Coaching - Teaching groups of epee fencers to fence off the blade redux

[RITFencing]

Since the first thread was lost in a server problem, I'll restate a bit of my problem and how I've been dealing with it.

I have a large group of high school age epee fencers, more or less all in the 0 to 3 years experience range, and too many in too short a time to give them all a lot of private lessons. I am worried about teaching them a bunch of actions on the blade, as they are already far too dependant upon blade actions (beats, binds, parries) to score touches, and many of them, while attempting some blade engagement, will lock their feet in place. I was wondering how to teach actions off the blade without having one side attempting some blade action; a preparation on the blade to disengage and attack into, a parry to decieve, etc. It seemed to me that to have any sort of depth in the handwork, I needed to make the students use things like disengages and line changes. I worked a lot with them on the footwork, which was beneficial, but still incomplete, and I was asking for help finding drills I can do in a group that did not involve one side attempting some action on the opponent's blade.

I got a few good suggestions about counter attack and stop hit drills from several people (Durando had some particularly useful things to say on the subject which I hope he will re-post for the benefit of anyone looking,) which I used a bit, but it seemed still lacking. I did, however, come up with a bit of an exercise for them. After a few drills, I told them to fence 3 touch bouts where any touch scored with any sort action on the blade (beat, bind, parry, press, whatever) did not count. This started to help things, but kids were still relying on parries to defend themselves, but were not riposting, which is a bad habit to teach and rather defeats the purpose of the drill. I then changed it: 5 touch bouts, and any parry gives the parry-er a red card. THIS gave me some very interesting results.

Kids were very apprehensive about it at first. Many of them still made reflexive parries, and many have asked "Why can't we just parry when we get attacked?" Some even went so far as "I can't do this! I need to parry!" which was honestly very telling. When they started to do normal bouts afterwards, though, some of them were moving much better, and already seemed more comfortable with attacks into prep, stop hits and fient disengages. They also seemed to be using their feet a bit more to defend themselves, to set things up, and DURING actions, which as I mentioned was a big problem beforehand. It wasn't every fencer, and it wasn't every action, but it started to get them in a good habit, at least a bit.

That was yesterday. Today, I did more drills on attacks and counter attacks, and on setting them up with the feet. Most were simple; lead your partner back and forth with footwork, one fencer tries to set up an attack with a straight lunge, the other fencer tries to make that attack happen when they want and then drills retreats to make it fall short, adding in a stop hit when they feel comfortable causing the attack and protecting themselves with distance. I then started to have them practice hits with angulation, first without any footwork, just different angles against an opponent who had extended their arm. After that, they did the same thing with footwork, hitting with advances and lunges and manuevering into position while the opponent moved around. When that was done, I had them moving in a small area with either fencer attempting to hit to the hand while the opponent can only defend with stop hits and distance, or by moving their hand out of the way. What ended up happening was fencers trying many different angles and positions, attempting to tag the others wrist, and moving around while doing so. I also started to introduce inquartatas (the fencing action, not the crumudgeon) to a few of the fencers, more as a neat thing to try and play with than as a serious action. it did get them to start thinking about moving their bodies out of the way.

When they had a handle on this, we went back to the five touch bouts, parries (or any other blade contact) not allowed. All the drills and exercises and examples of various actions that I thought up really showed a difference in a few of the kids; they were trying many different angles to hit and seemed a bit more comfortable attempting stop hits instead of just running away and fighting the urge to parry. People also started to move their hands into different lines to avoid attacks to them, and a few people even thought of compound attacks, starting to the hand and changing targets to the toes, thigh and chest. Bear in mind that this was not every kid, every action, but there were some instances of improvement, and while there was a lot of griping and "Why do we have to do this? Why can't we just parry riposte?" there was also a lot of "This is good/cool," especially when prompted by my "I know this is rough to do, but..."

When they are more comfortable with all of this and starting to get better point control, I'll introduce more complex things with tempo to set up attacks, and see if any of the smart ones realize that when a parry is a red card, getting your opponent to parry is just as effective as touching them, and even in a normal bout, getting the desired reaction from your opponent is very, very good. We'll see if any of them can bridge the gap there. I'll also get into remises with angulation, yeilding parries/counter parries and press disngages when we get back into blade actions to try and fight the tendancy to rely on muscle and a stiff, tight arm when making blade actions.

What I've learned from this:

1) The kids are smarter than I might have given them credit for. I'm going over things very quickly, mostly just inrtoductions and suggestions of things to play with (I'll be going over more technical detail as we go on) and I was a little worried about overloading them with stuff. We had about 1-1.5 hours to do all of the drills I covered today, with stretching, warm up and basic footwork covered beforehand and a lot of bouting, both constructed as mentioned, and open (I'm a big believer in giving students a chance to try out what they've been working on in a regular bout situation) afterwards. I tried to let them figure things out with a few hints from me to provide a foundation for later, and I was very pleasantly surprised. They're natural problem solvers, and they figured out some nead tactical stuff very quickly.

2) Pushing them out of their comfort zone was not well recievd but very beneficial. Many of them really don't like bouts where blade contact is a group 2 offence and love to gripe about it, but when they were forced to leave their comfortable little world of parries without much movement, they grew to the challenege very quickly. I apologize to any of you reading this, but we'll be revisiting this topic many times in the months to come.

3) Bouts with the students are a poor man's substitue for private lessons. I can't get in depth interaction with every student, but today I fenced a 5 touch bout with almost every one of my students. It's a lot quicker and a lesson, I can adjust the difficulty and focus to what helps them, and it gives me a chance to take a look at each fencer and at least work with them on something very practical. I know that's not really fitting with the theme of rest of the post, but it's an observation that I had today. The kids were literally lining up to fence me, too, so they must have been enjoying themselves.

That's about it. I'd really love any feedback to my brain dump, some restatement of ideas that got deleted by that server error, or just any of the communities own thoughts on the subject. I like to use fnet as a sounding board to see what other people are thinking, why they think it, what works and what doesn't and why in addition the getting reactions to my own ideas and solutions to my own problems. The resulting discussions thend to be very interesting to me.

[Allen Evans]

Three to four minutes fencing with each student, using the concepts you are trying to introduce can be invaluable. You can work yourself into the rotation of the class, or just have the class working while you take smaller groups of 3-4 and hammer home the fine points.

It sounds as though you are on the right track for the situation/problem you are facing.

Allen

[graymalkin]

I think a big part of success in epee is learning to trust one's point and reach.

So try a drill where your students attack their opponent with a one-line, straight lunge. The opponent steps or shifts back, performing a distance parry (This drill will help them learn that as well. Epeeists need to know the value of a simple step back). So after the first student misses his attack, instead of pulling his arm back for a parry (which many of them may be doing reflexively) he leaves his arm out, so that the opponent, when he counter attacks, runs into the point. When the students learn to place their point in the correct line so that their opponent's arm hits their point every time, you can move on to incorporating redoubles into the drill. That is, let the first student redouble if he chooses to do so.

This drill kind of hinges on the second student not being capable of landing his counter attack on the arm of the first student. I'm not sure how good at that your students are, but if they are capable of it, you just need to not allow them to land it until they master the rest of the drill. Later, you can allow them to land the counter attack, and at that point, the two are basically fencing a bout!

One of the hardest things to learn in epee is how much control one can have over the action without ever needing to touch the blade. The ideas in this drill should get that point across pretty well.

All luck to you and your students! Yay for epee!

[griffindm]

I'll second both Allen and GM above. I think you are definitely on the right track.

Epee fencing is a matter of faith. If you don't believe you can hit the smaller targets (hand, foot, etc), you probably can't. A big factor is teaching confidence in point control is getting their extensions before their foot actions. I quickly move the fencers to a confidence drill where they determine their target (hand) visually before they extend. They then close their eyes before extending and lunging. After a couple minutes of this, they realize they do NOT need to "steer' the point to the target, and can use their visual accuity on watching the opponent's reaction to their attack, and move into learning 2nd intentions.

The coach should ALWAYS be pusing the students out of their "comfort zones". The only exception to this would be in tournament preparation. In the final lessons before departure for a major tournament you should make the student feel as confident as possible, pushing them to peak at the right time. Left to their own devices, most fencers spend 80% of their time working on what they already feel confident about, rather than on those areas of their game that most need attention. It's a natural tendency of people to do what they are comfortable with.

The benefits of bouting with your students include seeing what they have the courage to do in a bouting situation, rather than a controlled lesson. You can also see how comfortable they are in setting and controlling distance on their own. Too many coaches control distance for the student during lessons. I usually take the opportunity during bouting with students to determine what I feel is the most obvious weakness in their game, and adjust MY game so that they cannot succeed unless they overcome that limitation.

The absence work you are doing is an excellent technique to get fencers thinking EARLY about the importance of controlling tempo and distance. Some people will struggle with it, but keep them at it and they will learn the ingredients that allow them to return to simple actions done in the right time and place.

Good luck.

Dave G.

[AaronK]

I had an idea for you that might help in terms of instruction.
(I don't know how many students you have or how long you have them for, so this suggestion might also not be appropriate).

If you have time to bout them, then give them private lessons for 3-5 minutes. Just work on a single action, and the defense- have the enviornment be bout-like so it is more immediately applicable to the student using it on the strip than most actions we are taught in lessons. If they can't handle it in a real situation, still keep it bout-like, but slow your action down to the point that they can succeed. After you have done this, get the students you have worked with to drill on the action with 2 other poeple. Get the more experienced people, or faster learners to teach the less experienced or drill with them. You could also use the same idea in small groups, rather than individuals. Get a line, and get a student to do an action (the others watch and hopefully will in time be getting some visual feedback to model) until they fail x# of times. Then they go to the end of the line. If they succeed x# of times then they take your place.
Also if you can teach a drill to a few students with more experience (people who in theory it should take less time to explain the drill to), they can in turn teach that to the less experienced students while you basicaly drift around and troubleshoot.

I know of a [saber] coach who had a system for teaching a few hundred kids at a time (but I don't think that you were talking about teaching 300 kids...they were not actually 300 in the gym at a time, but there were classes of 50-60 and he was on his own). His methods worked pretty well from my understanding- had many kids medaling at national competitions after only a few years. His ideas can be adapted to foil or epee.