Teaching New Fencers

Lady Lissa Underhill, Lord Lorenzo Gorla, Don Pascual Del Mar and Mistress Alys Mackyntosh

(from posts found on the Drills & Skills Yahoo group)

When training new fencers it is easy as the instructor to get bogged down and bored by the basic and repetitive nature of the material. However, there are a few methods that experienced fencers can use to keep themselves self entertained while giving instruction. These methods also have the added benefit of helping to improve the instructor's own skills and raising their teaching to a higher level.

• Have a new fencers also drill you. Doing this allows you to practice and benefit from the drill (remember, anyone can benefit from working on the basics from time to time) and your student gets the added benefit of learning how to teach the drill to others and the ability to practice the drill with others when you are not around.
• There are many ways to drill the same concept. If you or your student are getting board with a particular drill, ask around and find another one.
• Interactive drills, where you work with a new fencer (e.g. face the new fencer and have him/her mirror your footwork), are much more fun than watching the new fencer do static drills (e.g rows of footwork up and down the hall). Just remember to make sure that the new fencer understands the basics before you work on these types of drills.
• When free bouting with a new fencer you can choose a particular technique that you will practice or a particular attack that you will use to kill them, while still giving the new fencer all kinds of options and openings. For example, you could focus on remembering to extend your arm before you hit, or work on hitting your student using only a parry repost, beat, or feint attack. However, while you are doing this you must also remember to pay close attention to what the new fencer is doing so you can catch and correct any mistakes that they may make.
• When drilling or free bouting you can ask a less experienced (not brand new) fencer to evaluate your performance and to point out any mistakes that you may have made. As a result, you may learn a thing or two about your own fencing that you had not noticed before, and, more importantly, the less experienced fencer will gain experience evaluating another person's fencing with a critical eye. This will help that fencer learn to better analyze their opponents actions and it will also help them to become better at teaching fencing to others as time goes on.
• Think about asking less experienced fencers to vocalize (put into words) what they are doing. This works during freebooting, where you could ask them to describe what they just did wrong/right during a particular pass. This can also be used while drilling if you ask the other fencer to describe the drill you just did and its purpose. Make sure they understand the theory and reasoning behind what they are doing.
• Remember that new fencer will one day be teaching others, so teaching them how to teach is important.