"Useless" techniques

[jBirch]

I was reading a reply that Allen posted in the reverse lunge thread that he wouldn't recommend spending *ANY* time teaching sabreurs or foilists what a reverse lunge was or how to do it properly.

Personally, my own proclivities are to teach the "useless", obscure, skills but not to put any emphasis on them. To me, at least, more education (even "useless" education) is always a good idea. And at the very least, my fencers won't get tempted to play with a "really cool new technique" that they saw work once at a tournament somewhere.

But that teaching comes at the price of drilling and skills refinement. Any lesson where I teach an obscure technique is obviously one where I'm NOT refining the basics.

So the question to all the rest of you is:

Do you teach useless (or obscure) techniques to your fencers?
If so, why?
If not, why not?

[RITFencing]

I remember getting a lesson from a very high level epee coach who had me retreat with a double to the hand and then fleche witch circle 6 to the chest. He told me that while it was almost useless as an actual attack, he would be very scared of a fencer who could consistently and easily perform it in a lesson.

I think there are some actions like that which do not have direct application to bouting but nevertheless help build a fencer's skills.

[keith]

Originally Posted by RITFencing

............ he would be very scared of a fencer who could consistently and easily perform it in a lesson.

The scare the buggers before you fence them school of thought or, the other use of the competition warm up lesson.

[TBean]

As a student I will occasionally get a lesson on an obscure skill or even a skill that I might not use very often. They are often good to have rattling around in the back of your head, but more importantly they are often fun to learn. A reverse lunge, hits behind your back, some crazy pattern - jump in, jump out, jump lunge fleche become tension relievers - for both the student and the coach. We will laugh a lot during these lessons because I have fun learning the skill and he clearly has fun teaching it.

I look at those types of lessons, when I get them, as a small vacation from the regularly scheduled lesson plan. I fully understand the next week we will probably be back on the master-plan in his head.

[pavski]

All skills/techniques are "useless" if used in an incorrect context, for example circular parry sixte when someone directly attacks the foot. It might be the most amazing looking parry in the world but it is useless to use it to defend against this attack in this context.

[Allen Evans]

There was a period in my life where I learned a lot of obscure blade work. Envelopment, double-speed envelopment, so on and so forth. My coach at the time spent endless hours working me through these actions. Later, when I was competitive fencer, I remember the one and only time I hit someone with an envelopment, in a Div I NAC in Detroit. Afterwards, my opponent came up to me: "That was an envelopment, right? I've heard of them, but I've never seen one before".

Later, in the DE's, I got killed by a guy (perhaps Oshima?) who had a wicked flick to the wrist, remise. Guess which technique I wish I had been properly trained in and spent more time practicing?*

If a coach is giving a fun lesson to a recreational student for cultural enrichment, I feel that by all means all sorts of obscure blade actions should be taught, practiced and discussed. At the end of the lesson, you can take your check and move on to the next student. There is a certain class of student that wants to learn these exercises, and if you know them, by all means, teach them. For a competitive student, this sport is so complex, and demands so many repetitions of even the basic skills, why would a coach spend time teaching actions the student might only use once? My time is far too valuable for that, and I think that my student's time is more valuable than that, too.

Now, I'll seperate teaching these actions as tactics from using them as "compelling" exercises as a way to access a technical correction or motion. But to drill someone in an action such as a reverse lunge in saber, and attempting to put it into a tactical context seems to be a pointless exercise to me.

Allen Evans



*Several of you, to amuse yourselves, will suggest the imbrocatta, but you would be incorrect in this case. :-)

[epeelion]

Oshima's flicks STILL hurt like a b*tch. He's also a killer in badminton.

Anyway, Kogler teaches double' with straight thrust as well as filo' (opposition) ripostes, with the point. In sabre. But he makes it very clear that they are only to develop a feel for the blade and the point. There are many actions he does that aren't directly applicable competitively. After all, every action has to be taught in steps, even a simple bind.

[Inquartata]

I'm not a coach, and I don't even play one on TV, but...

No one taught me the reverse lunge, but I picked it up on my own and use it now and again to effect. Yes, in sabre.

It's a technique you can use to screw with your opponent's expectations and perceptions of distance. Like that little step back of the guard line when the ref says "Fence" that Pillet and some of the Chinese sabre fencers do? I imagine it's a Christian Bauer trick as no one else seems to do it, but it's certainly not useless despite flying in the face of conventional sabre wisdom.

Same goes with old Italian sabre---and I mean Barbasetti-era Italian. No one taight me that, either. In fact, I doubt that anyone outside classical salles teach it. But I use it and to effect. It too changes distances subtly and alters attack and defense angles.

I have to wonder whether there really is any such thing as a useless technique, maybe apart from illegal ones like the passe avant for sabre.

[RITFencing]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

I have to wonder whether there really is any such thing as a useless technique, maybe apart from illegal ones like the passe avant for sabre.

A coach once told me that there is no wrong thing to do in fencing, only the wrong time to do something. While his lessons weren't great, that's something which really stuck with me.

[Allen Evans]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

No one taught me the reverse lunge, but I picked it up on my own and use it now and again to effect. Yes, in sabre.

Ah, yes, Inquartata....the exception that proves the rule.....

[Allen Evans]

Originally Posted by RITFencing

A coach once told me that there is no wrong thing to do in fencing, only the wrong time to do something. While his lessons weren't great, that's something which really stuck with me.

"All that is not forbidden is allowed"? My, RIT, how you've changed since you've moved to California!

The question here isn't whether the occasional odd technique from the dusty history books works or not: I started my post with an anecdotal example of something that got me a touch, once.

The OP was about coaching these techniques to a student, and to me, that implies something more than just showing someone an occasional action out an old book while you're screwing around in lesson, or working with a recreational student who wants to make all of their attacks with molinet.

Allen Evans

[RITFencing]

Originally Posted by Allen Evans

"All that is not forbidden is allowed"? My, RIT, how you've changed since you've moved to California!

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

[Inquartata]

Originally Posted by Allen Evans

Ah, yes, Inquartata....the exception that proves the rule.....

Now, now, don't make me go into what that saying actually means again!

Anyway, I wonder if this isn't why I still manage to win bouts against "competitive" younger fencers: They are taught to do a few things really fast and well, but their games have no depth. Throw something out of the ordinary at them and they have no idea what to do with it.

I won a tournament against a young man once by taking a guard of quinte immediately off the line ( thank you Ed Korfanty ). By that time he'd have come into distance, and he'd all but stop, unsure of how to proceed. You could almost see the "WTF"? in his body language. Then I'd just hit him. It must have happened five times if it happened once...

[Allen Evans]

Anyone can take candy from a baby :-)

The fact that it happened five times tells me that this was more due to the opponent, rather than the action. I can't think of too many good fencers who let me do the same thing five times, no matter how bizarre. In fact, this fencer lost because he or she failed to go back to conventional solid techniqe and solve the problem in front of them...again, more a statement about the student and his or her coaching than the usefulness of a quinte guard.

But turn this on it's head....did you -- going forward -- suddenly adopt a quinte guard after that? Did you switch to training completely out of quinte guard? Are you advocating to other impressionable fencers out there that they should all adopt a quinte guard, or that we, as coaches, should teach it?

Again. The occasional idea can be useful. I got one touch, in my competitive career out of an envelopment. But I sure wished I had spent all of that time training in envelopments with a coach that taught me to make a flick to the wrist, instead.

Allen Evans

[keith]

Originally Posted by Allen Evans

Again. The occasional idea can be useful. I got one touch, in my competitive career out of an envelopment. But I sure wished I had spent all of that time training in envelopments with a coach that taught me to make a flick to the wrist, instead.

Allen Evans

Of course an imaginative fencer would have modified the distance to allow the envelopment to finish to a shallow target.

There are very few truly strange actions, that's the funny thing about fencing - all these stray bits and pieces just kinda fit together.

[Inquartata]

Originally Posted by Allen Evans

But turn this on it's head....did you -- going forward -- suddenly adopt a quinte guard after that? Did you switch to training completely out of quinte guard? Are you advocating to other impressionable fencers out there that they should all adopt a quinte guard, or that we, as coaches, should teach it?

I am saying that you should teach it, yes, if you want to train a fencer with depth. The rest of your questions are really non sequiturs which don't follow from what I related.

Now, are you really saying that fencers are so many Kelly Bundys, who can only hold so many techniques in their heads at a time, so you shouldn't confuse them with anything nonconventional?

I use the technique quite a lot. It was not a one-time thing, or a one-bout thing. I haven't learned or developed many things that I don't use.

[Allen Evans]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

Now, are you really saying that fencers are so many Kelly Bundys, who can only hold so many techniques in their heads at a time, so you shouldn't confuse them with anything nonconventional?

Nope. What I am saying, as a coach, is that often it's better to do a few things really well than a lot of things poorly. Of course, your counter argument should be that the student should do a lot of things really well. However, given time and training constraints, I tend not to focus cram my students full of "....and when he's left handed, and using Agrippa..." information.

Hmmm....you really AREN'T a coach, are you? There are a lot of students are there that have SO many techniques and SO much information in their head that they are, in fact, literally caught thinking, trying to decide what they should use in a particular situation. Their information about technique tends to obscure the actual problem they need to solve, which is usually a pretty simple one (as in the case with your quinte on guard).

But this drifts outside of the question. In saber, I spend more than enough time with my students just trying to get them to move well, make cuts with their fingers, and understand the relationship between the changing distance between them and their opponent, and when to finish their cut. If I'm teaching saber as an enrichment class, I might drift into Barbesetti, or any of the other older actions.

Really, I understand where you're coming from -- to some extent -- but anecdotal evidence that an old technique can work in certain situations doesn't really validate (for me) the need to include all of them into my cirriculum.


Allen Evans

ps - Wait! Don't you post to F.net with a teletype, for god's sake? Why am I even having this conversation with you? ? :-)

[Sean Butler]

I am hearing both sides of this argument and I am thinking that this relates back to a classic problem with education in general. Is education for enrichment or is it for achievement? The classical approach emphasizes enrichment while the modern approach emphasizes skill-gaining and application.

The argument for the modern approach is that as time goes on, what we know increases and as a result we need to choose what is important to us earlier so that we can begin to catch up with the centuries of innovations within our chosen field. The argument for the classical approach is that it teaches students about the interconnectedness of fields and promotes a more holistic understanding of things.

Neither is technically wrong, they are just two different goals. One is focused on advancement, the other on enrichment. Can the fencer who learns all the odd parries and strange footwork and sees fencing with a keener eye compete at the same level as one who has practiced relentlessly and perfected the more applicable techniques? Or maybe a better question is, why wouldn't a fencer want to learn all there is to know and pick up these other oddities on his own or at least ask about them?

[Jason]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

I am saying that you should teach it, yes, if you want to train a fencer with depth.

A quinte guard is neither useless nor particularly uncommon, so I don't think it relates to the issue of teaching "useless" techniques. (Using it to freeze a scrub in surprise is not much of a argument in its favor, however.)

You're right, though, about so many fencers not having much depth to their games. This is not because they haven't been taught antiquated techniques, however. It's because they haven't been taught enough about modern fencing.