At practice last night, I was not really up for fencing, but I am sure glad I did. I was in somewhat of a tired funk after the commute and work. FYI- the commute is at least 90 minutes each way. Normally, I try to avoid going into the office at all costs, but seeing as how the last time I was in the office was just after Pennsic, and I had not seen my boss or held a client status meeting with her in almost 2 months, I figured it would be good to show my face.
So I got to practice, and just hung around for a bit at the start. I grabbed my gear out of the trunk and suited up. My first fight was against one of our newer fencers. He's been coming to practice for about 3-4 months now. He's got the basics down, now its just refining it. I noticed with him that he was holding his sword not in a proper 3/6 or 4, but was sort of letting it wander in between the wards. This allowed me to really take advantage of the line on either side of his sword, by gaining the blade and pushing against his foible with my forte. After some time, I showed him what was working for me and why.
My second fight was against someone who has been fencing for two years or so at this point. He has made a big leap over the past few months. It doesn't hurt that there is a lot less of him than there used to be. We went on the floor with rapiers and daggers. I loved the aggressiveness he was showing against me. He was not afraid to take the fight to me, but I noticed when he was setting up, his sword arm elbow was kicked out as well as his hand. This opened up the line in 4 for me, and I was able to take advantage of it repeatedly. I was also able to work the 4 to 3 shot with a slight step with my front foot to my left, further taking me away from his dagger. I could see the frustration mounting inside him, so we stopped for a moment, talked, and resumed. Afterward, I explained to him what I was seeing and why I thought it was working and what I would do to correct that.
My third fight was against Malcolm's cadet. Jehane has been preoccupied with work and battling injuries, so she has not been fencing much recently. She was rusty and it showed but that rustiness caused a challenge for me as her responses to my actions were sometimes unexpected. This made me cautious and it was a good thing for me.
My last fight of the evening was Mabel, Antonio's student. She has the background of a modern saber fencer. I was able to get her moving her blade a lot by disengaging with no blade contact. This was causing her point to wander and her arm to get tired, so she'd bring her elbow back in towards her body, at which point her parries had nothing on them, and I was easily getting my foible beyond even her forte. Again, after the bout I showed her what I saw and why.
So it got me thinking about training and coaching. Some people are adepts of the school of thought of teach via doing drills. Others come from the school of hard knocks (let the student figure it out themselves). Others a combination. Me, I'm a better student when I understand not only the body mechanics (the drills), but also the reason why something works. Typically, I'll notice something when working with a newer fencer and try to exploit what I see. If they do the same thing and it is ineffective against me, I will typically stop fencing and go into teacher mode. Against a more skilled opponent, I might try the same thing over and over again from different setups. One one hand, I want to see what their reaction is; on the other I want to work on something to add to my skill set. If they ask me what am I doing, I'll explain it.
So that leads me to the following question: How do you learn best?
I like learning the theory behind a given technique and then learn how to apply it. It's really helped my fencing over the past year. I feel a lot more confident in what I'm doing and don't have to rely solely on my speed to win. I actually have a firm grasp of what I'm doing. So I'll learn technique, drill it and then try it in free fence... depending on the technique that doesn't always work, though. Like this month we've been doing body voids and such, but they're very specific to the situation, so if it's not there it's not there. But most things it's fine.
ReplyDeleteSurely hasn't been an easy process but it's been fun. I never really had anyone to teach me when I first started. I knew enough of fencing from foil that I was kinda left to my own devices, but I didn't know enough of rapier fencing to be solid without some help. It was a lot of trial and error until me and a couple of other fencers decided to work on drills together. So we're teaching and learning at the same time. I really enjoy the process.