Lesson distance: greater or less than bout distance?

[Chafunkta]

I've been giving one-on-one lessons recently to some of my students at the club. I've had no formal training, so I draw my teaching techniques from lessons I've gotten from other coaches. Needless to say, I've got some questions.

When you give a lesson are you teaching strictly form and proper technique, so that the distance between you and the student is close enough for them to easily hit, or are you trying to re-create bout-like distance where you're encouraging the student to use their full lunge distance?

Basically, should the student be pushed (encouraged) physically in a lesson by making them do full, fast lunges?

[oiuyt]

Is there any chance in the world that this question isn't going to get "It depends" as a response?

Nope, didn't think so.

It depends, of course.

It depends on what you are working on. Some of the lessons will be at each of a variety of distances. Some lessons will be at a variety of distances themselves.

There are many different purposes behind lessons. Some will benefit from closer distances. Many will benefit from distances that closely mimic bouting distance.

-B

[Peach]

9 or 10 years ago, Ed Richards broke a blade over my head at my second Coaches College because the distance I took while he was demonstrating a lesson with me as student was the distance my coach started with. I was apparently supposed to divine the distance Ed preferred.

[keith]

following the it depends theme;

If you are working on finger work/sentiment then the student may be doing no more than extend to hit.

but lets take a trickier example; say you want to work on the step lunge. There are (at least) three distances to do this;

stationary at step lunge distance - kind of obvious.

at lunge distance - student makes a step lunge on the coaches step back.

mobile at step lunge distance - student must make the step lunge when the coach fails to take the second retreat.

Depending on what it is you want to work on none of these is wrong.

[jBirch]

To paraphrase Oiuyt: it depends.

The purpose of a 1-1 lesson is to tailor the training specifically to the student and to allow the student to improve their technique as efficiently as possible. Often you explore a specific technical deficiency and try to craft in some better ideas to the student's "bag o' tricks".

Another way to look at it, is that you are using repetition to emplace a mechanical skill in your student. Whatever you train into them is what you'll get on the piste. You want to make the lesson as realistic as possible so that they'll learn the most appropriate thing to do when faced with a real problem.

In epee, for example, some coaches like to see a short lunge performed during the advancing action of the opponent. Obviously, in this case, all the queues that the coach is going to give are going to trigger this response and the student is going to be taught to "call the advance" through blade and distance preparation. While this lesson starts at fencing distance, the student is only encouraged to hit when the distance collapses to lunge or even thrust distance.

In foil and sabre, many coaches prefer to teach the lunge as a "chasing" action, done against an imperfectly retreating opponent. All attacks with this theory are done as advance-lunges with big, accellerating final actions. Some epee coaches use the fleche in place of the big lunge, so this style of "chase" is often seen finishing with a fleche to the body. This lesson starts at fencing distance and then EXPANDS to encourage the student to hit the retreating target.

Finally, beginner "hit the target" actions are generally done at the appropriate distance for the action to be performed correctly. If you're just working a simple, beginner lunge, and you want to teach a penetrating lunge then you want to start at thrust distance and signal by moving backward out of range. The student should hit before you can fully retreat. When teaching thrust actions, generally you start at lunge distance and then move forward into thrust distance so the student can hit with a simple extension. Too, we use static target boards and just correct the technical actions. These types of personalised instruction focus on the correct sequence of movements and at the proper distance for that student's lunge. If I want the student to perform 100 lunges, the I want each lunge to be at ~75% of maximum distance.

And then, of course, there are the different schools that teach blended versions of these theories, with some actions requiring short lunges and some requiring big ones. It really does depend upon the physical characteristics of the student and upon the specific lesson goals that the coach has.

Generally, though, I prefer to start students at "fencing distance" (the distance at which preparations are done) and then teach "entering" and "exiting" patterns. Distance changes then become controlled and correct in the context of the lesson and we can take a good look at the form and ensure that the actions that are being emplaced in the student are the technically correct actions.

Perhaps the biggest thing to take from this question is to ensure that you have a plan and a goal for your 1-1 lesson and to realise that it's not just a partner-drill that you do with a student. Partner drills are done at whatever distance that the drill calls for.

[RITFencing]

Lately, especially in foil lessons, I've been starting close and building up to longer distances, but never so long that our blades don't touch. I generally start with a simple extension with no footwork, work on a 1 tempo blade action like a beat, disengage or opposition, then start with advances and retreats, then lunges and recoveries (I really think that coaches and fencers should not think just in terms of the lunge, but also in terms of the recovery; too many fencers do them as an afterthought and see no real tactical application) then more complex bladework with multiple steps, etc. As this happens, the distance between myself and my student slowly increases, but as I said, never so far the foibles of our weapons do not touch.

[darius]

I really think that coaches and fencers should not think just in terms of the lunge, but also in terms of the recovery; too many fencers do them as an afterthought and see no real tactical application

These fencers are silly, of course, because 78.29% of lunges in foil do not end with a light on the box. Recovery is directional (forward, backward, middle, down), so the lunge needs to be balanced.

"What is lunge distance?" is a good question. I'm looking for the longest lunge that can be executed quickly and enables a strong recovery in any direction. I test the quickness based on the speed of the parry - if a properly-sequenced lunge can't arrive before I can parry (by reacting, not anticipating), then the fencer might need to start from closer distance.

As this happens, the distance between myself and my student slowly increases, but as I said, never so far the foibles of our weapons do not touch.

Pourquoi? I generally agree, especially when giving a more technical lesson, but as things veer off into the more tactical or combative, why is that distance invalid?

darius

[RITFencing]

These fencers are silly, of course, because 78.29% of lunges in foil do not end with a light on the box. Recovery is directional (forward, backward, middle, down), so the lunge needs to be balanced.

Agreed, and not just for foil. However, I think there is more than just the necessity to defend oneself, but also the opportunity to still pick up that touch.

"What is lunge distance?" is a good question. I'm looking for the longest lunge that can be executed quickly and enables a strong recovery in any direction. I test the quickness based on the speed of the parry - if a properly-sequenced lunge can't arrive before I can parry (by reacting, not anticipating), then the fencer might need to start from closer distance.

Well... these things aren't so simple. It's not like a lunge is either "quick" or "slow," or any of the others. It's all down to degrees. While there is a perfect lunge type for just about any sort of attack, it won't be found any time. I think coaches and fencers need to think about where they're going to er; big with a bit of akwardness in the recovery for more attacks landed but also more touches recieved, or short with more attacks missed but also fewer touches recieved when the attack fails. A lot of it boils down to what game the fencer wants to play and just what they feel comfortable with. A fencer relying on explosive first intention actions migth want to train for that huge lunge. A fencer who wants to set up second intention would want shorter attacks with more versatility.

Not that I am saying we should go to either extreme, but the fencer will not judge every distance perfectly, and I think a baseline needs to be set for each one.

Pourquoi? I generally agree, especially when giving a more technical lesson, but as things veer off into the more tactical or combative, why is that distance invalid?

darius

I'm not saying it's invalid... I'm saying it's what I've been doing, mainly to develop a good feeling of the blade (I dislike the term sentiment du fer; just sounds pretentious to me) and because I've been dealing with beginner and intermediate foilists and I want the extra control over their distance that this can give me.

[Allen Evans]

These are all good answers. I've summed up some of what I think about distance in lessons in an article on my webpage. Most of what I talk about on that web page has been summarized in the above posts.

A simple rule of thumb might be: the more technical (as opposed to tactical) the lesson, the closer the lesson starts. In saber I do bladework actions very close to the student, but then move the lesson out to the on guard lines. With foil and epee, I generally move out to double advance lunge distance as the lesson grows more tactical.

If you are working primarily on blade and technique actions, I would say that you should be pretty close. No more than comfortable lunge distance. I suspect that at the level of lessons you are giving, closer is wiser than further apart. You're a beginning coach with beginning students, and the emphasis should probably be on technique right now.

Of course, it depends....*

Allen

*There is a story often told about President Truman, who asked that his staff find him a one-armed economic adviser, since the ones he had at the time would end all of their advice with: "...on the other hand....".

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

Maybe since you're a begining coach, you should focus most of your effort on developing the structure of your club.

The lessons can probably wait, but the rock-solid social and financial base cannot.

I know, giving lessons is so much more fun than doing the books, but I've seen coaches that had the potential to really communicate their love of the sport fall through because they were great behind the mask and bull **** at the bank.

Priorities dude.

[marge]

My distance situation with Chafuncta's Epee lesson was simply this:
(I am the "student" he was working with.)

Let the student learn a new action at an accessible distance (i.e. a distance that they can comfortably hit at whether it's a lunge, advance-lunge etc.) before presenting the action to them at a challenging distance (i.e. one that they have to produce the largest, fastest lunge that they are physically capable of).

By asking me to perform an action that I had never done before and moving just outside of what was an accessible distance for me each time was frustrating and physically taxing. I feel that a student does not learn well under these conditions. These conditions can be applied after the learning of the action has been accomplished. Stress the challenge and frustration after the student has mastered the technique or action.

I made the mistake of presenting this issue to Chefunkta as one that was over the boundary of my physical limitiations. When in actuality, I think it is an important factor in how any student learns. Teach an action, let them perform it comfortably, let them practice it in a drill, then invite the student to perform the action in a bouting distance or situation that physically challenges how long they can lunge.

[Allen Evans]

Teach an action, let them perform it comfortably, let them practice it in a drill, then invite the student to perform the action in a bouting distance or situation that physically challenges how long they can lunge.

The two situations: "Bouting distance" and "(a) situation that physically challenges how long they can lunge" are not the same.

Many fencers can lunge a very long distance. However, that distance should rarely be used in fencing, and only in certain situations. Many coaches teach a lunge as a "one tempo" action, even when that lunge is very long. But, in reality, the monster lunges many of these coaches have their students do are at the limit of their physical skills. The student is actually slowing down at the end of the lunge instead of hitting with acceleration. The student is invariably parried or hit with a counter-attack.

AE

[keith]

The student is invariably parried or hit with a counter-attack.

.....or the coach attempts to teach an action on the lunge.

I remember hearing the claim that one of the reasons that epee distance has become tighter is as a defense against long progressive actions.

[jBirch]

And don't forget the difference between technical lessons, tactical lessons and conditioning lessons. Doing big lunges is a great way to condition the muscles to speed up your short lunges.

Though I would give both Marge and CF the following advice:

Work on your coach/student relationship first.

I'm not going to undercut Chafunkta, so Marge I would advise that you learn to become coachable first. Becoming coachable means submitting to the process that the coach is laying out before you. Part of the role of the coach is to PUSH you hard so that you get better. It hurts, and it sucks, but in the end, it'll make you better.

The question really is, are you prepared to work hard to make Chafunkta's lessons easier or are you just looking for an excuse to slack off?

[tbryan]

I'll provide some advice from a decidedly novice coaching perspective.

I'm not going to undercut Chafunkta, so Marge I would advise that you learn to become coachable first. Becoming coachable means submitting to the process that the coach is laying out before you.

Of course, on the other side, if a coach is just starting to give private lessons, he can probably use all of the feedback he can get, especially if he has little or no training as a coach.

Many fencers can feel when the lesson is stupidly hard or wrong in some way. Of course, most of them will just assume that they aren't trying hard enough and that they should be able to do what the coach is asking. (Otherwise, why would the coach be asking?) They'll really do everything they can to make the lesson work, even if the lesson is simply a bad lesson.

If the student is struggling*, it's time for the coach to change something.

Simple changes:

• slow the entire lesson down; you're probably going too fast.
• stop moving, try the action from a less mobile beginning, maybe just standing at comfortable extension or lunge range
• give a slower cue (not bigger, just smooth and slower)

More complex changes:

• change the starting or finishing distance of the lesson
• adjust the blade/hand position for the cues
• change when you give the cue in relation to the student's footwork
• change how you cue in relation to your own footwork
• change how the distance develops (when is it compressing or expanding and which one of you is causing the change?)

I've been trying to give much more focused lessons this year. In general, most of the time, the lesson focuses on one thing at any point of the lesson. So, a student just learning to flick in foil is standing still and learning the hand motion to flick and set a point. If he knows how to flick, perhaps he's now moving and simply learning to flick as a riposte. Here, the focus is on putting that action in context. He's very successful with the flick while standing, we're trying to put it into a realistic context. Once he can do that, maybe I have him make a simple target selection drill. He's hitting the flick as a riposte (which he can now do) to multiple different targets (which he has already practiced without a decision point), and he's focusing on deciding on the final target based on his opponent while maintaining good balance and execution.

If my student is still learning a new blade action (execution isn't that good even standing still), for example, and I'm already asking her to do it from a moving cue (so she's not necessarily balanced when she gets the cue) and finishing with her longest possible lunge (taxing her physical limits), and I add a decision point in the drill, the student isn't going to learn what I want her to learn. Actually, if I thought about it, I'm probably not even sure what I want her to learn. Is it the blade action? Her lunge distance? The ability to chose when to go? What am I teaching her here?

When my lessons were not very focused, even when they were benefiting the student, they tended to teach other things that I didn't intend to teach, often bad habits or incorrect decisions.

Work on your coach/student relationship first.

I strongly second this suggestion.

New coaches, especially, can use all of the feedback they can get. Depending on your working relationship and how much the student understands, this dialog can take a bunch of different forms.

Maybe you'd to give an entire lesson and then get feedback at the end of the lesson. Or maybe you want the student to think about it a little and give you feedback later in the week.

For example, I have worked with students where I pause the lesson from time to time to ask whether the action feels right. Does it seem like a reasonable action to make in that situation? In that case, the student was probably at or above the limit of my coaching ability at the time, but he did not have the resources to go to another coach. So, he has to provide feedback. Not an ideal situation, but in that case, the coach either says, "I'm sorry, I can't help you," or the student has to become a very active participant in helping to structure the lessons.

Sometimes I would give the same cue multiple times, and he would try other responses to see whether another action felt more reasonable. Then we'd have to decide whether it's just more comfortable (one he's more accustomed to doing) or better (a better answer to the problem of the lesson). It's not the best way for the student to learn, and a student may question whether you should be paying them for all of the feedback, but you can really get a lot out of this kind of relationship.

* A note on "struggling": pay attention to your student. At a coaching seminar, I was very surprised at how little struggle was required from the student before Allen Evans would say that the student was "crashing." It didn't look horrible. In fact, the lesson looked pretty nice. The student was getting it right more than half the time. They just looked uncertain, and they made errors in execution fairly often. After just a few errors, Allen would change the level of the lesson so that the student would have more success and more reinforcement of the correct action or decision. That's probably a whole other thread, but let me just say that a "good" lesson in this respect almost certainly looks a lot less complicated and difficult than you are expecting.

As a new coach, I know that I had the impression that the student had to fight through some sort of difficult and uncertainty in the lesson. I gave many "bad" lessons. The student still learns something, but the process is much slower and muddier from the student's perspective.

In fact, I gave a largely bad lesson just two weeks ago. After a lot of struggling and adjustments, I just stopped the lesson about halfway through, and started the lesson again as though we were just starting the lesson. I was much more careful in building the action. By the end of the lesson, the student was successfully and repeatedly making the action that they were struggling with earlier, even with the added complication of some "surprise" actions.

[tbryan]

I've been giving one-on-one lessons recently to some of my students at the club. I've had no formal training, so I draw my teaching techniques from lessons I've gotten from other coaches. Needless to say, I've got some questions.

There are a bunch of obvious advice we can offer online, and then there are some really subtle things that would be difficult to explain without being in the same room. If there is a more experienced and knowledgeable coach in the area, see whether they will agree to mentor you. Maybe you can even arrange a one day seminar and invite coaches from the region.

If that's not an option, consider taping a couple of minutes of one of your lessons (if your student agrees). I'm sure that several people here would be willing to offer feedback.

[marge]

You're right in that I am not highly "coachable" in this situation. (And Chafunkta and I have discussed this issue.)
I literally have fencing shoes older than Chafunkta. Not that age is strictly an issue...however, I do feel that we ALL need to learn from one another and as I have learned from him he needs to be able to learn from others too.

But aside from my point about the lesson needing to be physically "doable" for the student, I did not convery the fact that I was laboring under a health condition that requires that I keep my heart rate down. I wasn't "slacking." In retrospect, if I take a lesson at all while having this condition it should probably be only an "advance to hit" type lesson. But that is not his fault as much as mine.

[jBirch]

You're right in that I am not highly "coachable" in this situation.

I'm going to be a prick and ignore pretty much everything that you wrote after this comment, because I think that this is the crux of your issue.

There is nothing Chafunkta can do to help you get better. If you'd step back and look at this with maturity, you'd see that you've set him up for failure. There is literally nothing that can be taught to you until you learn to learn and it's your ego at having to bow to the wishes of this kid that's holding you back. Regardless of whether he's right or not.

(And Chafunkta and I have discussed this issue.)
I literally have fencing shoes older than Chafunkta. Not that age is strictly an issue...however, I do feel that we ALL need to learn from one another and as I have learned from him he needs to be able to learn from others too.

No, he doesn't. YOU have gone to HIM for HIS knowledge. YOUR goal is to "mind rape" it out of him as efficiently as possible, though you seem less interested in learning to fence then in showing this kid what it's like to be an adult. I hate to tell you, but he hasn't approached you hoping to learn from your years of experience.

My advice to Chafunkta after hearing your side, is that he simply stop teaching you. You're not a teachable student. If you were at my club, I'd simply ask you to leave.

Hope this helps. Truly.

James.