Historical fencing was a combat skill. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, even the sporting use of the sword in tournaments, fechtschules, and prize games carried the risk of significant injury. It is not until the Enlightenment that fencing begins to resemble the modern safe sport. This story suggests that if you are going to teach students how to use a historical sword or polearm, you should include realistic training in how to fight with the weapon.
As an instructor, you are challenged to find a lesson format that replicates the combat but at the same time incorporates the teaching. The answer is combat lesson.
The objective of the combat lesson is to teach a student the application of tactics and techniques in a realistic environment where the student has to identify and execute a successful action that leads to hitting the instructor. This is not just free play, using any technique at any time. Instead, it is planned as carefully as any other lesson to improve student performance.
The instructor first determines the overall goals of the lesson: is the focus offense, defense, counteroffensive, or a combination of related actions (offense with defense against a counterattack, for example)? From the general objective, the instructor determines more specific objectives and specific tactics and techniques. For example, if I were teaching rapier using Giacomo Di Grassi’s system, I might determine that my overall goal is to work on offense with renewed attacks. A more limited goal would be to work on a combination of pushes and cuts, and a specific technique might be the push-cut-back-push sequence.
When planning such a lesson, there are several additional important factors for the instructor to consider:
First, what is the experience and level of training of the student? Combat lessons can be used early in a student’s development, but should be adjusted to the student’s developmental level and physical ability.
Second, what are the underlying rules? On one level, this addresses the ground rules you use in your show to fight between students. If you are teaching in a late 1500s context with rules that forbid the use of the point as “unfriendly” (to use the terminology of the time), training longsword students in point techniques for combat may not whatever you want to do.
But there is a more subtle level. Do you allow the student to execute any technique, but only give credit for the tactic or technique the lesson focuses on? Do you reward each correct execution by allowing a hit or do you frustrate any? Does it correct performance (corrections are generally not made in combat lessons since the student must know the technique well and concentrate on the application)? Do you take advantage of students’ errors in the general technique to correct hitting? Make sure the student understands these rules, because if she doesn’t, fencing can stop with an indignant “why did you hit me?”
Finally, what is the duration of the lesson? In general, combat lessons are relatively high intensity and demand a high level of concentration from the student. To maintain that focus, the length of the lesson should be limited to 5-10 minutes, with perhaps 20-50 visits.
In teaching the lesson, the instructor creates situations that the student can exploit to execute the technique or tactic. Probably the simplest example is getting into range of a delivered attack with footwork. The student has to evaluate the instructor’s movement and actions, determine if they allow for successful action on her part, and choose whether or not to act. It’s not about two fencers hitting each other, having fun and thinking they’re learning. Instead, it places a high demand on the instructor who has to recognize the student’s pattern of activity and create a combination of easy but realistic openings, more difficult opportunities for the student to create the opening by faking (feints) or setting game traps. feet, and surprise. actions that require the student to react to a completely unforeseen situation.
The combat lesson is the logical culmination of the variety of teaching and training lessons that can be taught in a historical program. It has the advantage of both high realism and high student control, and offers superior fencing training to the individual student who has a solid understanding of technique and tactics. Carefully managed, it is an important part of your training program.