#fencing training

[makoivis]

Coming up with useful drills and progressions

When designing fencing (or martial arts) drills, try to make sure both parties are training something useful. Don’t have half the class just stand there while the other half practices.  When first learning a brand new technique, it can make sense to have one person provide an identical stimulus (in which case the coach/patient/uke doesn’t really derive much benefit). However, this should in my opinion be kept to an absolute minimum. If it’s a more familiar technique, it doesn’t really make sense to static training like that. It’s more useful to put the technique in a setting with a slight rivalry. For instance if the technique you’re training is a counter to a hip throw (for instance by shooting your own hip back and taking the back for a suplex) you can have a progression like this :

Repetition of the chosen technique with a set stimulus: Same hip throw attempt every time, same counter execution. Student focuses on learning the movements. 

Coached Rivalry drill: the hip thrower tries to execute the hip throw regardless of the counter attempt. If the counter attempt fails. the coach should succeed in the hip throw. The coach adjusts the speed and difficulty level so that the student is challenged, but the task isn’t impossible. If the student repeatedly makes the same mistake, the coach offers some small correction.  

Adding aliveness: the wrestlers start from a realistic set-up for the hip throw. The coach is trying to get under the arms of the student, and execute the hip toss. The student is trying to counter the hip toss. The student gets to practice countering the hip toss from a variety of distances and to recognize when the hip toss is coming. The student also gets to practice.

Aliveness and competitive rivalry: start with wrestling. Both fencers are only allowed to execute hip tosses or hip toss counters. Both are trying to success. Limit wrestling actions so that the hip toss is possible - you could for instance rule sprawling out of the game.  

For a fencing equivalent, you could pick for instance counter-disengage and thrust against a counter-six parry. The aliveness would come from adding realistic maneuvering.  

You could also do option drills and so on and so forth. When you have aliveness, rivalry and a few options, you’re basically doing a game that closely resembles match conditions. This is an excellent way to bridge the gap from practice to competition.

The level of progression should mirror the development of the students. If the student can’t execute the technique with a static setup, they’re not going to really benefit from adding variables.  Having progressions allow for useful training when you have a class with mixed experience and skill levels. The experienced students can either take on the coach role, or you can have the beginners pair up with other beginners and experienced students with experienced students. Or both: have the experienced students coach the beginners first, and then move on from there. 

Don’t have half the class just stand there. Try to get both personal in pair drills to do something useful for their development. 

[makoivis]

Teaching defensive actions in fencing

Paraphrasing Zbiegniew Czajkowski

It’s no good to show a student every parry and only then move to bouting. We must show a few fundamental strokes so that pupil can participate in practice bouts or drills in bout-like conditions. In epee: we start with parry six, circle-six parry, or stop hit against low line, and that’s enough for the student to participate in bouts.

First we practice by announcing attack. Then we do the same by not announcing the attack, so student must choose the correct action based on the attack the coach executes. 

All movements should be very real. It’s no good to give the student the blade. The attack should be such that if the student doesn’t react, they get hit.

The coach chooses a reasonable speed, depending on the level of the student. When we teach and coach in a realistic manner, we don’t only teach the movements, we teach students to read opponent’s movement, to distinguish simple attack, compound attack. What they have to do: parry or counter-riposte, step back or step forward. It is very very important. The student must hit the coach. The student must learn to hit reasonably and realistically. It’s not reasonable to train by pulling all hits and not touching the opponent. The student hitting or getting hit is feedback. If the student reacts and executes correctly, they should hit. If they don’t, they should be hit.

The variants of technical skill should be practiced as soon as possible. It’s no good to always practice against the same attack to the same target. The attacks should vary even if the action is exactly the same. So even if the parry is a hengen vs an oberhau (or circle six vs attack to high inside line), it should be done with various angles and choice of target. 

[makoivis]

Regardless of the action (in this case, a remise) if you are using primarily one action in practice, and you've gotten pretty good at it, it's time to move on. Practice is for learning and perfecting a variety of actions that you can bring together in competition. If you are better at one action than anything else (and continue using it), then you are just wasting practice time. Move on to something else, and then come back to the remise when your other skills have caught up. Remember, it takes practice (and often negative reinforcement) to train your body and mind to do things contrary to habit, but that skill is an essential part of becoming a better fencer. I find that lessons and focused bouting/drills (concentrating on other skills) interspersed with some free bouting (to remind you of all your skills) is a good way to train out bad habits (including using the same action over and over, no matter how many touches you can score). It's not the points you score in practice that count....

User ‘sabrebelle’ in ‘the remise disease’ thread on fencing.net

[redarmyscreaming]

Saint-Cyr Fencing Training

[makoivis]

[makoivis]

“Overlearning” fencing actions

One way to make fencing actions easier to learn is to use what some people call “overlearning”. That means that you take an action that has been drilled, and make it a part of a few longer sequences. The idea is to make the action automatic. Instead of having the student overthink the technique in a simple drill, we complicate the drill and just get a lot of reps in without them consciously thinking about the actions. 

In Foil, one example of an action we want to over-learn might be a feint, deceiving the parry and then finishing the attack. We might do the following types of drills:

Compound attack by feint-deceive

Student advances and extends to faint

Coach parries

Student deceives the parry and lunges

Compound riposte by feint deceive

Coach advances, student retreats

Coach lunges, student does a simple parry

Student extends arm to riposte, coach goes to parry

Student deceives parry and finishes the riposte. 

Compound counter-riposte by feint-deceive

Student starts with an advance-lunge, which is parried and riposted by the coach

Student parries the riposte and does their riposte via feint and deceive as above.

In Bolognese Sidesword, you could do the following to overlearn a falso manco parry followed by an imbroccata thrust. Dall’Agochie provides the following sequence:

Coach stands with their arm over-extended

Student advances to do a dritto sgualembrato to the sword hand, and does a full cut to porta di ferro larga

This is a provocation, not necessarily meant to hit, 

Coach voids the attack by withdrawing their hand and thrusting.

Student parries with a falso manco and ripostes with an imbroccata.

Another sequence that I’ve used

Coach advances to attack with a mandritto. 

Student parries with a falso manco and ripostes with an imbroccata.

Coach binds the sword, retreats and start to parry by moving to coda lunga

Student remises with a tramazzone to the head, accompanied by a chasing step. 

By placing actions that have been taught into different tactical contexts, the actions start to become more automatic. Doing the same for longsword is left as an exercise for the reader, but Meyer has plenty of examples. 

[makoivis]

Fencing should form the backbone of fencing instruction

It’s essentially impossible to learn fencing without bouting. It’s like learning to play soccer without ever playing a match. You can make the same argument for every single martial art of course, but let’s focus on fencing here. This much should be obvious, but it can also be motivated historically, as is made clear in many fencing manuals:  Note and know also that it is not possible to explain the art of fencing as well with words as one can show it with the hand. Therefore open your mind and ponder well and the more you train yourself in play the more you will think of it in earnest. For practice is better than art, your exercise does well without the art, but the art is not much good without the exercise  - Nuremberg Hausbuch (MS 3227a), 1389

One wishing to play must always attach himself to the most valorous of deed and reputation. Because as the glory of the victor depends on the valor of the vanquished, thus the loss is not censurable if the reputation of the victor embellishes it. The delight of playing with varied and diverse players makes a man cunning, perceptive, and nimble of hand, because from the variety of such practiced wits stems the shrewd and learned mother-experience of things. - Manciolino’s Opera Nova, 1531 It’s important to note here that the word used here is play (schimpfe, giocare). It’s obvious here that the idea of fencing bouts as practice is seen as an essential part in learning how to fence. It’s not a novel concept, so it’s very odd to see any opposition to it.  It’s true that in soccer practice, a lot of time is spent on drills such as practicing free throws, penalty kicks, passing, dribbling etc. However, almost every session ended in a practice match.  If people in your club do not bout, the first order of business is to get them to do so. If they aren’t bouting due to lack of kit, then they should get some or the club should have loaners.  Purely bouting is not the optimal way to learn I don’t think. Having drills ind restricted sparring games combined with practice bouts seems to produce better results. However, clubs where the only mode of practice is indeed bouting seem to produce a lot better fencers than clubs that don’t bout often or not at all.  If you do not bout or spar, you don’t truly understand the techniques you are practicing. They remain abstract ideas.  In many clubs I’ve visited (HEMA or sport fencing), there is some time dedicated to bouting after the lesson proper, and in addition to that there is a separate session each week purely dedicated to practice bouts. 

[sallegreen-blog]

Why just Pools and a DE?

The vast majority of fencing tournaments are now run in the same format of pools seeding for a direct elimination.  Yes, I understand that every one of these is training for the next one for fencers, referees, bout committees and organizers.  And, yes, I understand the conventional wisdom that our 10 year old fencers will not grow up to be World Cup Champions if they do not always fence in the same tournament format.

But, to borrow a famous phrase from Emerson, “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  It is fairly well established that variety of experience improves performance in any form of activity.  Various theories of neuroplasticity suggest that experiencing different approaches builds new neural connections in the brain increasing decision making capability.  That cannot be a bad thing for fencers.

I am not advocating that the official tournament structure be changed.  However, in your club it may be worthwhile to experiment with a variety of formats.  Some possibilities:

… One touch epee (for many years how epee was fenced and still used for Modern Pentathlon Epee) … or foil, or sabre.

… Five touch bouts in a double elimination tree.

… A chase format where the first fencer to a set of touches scored wins … or where the last fencer to be hit a set number of times wins.

… Reduced time limits – run actual time versus fencing time so that time spent arguing over touches is lost to the fencers.

… Pools in which specific rules are unknown to the fencers but must be discovered during the bouts.

… Handicap events in which fencers are handicapped based on their ability so that better or more highly ranked or classified fencers start with a number of touches already scored against them.

… Bouts in which there is no limit to the number of touches possible in the time allowed for the bout.

There are many other possibilities.  If you decide to be adventurous and try one, make sure that your fencers enjoy a challenge and that the format meets your training objectives.