Starting a new format for the class.

Well, I think that's what's going to happen- but you know what it's like, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I think we've got to a point where competitive drilling (freeplay with individual rules that force people to play against their weaknesses) will be the focus of lessons.


I still maintain that although there are many systems and personal preferences- there's just one art called "fighting" and learning to read weapons and preferences is very important. Also what's counterintuitive with one weapon or system may be obvious with another (Swetnam describes this with something along the lines of "if he presents in a guard you're not familiar with, do not presume him to be a fool or holding the guard incorrectly" )- a change of weapon will force you to focus on other actions.


Because of this l want to encourage cross weapon training, we have longsworders and smallsworders in the group as well a sport fencer and so-on..  A mix of weapons and styles are authentic as "17th century streets of London" goes and Swetnam encourages this peculiarly English way of gaining knowledge. (Encouraging people to join in and then remorselessly stealing anything of value while pretending we invented it)


There's going to be a split and some jiggery pokery going on in the not too distant.  The regulars don't "need" me and I'd like to keep it that way- but I still have to be there for them and I need to make time to spar and practice under pressure. The newbies get my attention because they need to be introduced to the basics and get these building blocks so they can feel confident when it comes to transition time- that point where I can look at them and know what they need to work on and how..

I've got a few ideas brewing- I'm thinking of a version of 1000 blank cards. At the end of each bout the loser writes down one thing that would have made the fight harder for the winner (for example, dear reader, banning the Nigel Special- a specific form of distance play that can be summed up by "void the hand and twat the head") and this goes into a deck of cards that gets bigger with every fight.  Once there's enough rules for a fair selection then one person is "handicapped" by choosing a card- in an ideal world, both would pick a rule, but the method of creating the rules means that you could have restrictions that are incompatible with a fight.  Besides, one person has to be totally free so you can try all the moronic and doomed to fail combinations that would appear if you're convinced your opponent will only do one thing.

This works on many levels. You've got the basic freeplay with a focus, then you have the loser asking why they were hit and checking for patterns. If one of the team is considerably better than all the others, they're literally stacking the deck against him- creating a self handicapping system where the worst fighters get to define rules and improve. Any "you must not" can be changed to "you must"  meaning that the weaker gets to see if that's a killer move or just one they don't get. I can add in a new rule whenever, use it to introduce a guard or a concept...  1/2 speed would be applied to both sides,  It builds up a catalogue of weaknesses and if the same rule keeps on appearing then that's one that needs to be taken back to the co-op stage of drilling.

When I started looking at teaching, I thought about this for drills. "what do you think you're weakest at..  pair up, do your own thing and I'll be around to answer questions/make suggestions".  It's a nice thought, makes for a lot of growth but only with good foundations.

All in all, I'm really impressed with how my class is getting on. They are easy to teach and I hope that a substantial part of that is because the I've got all the important bits right.

And they're making me proud.  Slightly baffled, but proud.

The Dunning-Kruger effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.

I will add another aspect.  Once you understand the Dunning-Kruger effect, you will get worried if you can't find anything wrong.  I have a good understanding of gambling and odds and for me there are "levels of confidence".  In poker terms, you won't go all in on a pair of kings, but you would think about it on a flush.

Now, yesterday was my first "evaluation" lesson where I've got us up to "safe freeplay" level. I can't really explain my exact teaching methods because I try to change language so I can talk to my  students. We've got a sport fencer (male and sabre.. which is unusual), a Polish girl who is really good with the Spanish School of Fencing and by necessity is ambidextrous with the rapier and at quite an advantage when bringing in another weapon... there's something I can learn from that. (As a side note, according to Swetnam she would be "in system" if she was sure enough to switch to Spanish). One guy who has basically taken my place amongst the Saturday Scrappers, which pisses me off because it reminds me how much better I would have been if I'd managed to drop by on a regular basis.  I think they're all doing really well, in fact... too well which makes me wonder what I've missed. Sure, this whole venture was so I could test my understanding against others and there's still the issue that it's me and the most esteemed and honourable maestro as overall instructors.


People have  this strange idea that the uber confident people are automatically right and that "I don't know" is some kind of sign of terrible weakness. When the reality is- if you want to teach, if you want any kind of authority you must invite questions.

I am worried about how well everyone is doing because I have difficulty believing that I'm that good a teacher.