Coaching: Adapting individual lessons to groups

[RITFencing]

Hi everybody; I saw this new forum and I couldn't resist posting something that's been in the back of my head for a while. Most fencing instruction, at least most training for fencing instructors, seems to focus on 1 on 1 student-coach interactions. I know that's where I function by far the best. However, such situations are not always possible, and what I've been thinking about lately is a way to adapt private lessons to deal with small groups, maybe of 4 fencers. I've heard Mark Masters at FAP has a very cool system where he works with one kid at a time but the others have to mimic and pay attention to what's going on because he'll ask them questions or switch people to make them work, and I've also seen small groups handled by havign one student work the drill a few times, then the next, and so on and so forth, so that no one goes without coaching interaction for long.

I'm wondering if anyone can elaborate on either of those two (they're very similar) or has any other ways on making instruction of small groups a bit more personal and similar to a private lesson.

[achilles_heal]

i have seen a range of tactics. one style is purely observational/critical. one is to first demonstrate with the most advanced/best driller and then step back and observe/correct. another is coach participation all along, switching partners often. this works best if there is a younger and highly skilled assistant coach to help so no one is left out except a coach, to observe.

for this to work, the coach(es) have do it more or less ideally all along, which isn't always possible depending on skill and/or physical condition. i try to do a hybrid of the second and third methods i mentioned. i can usually execute well a few actions and then i get tired and sloppy, so i go back and forth between being very involved and being very observant. not sure if this is best, but it's what i can do right now. hell, i'm getting old and a little fat, here.

anyway, doing the physical stuff with the students, especially the hard stuff and some of the conditioning, seems to keep focus and effort levels up. no one wants to be made to look weak by the old guy.

i'm sure there are many other ways to do this, and look forward to reading more answers to this question by more experienced coaches. i haven't seen the small group lesson yet, but i have seen double lessons before.

[qatet]

As one of Mark's coaches/students, I've seen quite a lot of his group work.

The format to which you refer is a shadow line. One student works the actions with the coach, the others range out behind and to the side (think geese flying south). Usually a striplength with each student, then moving on to the next. The principle for each student is similar, but more advanced students will have reached more options by the end of the strip.

One thing that Mark does to get students to this point is to use similar drills in both individual lessons and group drills. By the time the students are mimicking in the shadow line, chances are that they've experienced the drill in some other method before doing so with a coach who is off to the side of their blade and not directly interacting with them.

Other common formats for working a coach in with a group of people ...

The flying line - each student has three or four actions, executed in sequence. When the actions are finished, the student quickly moves away (often by fleching past the coach) and the next student starts. The goal is to improve the speed of execution, rather than to learn a new action. there is no space for repetition in this kind of lesson, except by going back through the next time, so there's a pressure to do it correctly. The first time or two through the actions might be slightly slower, to get the movement in the body. After that, the actions are sharp and at full speed - flying, as it were.

Coach rotates through students. Maestro Vitebsky often does this with small motions, filling a role similar to a flying line, but allowing the students to drill the action with each other while awaiting their turn with him. Set students in lines drilling together (let's say lines are A and B, and imagine numbering the students down the line). Coach replaces student A1 (A1 watches), and works with B1 briefly. Then replaces A2, A3, A4, etc, then works back the other way down the other line. Again, this format works for short actions, otherwise it takes forever.

Students rotate around coach. Coach stands in one corner of the drilling group, so they can see all students. When it comes time for students to rotate, coach stays in same place and gets a new victim. Works well with smaller groups for more complicated drills. Can turn into very short individual lessons with each new student.

RIT - Mark keeps talking with us about doing an in-service day working on just such ideas of group lessons. Drop him an email and ask if you could sit in! (And maybe if you drop such an email it will get the rest of us off our collective tuchuses and make us set a date for the training day. Should be easier to schedule now that most of the international junior and cadet events are done.)

[Durando]

In college we did a sort of flying line type lesson in teams. So we would go four at a time. My coach, Vinnie Bradford, was using the Beck system. All of us were responsible for having the sequences memorized. Then she would run us through the changes and each of us would watch the other.

Not as boring as it sounds. I miss having a moment or two to watch others and visualize before having to do an action. I also somewhat miss knowing where I am in a sequence of actions. The strong points of working this way is that weaker students get a chance to see the action done correctly before executing. Memorizing the sequences was worthwhile as it made us think about fencing in the abstract, something which shockingly few fencers can do in my current club.

I have quarrels with the tactics engendered by the Beck system, but there's no reason why a similar approach wouldn't work with more modern epee tactics.

[thekoby]

I've found it easy to adapt my private foil and sabre lessons to fit a larger class (with foil ranging from 5-32 and sabre from 4-10), but I've been having a real hard time with adapting epee lessons to fit even a small group.

I guess part of this comes from the fact that the only epee lessons I've had have been 1-on-1 with my coach at the time and I was never really in a "class", and since epee is my primary weapon, I tend to be a bit more picky on small things (like point control and target area). I've tried doing the method where I rotate in and out of the group and this works sometimes, but other times when I'm teaching something like point control (hand targets) it sometimes gets confusing to the students what they are supposed to be doing and I basically end up taking them one by one for a quick 5 minute private lesson. Any thoughts on this??

[MdA]

There is a great book by Vinnie Bradford titled "Taking Foil Groups to the competitive Level" I am sure it can be adapted to epee.