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The fencing lesson – The silent lesson

It is possible to give an entire fencing lesson in silence, without oral prompting, instruction, or discussion (beyond, perhaps, a brief statement of the lesson’s objectives). This removes the oral cues from the lesson, forcing the student to focus on visual and tactile information. The silent lesson develops the fencer’s problem-solving and decision-making abilities without verbal cues. By removing oral instruction from the lesson, the Master forces the fencer to adapt to the conditions presented by the Master and to read the signs that point to opportunities for successful action, just as the fencer would in combat.

The Teacher leads the lesson without oral directions or discussion. All actions are presented as physical cues, through blade movement, footwork, and timing, and the student is expected to select an appropriate offensive or defensive action in response to the cue. The sequence of actions must be selected to be consistent with the tactical system used by the Master. For example, when working on the straight thrust feint compound attack, disengage, using the Tactical Wheel, the flow of actions could be:

… (1st sequence) The master stands guard with the 6th open; the student executes a straight push to 6th and hits

…Finally – Master stops and aftershocks

… (2nd sequence) Teacher closes 6th – then presses student’s sheet – student disconnects on 4th and hits

… (3rd sequence) Teacher opens 6th – student feints with a direct hit on 6th – Teacher starts parry – student steps back to hit on 4th.

There is no theoretical limit to the duration of the silent lesson. However, since this lesson requires a high degree of student concentration to read the prompts presented and determine the appropriate action, to avoid undue student fatigue, it would seem reasonable to restrict the lesson to less than 15 minutes.

The silent lesson also requires a high degree of concentration on the part of the Teacher. Since his signals are now sword or footwork signals, he must take care to ensure that he is selecting the correct signals and delivering them in the correct manner for the action he desires. To an even greater degree than required for regular lessons, he must ensure that threats are clearly communicated and realistic.

With this comes the requirement that students’ actions must receive corrective feedback. Feedback typically involves some level of oral communication. However, in this lesson, your actions become feedback. A student feint that is wide and non-threatening doesn’t elicit a reaction or prompts an immediate counterattack, an incorrectly executed parry earns one hit with his attack signal, etc. The student must be able to self-correct for this lesson to work well.

The silent lesson can be the entire lesson or part of the main body of the lesson. This approach is best suited to a training, sparring, or warm-up lesson. The requirement for technical perfection of the actions, with the resulting demonstrations and corrections, makes this lesson format difficult for technical lessons.

The silent lesson can be used with students at any stage of development, as long as they have been taught to identify and act on opponents’ movement patterns. With beginning or intermediate students, it may be necessary to provide an objective at the beginning of the lesson to ensure that the student understands the focus of the lesson. Not all lessons need to be silent lessons. But all shooters can benefit from incorporating silent lessons into the training program.

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