#teaching fencing

[caffeinatedkt]

So I’m teaching an intro foil class, typical 8 week format, mixed teenager and adults. It’s a very accelerated pace, due to the short schedule, but we try to otherwise do things pretty traditionally, with the idea of starting people off with the basics in foil. If they like fencing generally, then if they want to transition to older spada, rapier or sabre, they have a solid grounding in the basics, and have a sense of whether they want to invest more in their own equipment at that point. Also, we only have to provide one class’ worth of weapons, rather than breaking the bank with a class full of 16mm Castille dueling sabres (or intro rapiers). We finished our second week of this session last night, and this time our groups skews younger than average. We have five young teenage guys who all started, and, my goodness, I am glad we have a lower age limit on this. They stay on task better than younger kids would, but a couple of them haven’t hit their growth spurts yet, so they are really small dudes (one of them basically could use the Italian foils we use in class as a rapier). It certainly makes teaching interesting when you have a 65+ year old, 6+ foot tall retiree, and a 4’6” (at best) 13 year old in the same mix for pair drills about finding fencing distance and lunge distance.

[sallegreen-blog]

Insight  from a Compound Riposte ...

... in epee.  After working on the disengage riposte, I had two students try a one-two riposte, for fun, as a timing and synchronization exercise, to see how well they could make a classical technique work in the simplified modern game.  One of the comments was very useful - “I think I might do this eyes open without even realizing I was doing it.”  I have been teaching technique for some time with the message that teaching a technique results in two things: (1) the student knowing how to do the technique and (2) the student knowing what the technique looks like when it is coming at you.  Number (2) is really important if the student decides this will not be a core part of their game.  I now have a number (3) - to serve as the basis for realizing possibilities.  If you don’t know that a one-two riposte is possible, maybe you will never realize that it will solve this particular tactical problem right now.

[sallegreen-blog]

What A Parry Does

When I ask students what a parry does, the usual answers are “it blocks the attack” and “it gives me the right of way.”  These have a germ of truth in them, but they are oversimplifications.  The parry does a wide range of things:

(1) in foil and sabre, when executed with the correct timing and recognizable technique, causes the referee to assess that a parry has occurred and to assign right of way to the immediate riposte.  The parry itself is neutral - the first offensive action off the parry gains right of way.  By convention this is the riposte unless it is held or delayed. (2) in epee, delays the attacker’s hit for sufficient time to allow the riposte to register either first or  inside lock-out time resulting in an acceptable touch outcome (which may be a double hit in some tactical conditions). (3) at the moment gives the defender the certainty of where the opponent’s blade is, as well as control of that blade. (4) sets up the riposte, whether direct, indirect, or compound. (5) gives the opponent the option of controlling the blade in the riposte by bind, croise, envelopment, glide, opposition, or opposition cut (in sabre) for a one light solution. (6) forces the attacker back into the OODA loop. (7) transfers the initiative to the defender if the defender takes immediate action. (8) disrupts the attacker’s plan for the phrase and for the bout. (9) closes off one line and set of tactical choices for the attacker (certainly in the pool bout, less so in direct elimination). (10) may (or may not if the attacker does not realize what happened) cause a change in tactics by the attacker.

Each of these things the parry does can be exploited by the alert defender who recognizes that the parry does more than block the attack or bestow right of way.

[sallegreen-blog]

Drills and Invitations

One of the difficulties in teaching using drills at the level of beginning and intermediate fencers is that you have to teach the technique and the cue that elicits that technique.  The students look at you and either ask “why are you asking me to do something that will get me hit” or think some version of “the old fool, I am not going to do that, I might get hit.”  In the first case you get to explain and a light may go on.  In the second the drill degenerates immediately into mindless poking.

What they need to know is that this is part of the first stage of teaching tactics.  You are not teaching a cue; you are teaching an invitation.  Now the students know how to get the opponent to do a specific thing ... and they can parry or counterattack or whatever and score.  The opponent has been rendered the most wonderful of all things, predictable.

Now all you have to do is to keep them from doing the counter to whatever the cue elicits.  After all, the purpose of the drill is for their opponent to succeed ...not to fight a bout.  Given half a chance they will try.