Required Gear
- Full Sparring Kit
- For first 2 drills mask, gloves, and gorget are enough
Circle up:
- introduction including my experience teaching beginners
- Often times the hardest part of fencing for a new fencer to learn is the conceptual aspects.
- One of the hardest concepts to teach a new fencer is that of Fuhlen. To trust what you feel and let your body respond based on feeling rather then sight.
- The purpose of this class is to offer varying drills that I use to instill the power of Fuhlen early on.
- Three types of pressure in a bind
- Hard pressure is the opponent pushing against you trying to displace your blade
- Light pressure is someone pulling away from your sword to cut around or provoke an attack
- No pressure is when someone is holding their position and is not intending to move they aren’t pushing or pulling away.
Drill 1 baton/mask/palm games
- Played in partners each pair picks a “coach” and depending on equipment balances the baton mask or just palms between the two of them with open hands (no holding).
- The coach moves around with proper foot work offline and lateral giving varying pressure
- The student tries to follow this pressure to prevent the item from dropping
- A win condition can be added in the form of gaining ear position
This game is a representation of the bind and the pressure that it presents. The sword is an extension of your arm. The “weak” of your arm is your elbow to your hand and the “strong” is your elbow to your shoulder.
Drill 2 Bind game
- played in pairs each pair starts in the bind roughly middle of each sword touching.
- The goal is to explore the bind and what applying different pressure can do to the other persons blade
- Rotate through different positions this is a fluid exploratory game.
- Each players goal is to keep their point on line through winding without leaving the bind
- Special note: if a student is using their strength to continually push against another blade step in as the coach and play the game with them. Put some pressure on their blade so that they start to use strength to force you out of the way and disengage leaving your point online.
The harder someone is pushing the less feeling they are able to feel. Instead we use the strong and the weak of the blade to overcome the buffalo. The blade is the equalizer - you can add a win condition by allowing each player 1 thrust during each round
- This adds the ability for a student to use eyes open fencing while allowing the one being thrust to use the Fulen to respond appropriately
Drill 3 Blind Game
- played in partners alternating coach and student
- The student closes their eyes and holds their blade out to bind with the coaches blade
- The coach and student start to play bind game as before but only the coach can thrust.
- The coach will randomly launch a thrust at the student
- Only using Fuhlen the student will parry the incoming thrust
- Speed varies on success student should be succeeding 75ish percent of the time
This is instilling a trust in a fencers feeling, allowing them to notice that they don’t have to see something to respond appropriately our bodies react to feeling significantly faster then sight.
Drill 4 Hangen Winden and the 3 wonders
- this is a more advanced drill that I use at the end of my beginners course (4 2 hr sessions)
- Again played in partners each pair will alternate coach and student each round
- The coach will throw either a unterhau or oberhau at the student (left or right)
- The student will parry, take a moment if needed, wind to safety and either cut thrust or slice
- This is a much more free form game to start integrating Fuhlen into actual controlled exchanges.
This begins to teach new students how Fuhlen leads into the techniques that we learn through the sources.
Questions