"I don't want to do as many drills"

[Wizardly]

Here's one for all you coaches and fencers involved in group lessons:

Everyone, and particularly the younger fencers want instant gratification. To that end, nobody wants to drill. The concensus I've noticed so far is that at least some of the time must be devoted to drilling and some time devoted to bouting (free or controlled).

How do you structure your group lessons to accomodate bouting and instruction? How long do you typically spend on instruction both in total and on each skill? How do you present the necessity for instruction to the fencers? How do you motivate participation in instruction rather than going through the motions? How does your approach change dpending on the age or skill level of the fencers? What do you do to establish a culture of participation?

[Zelda]

My coach in Brisbane always has 10 - 20 mintues at the beginning of a session for footwork. Depending on the group of people there on any particular night he will structure it into games/competitions or even lemmings. It helps keep people interested.

[veeco]

This is an interesting question, and I recently read a book about it. The book is in French, so if you cannot read French it's not really useful, but I will give a reference at the end of this post.

Basically what the author think is that a lot of the old school coaching relies a lot on technique.
Typical old school coaching would be:

"You want to learn to fence, first you need to learn how to: get on guard, hold your weapon, advance, retreat, lunge, and here are the basic lines in which you can hit and parry"

Then drill after drill the student spends time honing their advances, retreats, etc.

This book specifically tries to alleviate that problem. Basically the idea is to let the students go at it, first with simple rules:

The first one to hit gets the point (yes, even in foil or sabre)
The limits of the strip still apply (e.g. go beyond the end line and you get hit)
Target area is the fencers jacket, without the sleeves.
You cannot use your non weapon hand
You cannot turn your back to your opponent (safety)
You cannot do brutal or dangerous gestures
Each time someone is hit, you need to stop the action, and go back to the start line. If the point was on a non valid area (i.e. sleeves, legs) the fencers stop, take a safe distance, and start again.

After this period, it's good to take all the fencers together and go through the following questions with them:

Did you try to achieve the goal of the game, as it was previously defined? (This is not often the case, most beginners tend to just wack at each others blade, failing to recognize that the goal is to hit the other person).

What did you do in order to win?

Could you count all the touches?

Did you stop fencing on a non valid touch?

Could you describe the move(s) you used to score a touch? (This is important. Having the student formulate in his own words the successful moves they make helps them be cognizant of what works and how to do it. Also, it is easier for them to learn how to do a move properly if they can describe it themselves in their own words.

Could you describe the move(s) that you used to avoid a touch?

Did you realize that their was an switching of roles that took place, between attacker and defender? (This leads to defining ROW, later)

Once the questions have been answered, this will lead to identify and define what kind of offensive actions are available. This will be a good time to start a drill on how to extend your arm to hit.

The book proposes this drill:

Theme: identify and define what kind of offensive actions are available
Objective: Be able to hit a materialized target
Student's goal: Be able to hit the target and explain when and how
Drill: A is the attacker, D is the defender. They are positioned at arms extension distance, without crossing their blades.
D cannot use his weapon to defend himself, he can only move back
A has to attack before D can reach his rear limit, otherwise D becomes the attacker.
If A doesn't hit, D becomes an attacker.
Success criteria: A touches once out of 2 attempts. He answers the question "When" by one of the following answers: When the opponent is at the right distance. When the opponent has lost his balance. When the opponent has removed his cover.
He answers the question "How" by one of the two answers: By extending the arm directly. By extending the arm and going on the other side of the blade, underneath or over.
And the fencer is balanced (good on guard position and good footwork).

While doing this drill it is of course important to introduce the on guard position as well. The on guard position can be described as a position where the fencer is balanced, ready to do at any time and in the shortest time all the actions and footwork that fencing requires. This notion of balance is important.

This situation will direct the fencer to realize the importance of the essential move of the fencing offense, which is to extend the arm.

...conitrnued...

[veeco]

At this point it is not necessary to use the fencing terminology, it is better to speak in more common terms, such as "to score a touch, I need to extend my arm". Once the coach estimates that the students have understood this principle, they can introduce the correct term, such as coupe, disengage, straight thrust.

After a couple of these drills, it is good to go back to "free fencing" as described above, which will allow the coach to evaluate the progress of the beginners.

Then to introduce the notion of defense, you can go through another drill/situation, where A has to attack and D has to defend. A is forbidden to move their back foot. D should find out that the best way to defend is one of the 3 following:
- retreat
- avoid (esquive)
- parry

D should be able to describe these moves after a while.

After a couple of these drills and free fencing, you can introduce ROW with the following situation. It will be evident at this point that a lot of beginners will have a harder time to assimilate the defensive part of the game. The fact that they have to understand in what role they are in the "free fencing" situation is the biggest problem. Beginners won't understand that one attack started before theirs and therefore they will start to attack as well, creating a lot of double touches.
ROW and the lunge will come to your rescue at this point.

You will create a drill/situation where A cannot move their back foot, and D can only defend himself with a retreat. They should be positioned at arm extension distance. A will first lean over, and then you will be able to introduce the lunge as "better way to lean over" and gain the distance necessary to hit despite D's retreat. The lunge comes into play.
Now, at this point the students should have made progress in their technique and gesture. They have a clear idea of what is the goal of the game, can define whether they are attacking or defending, but still have a problem with the rapid change of situation regarding what role they should be in. It's necessary before you get into ROW, to define a situation/drill to bring it up, and that will automate the offensive/defensive role switching and make it more natural to the students.

The book proposes this situation/drill:

Fencers are without weapon, on guard, facing each other, at the distance of arm extension. When a student extends his arm, he should be able to touch his partners sternum. Both students should have their palms open.

A will extend his arm to touch D
D will move his open hand towards their back shoulder, to hit A's palm (like a high five). Once D's hand hits A's, D's hand will stop moving towards the shoulder, and rebound forward, trying to hit A, who then becomes D, and so on.

The objective would be to do 4 full exchanges of roles in a row, smoothly.

This will introduce the notion of dialogue between the fencers. Once this game is becoming too easy, you will give them weapons, put them apart more, and start again.

This situation should be introduced as a solution to the "double touch" problem exposed above. It will lead to defining ROW, as the following: "Each and every attack should be parried, and every parry gives right to one riposte".

At this point it becomes necessary to teach the students how to hold the grip, so that they can make effective parries, and to stress the fact that parries are made with the hand, not with the point (which most beginners will tend to do). The book proposes other exercises, situations and drills to point this out to the student.

But more generally the idea is the following in this book: each drill is introduced as a way to solve a problem that the students (with the help of the coach) have encountered in their free fencing lessons. This makes it easy to translate the knowledge acquired from those drills back and forth into the free fencing.

Another thing that the book is proposing, which IMO is interesting, but I am not sure everyone would agree with, is that all 3 weapons can be taught, in parallel, to avoid the "boredom effect", and to make use of certain specifics of the different weapons to make it easier to discover things to drill on. One example is given with sabre and foil to give students the notion of distance:

Since sabre has a different target area and you can hit with the edge of the blade, it requires a bigger distance when being fenced. Putting foil students in a situation where they can use a sabre and hit with the edge, to the hands and to the head, makes them more aware of this notion of distance. First you can put them into a restrited situation, where hitting the hand or the head is worth 2 points, and hitting the body is worth 1. This will make them think more about how far they are from their opponent and whether they can touch them or not.
Of course, this could be done with foil as well, if you are creative enough to find a situation adapted to foil.

In any case, if you read French, I really recommend this book. It was an eye opener for me and really gave me some ideas on how fencing can be taught in a less boring way.

Here is the reference:

Maitre Daniel Popelin, "Escrime, Enseignement et Entrainement", published by Amphora publishers.

[scarlet_woman156k]

Hey veeco, would you be willing to write a english translation of the book?

Makes me wish I actually paid attention to those years of French in gradeschool and HS.

[Wizardly]

Dump a pile of foils on a group of kids, let them whack each other with simple rules, then tell them you can make them better...it's an interesting idea.

Naturally, I want to know, a) has anyone tried this approach, and b) does it work?

[Inquartata]

Hey, I've been fencing for over 20 years, and I don't want to do drills, either!

[westcoastsabre]

Though I haven't really done any sort of coaching at all, one thing I've noticed was that clubs who give their beginners more freedom tend to retain more of them and many of them turn out to be very commited fencers. I'd liken it to tennis, once someone knows the basics they are often let loose and will occasionally go to a local tennis court and play a little. and eventually once they start to really have a love of the game they might go back to their local raquet club and learn more advanced things and really get good at the sport. I'd think that forcing drills upon fencers that don't want to do them would just drive them away from the sport. But, once they like fencing enough to get better then they will start drilling again. and eventually they will do what it takes to get better in the long term, rather than getting better in the short term.

Personally, until I started bouting (my fifth week), I was going to quit, but once I started to bout I decided not to. And for a year I complained about all the footwork drills that we had to do until eventually I was let loose and fenced with the club's best. And sooner or later I wanted to do drills because I wanted to get better. I think the lesson in all of these anecdotal stories from personal observation or experience is that drilling isn't effective until students want to do it, other wise you'll just drive them away. But I think after a while they will return with their own commitment to the sport rather than their coach's commitment. just some calories for thought...

[veeco]

Originally posted by Wizardly
Dump a pile of foils on a group of kids, let them whack each other with simple rules, then tell them you can make them better...it's an interesting idea.

Well, there is more to it than just this, and quite frankly I did not have the time or the space to get into more details. I could, again time permitting as scarlet offered, translate the book, but I guess I'll pass ;-).

Naturally, I want to know, a) has anyone tried this approach, and b) does it work?

A lot of people have tried this approach. For one thing that's pretty much how fencing is being taught nowadays in european countries.
Now, as to knowing whether it works, it depends what your goal is. If your goal is to produce champions, then I guess it's not really possible to know whether it works or not, because I guess the same student taught old school and new school that sticks to it not matter what will probably end up having the same results anyway.
However, if you goal is to reduce attrition rates, then I guess it should work. I don't have any data on this, but it seems perfectly logical to me (perhaps not to anyone who's read my terrible synopsis). If you teach someone something like counter 6 by just teaching them: "This is how you do counter 6, now do it 100 times or until you can do it perfectly" without going into the details of what parry 6 is supposed to do, and most importantly letting the student realize by himself why it is important to do it this way and not another, you will definitely have some people get bored and leave. This is the 21st century, the novelty factor rubs off pretty quickly these days. On the other hand putting the student in a situation where they can realize the important of counter 6 and how it should be done, and then using drills so that they make this move better has 2 effects:
- 1 They know why they are doing the drill in the first place, and have experienced the devastating effects of the move not being done right, or at the wrong time, or not done.
- 2 Because they have come to realize this on their own, you can do less drills because they have gone through a verbalization phase which improves their motor learning ability for that move (This has been researched, the book I mentioned cites as a reference Ree K Speath Arnold and Chatillon, published in 1985 in France).

[glowstix]

i have no problem with drilling at all; its just that sometimes the drills kinda get too complicated, i.e. too much thinking to the point where its like a choriographed (sp) bout. kinda like watching an old movie and pretending not to know the ending and get excited.

the only drills i like are footwork drills and the bladework drills that are slightly above the "basic" level. anything beyond that should be instinctive. hope i wasn't too confusing!?!?

[great bowyer]

i feel that footwork drills are always good, even though they can be boring. i also think that simple bladework drills are good, but after awhile, you get to the point where you can use these simple moves very effectivly and by instinct. after this point, you might as well just be bouting while working on setting up certain moves and executing them.

[Talen]

Two cents from a beginner who has coached other sports:

1st - What veeco is describing is an approach to a "global" learning style. A short explanation is that "global" people have to see the end result before they can understand the necessity of the steps, or drills. "Sequential" people just want to know how they can get there, regardless of where "there" is.

Many of our youth get bored easily and their teachers often just teach the steps. Taking their free time to do something like fencing, only to find it just as boring as "school", turns them off. I suspect the French technique described could work. My concern is breaking bad habits afterwards.

2nd - Retention is a problem, at least here in the Great Plains. After a long hiatus from fencing in the '80s, I'm taking a beginning course. The club president told me that he had over 30 inquiries into the class. Six showed up. From a class of 14 last year, perhaps 6 are still fencing. I don't live anywhere near my class - it's about 60 miles away - and I'd like to get a club started at our community campus where I teach. With these retention numbers I'm going to have a hard time selling a modest equipment expenditure to the Continuing Education director.

Anyway, I've been long winded for my first post. Hope no one's in a flaming mood :-)

[Tomas N]

Talen, retention is a problem everywhere, not just the Great Plains. I know what you're going through.

I really liked reading Veeco's post as it gave some ideas for additional drills. I'm also intrigued by the technique. I never thought to let them start out fencing. When I see newbies fence, it looks so violent and ungraceful that I can barely watch. I'd have to get over that aversion.

What I would find very useful would be a book with a lot of different drills/games/teaching techniques. Yes, I know there's a link to training tips on this webpage, and while those are useful, I need more activities that are both fun and educational at the same time. There's got to be a (admittedly small) market for something like this, since I'm guessing that most of the fencing instruction going on across the U.S. (certainly in small-town U.S.) is being done by what I would call "fencing missionaries." Folks, like me, who try to teach fencing and spread knowledge of the sport, but are not formally trained to do it.

So I would like a) a recommendation to a book and b) some posts with your favorite fun/educational training tools.

Tomas

[Inquartata]

There is such a book, and it's called "Fencing and the Master" by Laszlo Szabo. It's widely available and is full of drills and training exercises. ( It's also a deadly dull read, but that's neither here nor there. )