Violent Fencers

[jBirch]

So, I was reading and posting in the How do you fence these guys? thread on the main forum and it got me thinking.

How do you teach students like these (who are sucessful at fencing "hard") to not fence so violently? I've done the whole "give 'em a taste of their own medicine" technique before, as well as ignore them or encourage them to go to a different club. Nothing seems optimal though.

Any better advice?

[swatchpost]

Originally Posted by jBirch

So, I was reading and posting in the How do you fence these guys? thread on the main forum and it got me thinking.

How do you teach students like these (who are sucessful at fencing "hard") to not fence so violently? I've done the whole "give 'em a taste of their own medicine" technique before, as well as ignore them or encourage them to go to a different club. Nothing seems optimal though.

Any better advice?

Here's the interesting thing about the student that I was speaking of in particular: our coach wanted to show me something very specific while having a private lesson. He walked up the the guy I've been talking about and asked him to do a parry/riposte action with him. They get clicking back and forth and back and forth. It looks wonderful and perfect. The student's actions are perfect and controlled. The coach continues my lesson. And I look over, and the student in question just keeps on fencing like he normally does. It's like he knew exactly what to do with the coach, and then has a totally different personality on strip!

[RITFencing]

Regarding my post in that other thread: I would never, in my capacity as a coach, beat a student physically with a weapon, my hand, or anything else.

As a fencer, however, especially in competition, when someone tries that crap with me, all bets are off.

[MUHSfencing]

Originally Posted by jBirch

So, I was reading and posting in the How do you fence these guys? thread on the main forum and it got me thinking.

How do you teach students like these (who are sucessful at fencing "hard") to not fence so violently? I've done the whole "give 'em a taste of their own medicine" technique before, as well as ignore them or encourage them to go to a different club. Nothing seems optimal though.

Any better advice?

The "taste of their own medicine" thing really seems to be a bad idea on a lot of levels.

A different approach might be to sweat it out of them.

Seems like there are two different kinds of violent fencing: one is approximately correct technique done to an extreme (super hard jabs or slashes depending on weapon) and the other is just totally incorrect technique (hitting opponent's arm or leg with an attempted "parry").

Either way, the student is using way more energy and also wasting tempo by being violent. An exceptionally perceptive student might notice that s/he is seriously outclassed by higher level fencers who use finesse more than brute force -- that would really make life easy for the instructor.

But the majority of 'violent' students will need remedial work. I propose lots of hard drilling. Wear them down. Make them realize the necessity of conserving energy and moving efficiently. At the same time, fix their technique so that they are no longer hurting people on the piste. Until the violence is all worked out, no bouting allowed.

And what's really great is that if the 'violent' fencer won't mend his ways or is too lazy to stick with the training, he'll go away on his own.

[darius]

You have to get to the core of 'why' somebody does this.

We had a fencer who managed to hurt several people in warmup games; he didn't really mean to, he just had poor spacial awareness, combined with a linebacker's body. But he loved to play and played hard, which is a lethal combination. The better athletes could account for him and usually lower a shoulder if he was nearby, but the kids/newbies/non-athletes can't. That lack of kinesthetic sense showed up in his fencing; the light blows came from the shoulder...everything else came from the hip!

Swatchpost, often people like your foilist are in this category ... they can do it "in a lesson", but in the bout get wild and crazy because they're overwhelmed by the variables. As a coach, you need to gradually add variables, not all at once.

With folks like this, you've got to slow the game down for them; show them the value of fine motor skills and get them to work on it over and over and over again until the correct habits are ingrained. Don't let them be in situations where they can regress. This is work-intensive.

Of course, this is all moot if the fencer does not want to be led. There are fencers who hit hard on purpose. There are also reasons to do so, of varying legitimacy (intimidation, retaliation, manplate removal, posture correction).

Then there are the true wackos. The folks who know what they're doing, and think that slashing at somebody's ankles with the flat of the blade is fine, because "it's a duel." These people all come from towns in Upstate NY with sub-10,000 populations and have famous fencing masters that you've never heard of. I highly condone making these people go away by any means necessary.

darius

[Don Badowski]

At the club: Warn them nicely, warn them firmly, warn them with temper, then don't fence them. And any bad behavior should be brought to the attention of the club officers.