Classical Fencing: The Command Lesson

Fencing texts, from as early as Rondelle to as late as Lidstone, generally provided in-depth tables exhibiting the sequence of commands the coach would use in teaching a system. Shown with the instructions are the responses to all those commands by coach and student. We know that these instructions were being actually made use of because authors, as early as Siebenhaar to as late as Crosnier in his Fencing With The Foil in 1967, provided conversations of the details of how instructions had been to be offered.

However, the command lesson has generally been abandoned as a training resource. Modern-day texts, which includes the United States Fencing Coaches Association’s primary Countrywide Instruction Software, do not deal with the use of commands.

There are a quantity of factors that may perhaps account for the general abandonment of the command lesson:

• This is an old technique, in use for a extended period of time of time ahead of the advancement of modern-day procedure and the improved athleticism of fencers.

• There is an emphasis in the teaching of Fencing Masters on the use of blade and footwork cueing in unique classes, and educating by blocked repetition and teaching by presentation of possibilities (actually opposite to the most powerful use of equally repetition and alternatives).

• The prevalent belief in video games idea in which athletes are authorized, even encouraged, to locate their personal way to the execution of a method. This is not to denigrate games idea the incorporation of online games idea in specific phases of coaching is really desirable.

• The command lesson calls for a better interest to the segmentation of method into its elements, requiring specific consideration of the sequencing and chunking (the progressive combination of areas into the total) of all of the aspects of the strategy. In other words, training this way calls for assumed and disciplined functionality and operate by the trainer.

Having said that, for the classical fencer, and for specific takes advantage of for all fencers, the command lesson has crucial added benefits:

• For classical fencers it enables the recent practitioner to master the way fencers in the classical time period in fact discovered to fence. It is hence a window into the ethos of the sport. A lot as language communicates the mother nature of a lifestyle, how you discover to fence communicates the nature of the sport.

• The commands present a willpower to execution to make certain that the scholar does the drill, not what the pupil could want to do, an final result important to the advancement of method and response time.

• Numerous strategies call for unique sequencing of steps. Still left to their very own gadgets, college students have an unreasonably significant chance of not acquiring the sequence suitable, creating an ineffective practice pattern, and necessitating significant work to take care of the pattern. The commands can be tailored to the create the necessary sequence.

• Deliberate teaching and element-full coaching are improved.

As a Maitre d’Armes, I experienced commonly abandoned the use of command primarily based classes. In the progress of the Classical Academy of Arms credentialing software, I incorporated command dependent instruction because of its shown existence in Salles in the classical time period. But then, I had a course of modern-day fencers that required to improve their precision and command. Just after 30 minutes of perform, first with instructions for each ingredient of the straight thrust delivered by lunge, and then with progressively larger chunks of the strategy, I observed a definite improvement in precision, sequencing, and movement precision in their assaults. The command lesson is not the only alternative, but it need to be portion of any classical fencing education and be regarded as a specialised software for modern day fencing education.