What is the average time per week a club should meet?

[silvercross]

Yay!!!

A blank, unbesmirched piece of discussion forum to fill with nonsensical (and sometimes quite useful) information, and I get to be the first one!

Faaaaantastic!

So, here it goes:

What is the average amount of time you think is a good amount of time to attend a fencing club per week? (mind you, exclude 'social time'. Keep it at 'training time') and why?

Our club meets three times per week, two hours each session (but I'm a bit overworked this year, so I can only make one).

[chefencer]

We're four times a week, 7pm-9pm-ish with 2 days for Y's, 1 for epee and 1 for sabre.

[Goldgar]

When I was young and eager -- and unmarried -- I'd go 4 times a week, and stay until they turned the lights out on me.

[jfarmer]

Our club meets twice a week, Tuesday & Thursday, for 2 hours each night. The first hour on Tuesday is devoted to drills for club members, small group lessons, and individual lessons. The rest of the time is used for both open fencing and individual lessons. We also have Introductory classes on Monday night.

What does your club at each meeting? Is each meeting a structured lesson & drill? Open bouting? (As an aside, we also have a business type meeting at least once a quarter.)

How often do your members want to be there? We have some in our club that if we could have the room, they would be there every night for 1 more more hours.

John Farmer
Coach, Oak Ridge Fencers Club

[silvercross]

Before I worked nearly every day (oh, wait, I do work every day... ) I would have been considered one of those who would fence until they closed the building on us (they still close the university sports centre with us being one of the last clubs to exit).

We generally do beginners sessions on the Tuesday nights from 6:00pm to 7:30pm, and then free fencing from 8:00pm - 10:00pm. Thursdays are advanced training/footwork from 8:00pm-10:00pm. Saturdays tends to be ranked bouts (for the club's rankings) from 12:00 noon to 2:00pm. This one tends to be a bit more relaxed, since we'll always be missing people on saturdays due to tournaments.

When we don't do beginner sessions on the early tuesday sessions the coach does a 'weapon specific' training session.

[Allen Evans]

What's the purpose of the club? Many competitive clubs are open every day of the week. The same people may not fence on every night, but there is something happening at the club every night...and often during the day, as well.

Rec and part-time clubs (esp. those that rent their space) may only be open 2-3 days a week.

Allen

[silvercross]

Due to the fact that the venue isn't ours ( a university multisport hall), we can't practice every day of the week. It would be nice, but some members make up this deficit by going to other local clubs.

[Pointedly]

My club is fairly well established, so its open 6 days a week.

Mon-Fri like 4-9, and I've been there at 11:00 before.
(Note, monday and wednesday maybe be open 4-7 or something like that. Friday is generally 7-9:30ish)

On saturdays it's open 8:30 to 4:30. (But this is group footwork and tactical only).


But keep in mind, this club is run as a business. it's for competative and/or recreational fencers.

[Jay Young]

At Texas Tech, we meet Tuesdays and THursdays from 7:00-11:00. We're a division of recreational sports at Tech.

[cmedalis]

At the clubs I am a part of:

Millersville Univ. Fencing (part of campus rec/club sports):
Wednesday 7:00 - 10:30
7:00-7:30 is officer meeting/updates
then footwork , group lessons & drills, individual instruction and open bouting
Friday 6:00 - 11:00
Conditioning/Cardio for an hour then group & individual instruction an dopen bouting all night.

Lancaster (a rec center program with a handful of competitive fencers)
Tuesday 6:00-10:00
Beginner class from 6-7:30, Intermediate 7:30-9:00, individual instruction & open bouting till we close up