridden for a long time, and my riding just wasn't there as where it needed to be. And so she would just get around behind me and slash me to pieces and then ride away going, should we try that again? And yeah, like getting the riding to the point where the horse just does what you think rather than what you have to tell it.
Elizabeth Scott
And being able to ride with one hand, and being able to ride with your seat, and then separate that from what's happening with your sword arm. And not swinging the sword across, and then your horse follows it. It's a work in progress. It's a lifelong thing, really. Arna Keats was just here, okay, last month, yeah, like, in the last six weeks in Virginia. So I drove my horse up there, and we did a whole mounted combat weekend, which was just fabulous. He's a really good instructor who lives in Germany. So we look for those opportunities. My long term goal is I would love to find some other folks that are good riders, and really try to get more of it on video, and really break it down for people.
Guy Windsor
Here's the thing. Are you familiar with my From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice series?
Elizabeth Scott
I am, yeah.
Guy Windsor
Okay, the dagger book is coming. The wrestling is done. Longsword on foot is done. The dagger is coming. I need to do the armoured combat on foot plays, so sword and pollax and spear, and I need to do spear, sword and wrestling on horseback, but I am not the right person to be doing those because I'm not an armoured combat specialist and I'm not nearly a good enough rider. So.
Elizabeth Scott
Well,, I'll be there soon.
Guy Windsor
I'm thinking like I would really like to get my interpretation of those plays on video with people who really know what they're doing with the armoured combat stuff in the proper armour and the mounted stuff as well. And it's a tricky thing to organize, but would you be interested?
Elizabeth Scott
I would, and I know some other people that would also be interested, and I could help. We could make this happen.
Guy Windsor
While you're over here next year? I will hold you to that. Okay, that'd be really cool, because it's really tricky, because either I have to fly somewhere where there are people who will do it, or, and the thing is, obviously, because it's my book, my interpretation and whatnot, then I need to be as, like, this is the way I think we should do it. But there's probably going to be points where, if the people are experienced, they might say, well, actually, my foot should be over there. Here's why. So hopefully the book will, like improve with contact with the people.
Elizabeth Scott
I think that's the way to do it, is to have you there with other people that are kind of horsey experts, right? And then sort of synthesize and make an interpretation that is correct from both standpoints. Yeah,
Guy Windsor
That would be fascinating. That'd be fantastic. Okay, we have a plan. Okay, so what is the best idea you haven't acted on yet?
Elizabeth Scott
It's a good question, because I, you know, I really do try to act on my ideas. Sometimes it takes me five years. So the going to the UK with my horse was an idea that's now actually coming to fruition. Really, like my long term best idea is, I really want to turn what I'm doing into an actual physical place, brick and mortar place where we have the space to bring in international practitioners, and have opportunities to not just like, yeah, teach HEMA and have a little HEMA club, but really make it a centre where people can come and work on the athletic training standpoints and the rehab, but then also really make it a quality HEMA facility, and hopefully have it close to some horse stuff, so that that can get thrown in there, because I now have skills running a HEMA club, and I have skills doing other things, but I would love to have a space that's got everything that I want there. And I know many people have that same vision, but, you know, that is mine.
Guy Windsor
I have done that, and it was great. And I'll probably still be there doing it, if it wasn't for family stuff in the UK. So we moved over. But something happens when you have your own permanent space, like, for instance, students would come over from like, South America or Australia or whatever, and that's expensive. So they could train basically for free and sleep in the salle, which is technically against the law, but no one's actually paying attention, and so it makes all of that sort of thing much more affordable. And if you want to run a five day seminar. You don't have to think about where to do it.
Elizabeth Scott
You cut a lot of that planning cost.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it cuts out all of that. And it can also be a restriction, because maybe the thing you want to do should be done in a different kind of space, and you don't think to go and look for a different kind of space to do that thing, because it has to fit in the space that you've got, right?
Elizabeth Scott
Well, that's exactly the problem. The longer you do these things, and the more experience you get, the more you start to expand like, well, actually what I need is this. Actually what I need is also this. But, well. We’ll see.
Guy Windsor
Where would this centre be?
Elizabeth Scott
Oh, that is the problem, which is why I have not opened such a thing yet, is that I'd be very curious to see how much I like my time in the UK. Who knows? Maybe that's just becomes where I live and be near friends there. Or, I've spent a lot of years up in Boston and other places, and there's lots of HEMA folks up in the New England region, in the US that I think would love a high quality facility where they could come and train. So it's a little bit TBD, but yeah, we'll see what the next year brings me.
Guy Windsor
Okay, obviously, no sense opening one now, because you know you're coming over here.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah, I'm coming, and I'm enjoying my ability to travel and go to other HEMA clubs and learn and teach. So I definitely never want to give that up completely?
Guy Windsor
I didn't. When I had my space it was an enabler of all sorts of things. And if I needed to go for to the states for three weeks teaching seminars and whatnot, my students would carry on just fine without me. If your students can't carry on without you, they're either beginners or you're a very bad teacher.
Elizabeth Scott
I agree.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so a facility for training historical martial arts. At the moment, I'd rather it wasn't in America.
Elizabeth Scott
I know.
Guy Windsor
I don't think I can actually visit America at the moment?
Elizabeth Scott
Well, yeah, with where things are going, there's more and more reasons to put it in the UK and not in the States.
Guy Windsor
I've been going to the States like, an average of maybe twice a year for the last 24 years, right? And it's always a work trip in that I am teaching a seminar or attending an event, or attending an event and teaching a seminar or whatever. Many, many times I've been asked by the immigration officer exactly what I'm doing there, and am I getting paid and basically making sure that I'm not going there to take a job. So I tell them the exact truth, yes, my company is being paid by these people, and my company paid me my salary. That's what's happening, and they've always been completely fine with it. Now that would get me locked up, which is insane.
Elizabeth Scott
It's absolutely insane.
Guy Windsor
But it means that, basically, I just can't go to the US to work, because I can't be sure that the immigration officer who I talk to when they look check my passport will actually behave reasonably.
Elizabeth Scott
No, I agree. And, you know, it's really sad, like, just in, wasn't what was it? What month was CombatCon? Not CombatCon, SoCal Swordfight? March, February? March. Time flies. But, I mean, just at that event, it was so cool. All these international folks flying in, you know, world's biggest HEMA tournament, like, that's awesome. And then, even within now a month, a lot of those same people who came are going, there's no way I would go next year, with the current political climate, and now, you know, what was a really cool event, may not ever get back to those numbers until things change. And that's really sad, really, really sad. So, yes, so the long and short of it is, I'm coming to the UK. I will be doing my year long program, and then we will see if I stay out.
Guy Windsor
The UK is short of doctors.
Elizabeth Scott
They are very short of doctors. That is true. That is true, I would definitely be able to find a job.
Guy Windsor
So you could get a job. I'm assuming that your surgery job is basically financing everything else, really. Is that fair to say?
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah. So I'm leaving my academic position at Duke University, and what I've made from my surgery position working here for several years is what's allowing me to even make this possible, which is really, really fabulous. And, you know, eventually that money runs out, so I need to make sure I set up shop and really, you know, promote my business, but yes, I'm very excited.
Guy Windsor
Can I just say that I came across your Sprezzatura business online, and I said, Liz, you should come and talk to everyone about it on the podcast. Need to work on your marketing, because you should have gone, oh, I'm starting this business where I want historical martial artists to come to me for advice about their training and whatnot. Hmm, who do I know who can help me get more clients? Ah, maybe Guy. Come on!
Elizabeth Scott
I've had to be a little careful with it, because while I'm still working full time, there's a very much, like a max number of clients. So at any given time I don't have a ton of openings, but after June, I will be full throttle, which is great.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. And so this, this podcast won't be going out until probably June anyway, excellent.
Elizabeth Scott
So then, if you're listening, yeah, I do have space.
Guy Windsor
And your master's degree. Are you doing it at Loughborough Poly? Which is, like, the best place in the world for physiotherapies type stuff.
Elizabeth Scott
According to the internet. Yes, no, it is.
Guy Windsor
It has been for a really long time. I mean, yeah, one of my students in Finland, she actually asked me to write her a recommendation letter to get help her get into Loughborough to go and become a physiotherapist. And I was like, Loughborough? I know Loughborough, because back in the 90s, people were telling me it was the best place to go, certainly in the UK for physiotherapy type stuff. So, so basically, this master's degree is all about Sprezzatura. It's not really anything to do with being a surgeon?
Elizabeth Scott
Correct. Yeah. It's entirely for athletes, for sports performance, for doing what we can to make, make you guys better fencers and martial artists and, yeah, it has nothing to do with medicine, actually.
Guy Windsor
So when you qualify, you'll have Sprezzatura on the one hand, stopping people ending up on your operating table, but then also the operating skills. So if they do have an accident and they end up on your operating table, you can actually fix them.
Elizabeth Scott
Yes, little bit of conflict of interest there.
Guy Windsor
If you were sort of financially incentivised... There are plenty of orthopaedic patients out there. I don't think you need to create any extra ones by giving them deliberately bad training advice.
Elizabeth Scott
Yes, exactly. What you do as a sports medicine doctor in the US is you see your patients, but then you're also on the sidelines, managing injuries and trying to prevent them. So it all fits into the same philosophy. So, yeah, depending on where I end up, like if I stay in the UK, it is a pretty complicated process to get credentialed already, as it should be. So we'll see what my medical practice would look like at the end of it, but at the very least, I'm very much going to be using the degree to help me transform my clients and spread what I do.
Guy Windsor
I think that's fascinating, because it's the sort of thing I should have done, basically. You’re making me think maybe I should do that too.
Elizabeth Scott
There's so many people in the world that need this set of skills. That's why it's like no one's competing against me, right? Like we're all just working to make people better and keep people doing what they love.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Well that has been inspirational. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Liz, it's been lovely to see you again.
Elizabeth Scott
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. This was a blast.
