Progression within a Single Lesson

[parryDoh]

As a new foil coach, I recently attended a USFCA foil clinic in hope to improve my teaching. It covered a lot of excellent material. One of the things it covered was lesson progression. For example if the coach was going to teach his student the one-two, the coach would have the student start with a simple direct attack and by changing distance and closing lines would slowly progress to having the student doing a one-two without saying anything. My question is how does this fit into a over all lesson.

Being a competitive fencer for years, Ive taken many lessons from many different coaches. Most lessons Ive taken have a clear, warm-up, main lesson, and cool-down. The coach would start with a general warm-up with blade actions and move into adding footwork. It would be for the most part the same every lesson. Then go into the main lesson teaching a particular attack/defense action. Finishing with a cool-down which would be easier then the main lesson.

When fitting lesson progression into a lesson, does it tie the warm-up, main lesson and cool-down all together or does it just fall only into the main lesson section? And should lesson progression be used in every lesson? I'm just having trouble fitting it into what I already know. I will definitely have to attend the next foil clinic to ask these questions, but that may be a while.

[Allen Evans]

For the level of lesson that you are talking about -- a training lesson for a beginner or intermidiate fencer -- I feel that the warm up and the cool down should add to the lesson progression, and not necessarily be seperate from the lesson itself.

For instance, a warm up for a parry riposte lesson might consists of some simple, slow parrys and ripostes to a variety of targets. This moves into the main lesson which might be to teach a more dynamica parry (the coach is changing distance more, the student is forced to retreat on the parry, and so forth) and a riposte from a variety of distances. The cool down slows the lesson down and moves the coach and student to a closer distance and the technical execution of the action(s)

So we have this concept:

Near --> Far --> Near
Technical --> Tactical --> Technical
Slow --> Fast --> Slow

But this is only one example of a progression. With a very advanced fencer in a different lesson (say a tactical or bouting lesson) the progression might follow something close to that above, but with a different focus and emphasis on the elements of the lesson. For instance, the progression might not be from a technical skill to tactical implementation but move through a range of tactics, instead.

Lesson progression is worth more than a couple of paragraphs, and there are more right answers than first appear.

Allen Evans

[jBirch]

Great question!

It's not just fitting into the lesson that's important, but also how the lesson itself fits into the overall training goals that dictate specifically how the individual lesson procedes.

Personally, I prefer to start everyone at the absolute fundamentals (en garde, steps forward, steps backward, lunge, etc...) during the warm up phase and then continue to present challenges that are solved by the technique that I want to work on in the main body. I don't like the totally silent lesson and total discovery by the student because I want them to pick certain specific choices along the path. Too, the student needs to rest and synthasise what it is we're working on, so the "walk back to the line" is an important time to talk about the why and when questions before setting up the next drill.

I do this during every private lesson (group lessons are different since we may not have time to work through the whole progression).

How I set up the main lesson depends on the student and on their overall training plan.

To use your 1-2 example, I can do a 1-2 on an extension, lunge, step-lunge, on a fleche, as a riposte, as a counter-action...even as an infighting manouvre! Which ones I pick to work on, and how I introduce them, is an outcome of the warm up phase and my observations during that period plus my overall training plan for that individual. Are they working on attacks or defense at this point? Are they working on opening or closing the distance? What kind of tactical options make sense given the skill level of their opponents?

If I spend a lot of time working on simple distance changes, then I may want to introduce the 1-2 as a relatively simple compound attack by the student. If we get very dynamic footwork, we may work the 1-2 into the step lunge or the fleche and on different foot cues. If I'm working on hand cues, I may even get so complicated as to go feint, parry, riposte, counter-parry, riposte w/ 1-2 if the student is keeping up and learning what I'm trying to teach.

Generally though, I start with the basics, then move to the simple version and then start adding useful variations to that technique. I end when the student's brain is "full enough" and they've got something to practice. Often we'll end back on the target boards or with some footwork drills to work on.

James.