British Coaching

[Tiwaz]

What is happening to the coaching system in Great Britain now that each home country is in charge of running their own coach education schemes?
As far as i can see the BFA has decided to ditch the hungarian scheme altogether without giving it a fair chance to produce results.
Further more England coaching seems to have a complete none entity at its helm, who is Bob Bales? how is he more qualified to dictate coaching in this country than Bognar and Luckovich who have produced more successful fencers on the international circuit than he's had BAF dinners.

[I fence epee]

Hungarian scheme? Please explain for the americans in the audience.
Anyway, there must have been problems with british fencing for some time. According to the FIE's results page, they were doing great up untill the 50's and then fell apart. What happened?

[Tiwaz]

Well the short answer is British fencing decided to ask top a hungarian coach (Gabor Bognar) to write a new coaching syllabus with the BF's highest coaching qualification being the Equivalent of the Hungarian international fencing masters diploma. This new system was/is radicaly different from the french based system of the Academy(British Academy Of Fencing) and British fencing however before this new system could get off the ground and start to really benefit fencing in the uk it was scraped and replaced with seperate coaching schemes in each of the home countries(England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) on top of the antiquated Academy system and the hungarian diploma system which is independent of all of the above (confused yet?).
The New head of coaching in England is the mighty Prof Bob Bales who as far as i know has produced no international fencers or champions of note.
So the situation as it stands is anyone who wishes to become a coach or gain higher levels of qualification has the choice between the old boys club of the Academy (don'tcher know) and the chaos of the home nation fencing bodies.
So to some it up New coaching system chaos + Academy= fencing in chaos and a load of really pissed coaches.

[Gav]

First of all the Hungarian scheme was produced by Scottish Fencing first and then rolled out to the BFA. It is a better system in my opinion - although that stance is controversial. The 'Scottish System' IS therefore the Hungarian system. As far as I know the alternate systems for England and Wales are all the same Hungarian or Baf system although I do not know which Home Country uses which.

Secondly, the BF has reconciled its differences with BAF - or at least it had last time I checked.

The problem with the old BAF system was that it was being abused at a low level and at the high level focused on too much complexity without maintaining any focus; it was more of a 'classical' framework. There is nothing inherently wrong with the system it was just out of date. The Hungarian system focuses on a better progression of skills and incudes modern sports science. the UK has produced good coaches under both systems.

I've had had some experience of Mr Bognars coaching technique and it is very good.

[Mr Epee]

Is a description of these systems available online? Being fairly familiar with Bognar and the Hungarian Coaching Program, I am especially interested in seeing how they worked it out in english... and seeing if it really is the same.

Countries without fencing traditions seem to get stuck with the worst hodge-podge of coaching credentials... ultimately they end up as good ole boys back-scratching associations...

On the other hand, countries with fencing traditions have pretty much the same problems...

[Gav]

I think there is a brief overview of them online somewhere on the BF website.

You should be able to get more from www.britishfencing.com.

I tend to get bored, very quickly, of the 'back scratching' you mention and so don't spend much time chasing around for more information.

[Mr Epee]

Hmm... I found two different places where they explain that they are changing, but not what I was looking for there...

I'll keep searching

[Gav]

I thnk your best bet would be to email a few people and express your interest.

http://www.britishfencing.com/nation...ing_awards.htm

On that page s the coaching panel. I'm not sure how up to date this page is. Paul NM is one of the people who helped set up the Hungarian scheme in the first place and might be someone to contact.

[Mr Epee]

Will do... Thanks for your help, Gav.

[rory]

The Hungarian scheme came from Scottish Fencing first. Coach educators include Gabor and Zsolt Nemeth (also a senior coach of the Hungarian ladies' foil team).

My understanding is that each Home Country runs (as they have for some time) their own coach education scheme. Typically this is the same as the BF "official" scheme, which is originally the S.F. Hungarian system.

I believe that nothing is actually changing: there's just been a reorganisation in the coaching panel at BF to reflect the fact that BF is no longer in charge of England Fencing, which is now a separate entity.

And Bob Bales was coach to Tom Cadman, Robin Knight and Georgina Usher when he was coaching full time. Georgina's been ranked in the World top 16, and Tom's Britain's top epeeist. Robin Kinght was Commonwealth Champion.
So he's rather more qualified than most British coaches, don't you think?

(NB I don't know Prof. Bales - and I found all this information on Google inside 10mins. Do your research.)