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Teaching Fencing

How and why to study bouts on Youtube

Almost a year ago, as we were all finding new routines of a summer in lockdown, instead of baking bread, making a jungle of houseplants, or going on long relaxing walks, I found myself watching tones of Youtube videos.  Being ever mindful of my father’s admonition that “screens will melt your brains,” I justified my binging by watching, not aimless content, but World Cup finals of my favorite fencers.  Now, I’m going to share a few pieces of advice that I wish I had at the start of last year.  

First piece of advice: watch on a computer with a screen larger than your cell phone.  It’s important to get as many of the details as possible, and watching on a phone just doesn’t cut it.  Additionally, the Youtube phone app skips forwards or backwards in ten second increments as opposed to five seconds.  While that may seem trivial, those five seconds can mean the difference between skipping through the dead space of fencers resetting or skipping into the middle of an action and losing all context.  

There are a ton of channels on Youtube.  I’d recommend starting with fan favorite channel “Cyrus of Chaos,” then move into the FIE Fencing Channel (Their bouts are less well organized, but they have more of them, and commentary besides), and Fencing Vision.  There are a few channels specific to each country – channels from France, Russia, and the Asia-Pacific, although these channels have the draw backs of often being untranslated or in different alphabets.  

There are a few important hotkeys to remember.  Spacebar is the pause button.  Period is the command for “one frame at a time FORWARD,” and comma is the command for “one frame at a time BACKWARD.”  Using period and comma in conjunction with spacebar will allow you to really zero in on the exact moment a fencer starts their attack, or the precise technique they use to execute their motion.  Many videos from the FIE channel will already have high frame rate slow motion replay, although the replay doesn’t always start at the right time or have the right angle to really understand what’s happening.  We also have the arrow keys: right arrow will skip forwards 5 seconds, left arrow skips back 5 seconds.  I’ve found that skipping forwards in 5 second increments will often cut out all the dead space in a bout, letting me watch the best parts of a match.

As a fencer myself, I can say that just by watching high level fencers I was often inspired by their tactics, their execution, their form and ability.  I clearly remember the first moment that I saw 2x World Champion Sofia Velikaya deliver an incredible low-line attack that inspired me to mimic her for years afterwards.  High level fencers are all the time watching and learning from their rivals, their teammates, and from youtube itself.  Now, you can too, with just these few simple hints to get you started.  



6 Tips For Running Great Drills in Fencing (Or Any Sport!)

This article is all about creating and running great drills for the sport of fencing! (Or any sport!)

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Drills are a critical part of a complete training program when they are structured and USED correctly. There are a lot of common mistakes that people make when designing activities and this video will address how to make what you are doing with drills as effective as possible for your students.

Principle #1 Be Objective and Skills Focused

The activities, drills and games you play with kids are the vehicles for teaching skills and content! Not an end to themselves!

Too many people make the mistake of creating activities that are about the activity instead of being focused on what they are trying to accomplish!

You need to have a clear idea of what you want the kids to learn and convey that to your students.

Always Ask Yourself: What do I want the kids to be able to do, understand or what skill are we practicing with this drill? And, Don’t forget to share that with the students so they understand what they should be learning also!

Pro-Teaching Tip: Sharing the “WHY” something is important is always critical for student understanding and buy-in. You need to be able to know and explain to students why what they are working on is important!

Principle #2 Start with Bite Sized Objectives

Great drills start with a basic concept or objective that is easily understood by everyone.

I have a saying, a good starting point for a drill is “something an Olympian would do while also being something that someone on their first day fencing could understand and do also”.

What does that mean? A great drill starts with a small focused idea to work on. Olympians work on the small details so a drill that starts on something small would be something an Olympian would do but is also something that someone on their first day could understand.

For example, keeping distance with someone moving back and forth.

Principle #3: Great drills have levels!

You start with something basic on “level 1” and then you slowly add pieces and ideas once the students have mastered and understood level 1.

Level 2 should build upon what has been done in level 1. Level 3 should build upon level 2 and so on.

This layered approach allows you to build up even younger students to complex ideas.

Pro-Teaching Tip: Always remember to take time to “Check For Understanding” with students. You can’t go fast until they have down the concepts and how the drill rules work. One way of doing that is you can have each pairing go once or twice while everyone is watching and then you can affirm when they are doing it right or correct understanding not just for that group but for everyone.

Principle #4 Have a FUN Factor an Gamify your Drills

I often call our drills “Games” because we always have a way for both sides to score even if each side is working on something different.

Having a way to “score” provides feedback as well for students to know when they are succeeding or not and often motivates them to try harder and modify how they are doing something on their own.

I am not a huge fan of straight technical drills where students are just doing rote movements without a score. Oftentimes, students end up just practicing bad habits in technical drills but of course there is a place for them and I advocate for teaching kids a technical routine they can use but ensure they are doing the movements correctly.

Principle #5 Discovery Elements are Essential

You are of course sharing with students the goals and rules of the drill but a good drill also leaves an element of discovery. When students figure things out on their own with the structure of a drill it is a powerful way to increase retention of concepts.

Pro-Teaching Tip: When you spot a student trying something different or discovering something interesting, don’t be afraid to stop the activity and call that out and discuss!

Principle #6 Teach Your Students To Be Great Training Partners

It is really important that students understand that even when drills are like games and they are trying to “win” that they are first and foremost teammates and club-mates trying to get better together.

Sharing with them what it means to be a good training partner including helping each other if someone is struggling will make any training routine you do more effective. I will talk more in-depth about being a good training partner and teammate in another article/video soon.

I hope these tips help you in your practices! We will start posting some of our partner drills/games over the next few weeks but I wanted you to understand where we are coming from in how those drills have been developed.

If you’d like to learn from our Elite coaches either in-person or online, you can go to:

www.timmorehousefencing.com