I hope that during the progress of this text I would make the title more clear. The basic concept came to me in conversation after today’s session.

Some background – I am a junior instructor in the only HEMA school in the country. We are in the capital, but as this is the poorest and one of the smallest states in the EU, there is not much interest in our art. While we have a solid group, new students usually come every few months. We are open the whole year and we do not have beginner classes – our belief is that both the advanced practicioners and the beginners learn better together.

Today, we had two new guys – well, one of them has had one session. Our instructor and the other assistant instructor were working on a hanger for our swords, as we recently moved to a great new training hall. Because of that, I led the training session.

When we have a mixture of beginners and more advanced people, we usually start with simple floryshes – all of us, than I give the advanced people some exercise and leave them be. They are generally good enough to know what to do on their own and they do not need too much attention. Actually, a lot of times it is better to leave them on their own, and discuss their work afterwards.

So, after the initial exercises – wide play basic cuts, I send the advanced guys to do some binden and elastic drills (elastic drills are like sparring in molasses – you go slow, and you explore different situations and options, usually without anything more than gloves. It is a good complementary exercise to regular sparring, and a good transition from drills to free play).

So I was left with two complete beginners. Unusually, I decided to cover the basic guards – something which I usually leave to our instructor to do for the first time.

Of course, they have already done most of the guards in the last 30 minutes – they are all included in our floryshes. So I just defined them and taught them how to build a guard.

How to build a guard, what is that? Well, in the last couple of years, I noticed that postureq guards and cuts are best learned through learning how to “build” one. What does that mean for a guard? Lets take the basic Pflug – it is a guard you have in every european swordsmanship system, in one way or another. There is the Porta di Ferro guards in the Bolognese, the sixth guard in I.33, the Posta Breve in Fiore, the Eber in Leckuchner, the Offensiva perfetta of Viggiani, the terza in Italian rapier, hell, the Seigan no Kamae in Kendo and kenjutsu.

You first set the intention – what do you want to achieve from this guard? What is it purpose? Pflug is thrusting guard, meant both as a good starting position for a thrust, and a threat. So the point of the sword has to point at the opponent – seems pretty simple, but beginners can ignore it, if you do not specifically explain why that is and what can you achieve from it.

All of the basic Haengens – the two Pflugs and the two Ochs – are meant to protect one of the Four Openings. So the sword has to be positioned in such a way as to protect one of the lower openings – of which there are two, so we have two Pflugs – one on the left and one on the right. The flat is weak, so the sword must not be parallel to the ground, but at an angle – and I demonstrate how a flat position cannot take a strike, while an angled one can.

There is also the idea of power generation in the thrust. As the thrust is weak, compared to the cut (remember Silver – the force of a child is enough to drive it aside), the body needs to be behind it, sometimes in ways different than a cut. So you position the pommel in front of your pushing back leg.

And with these three basic fundaments you have “build” the Pflug.

I am explaining this, so I can show what I actually taught. But the point of this post is the method.

After the guards we took a rest, during which they asked me what a perfect balance for a sword would be, and I explained to them why there is no such thing, and why balance depends on the purpose of the sword, comparing a longsword, a classic arming sword – Albion I.33, and a side sword – the Albion Marozzo.

After that, we went through the floryshes again, and this time they didi much better.

With that, I ran two beginners through 1:30 h of training, with a warm up of about 15 minutes, maybe 5 minute rest, and three sets of exercises with 5 minutes rest inbetween. Thus they spend 1:15 h training with just a little rest. And I did not need to force them, nor did I ran a very tiring session, either. They were sweaty at the end, though. But not exhausted.

What I realized at the end, and what I conversed about with some of our advanced guys and some beers after training, was that my choice of exercises was not the key of what turned out to be a good training session. It was my method, which is partially my instructor’s, partially my own. And they looked quite good after just 3 hours for one guy and an hour and a half for the other.

See, teaching fencing is like fencing. You have to use Fuehlen and define when the student is soft and malleable and you can show him and explain more, and when he is hard and there is a wall in his mind, and it is best to leave him alone for a bit. And as beginners are especially fidgetty sometimes – even though that was not an extreme case of it – you have to choose “Indes” to go hard or soft, because there is a small window of opportunity, a small bloss in a half-tempo. Before that, you have to judge how far they are from understanding and feeling the technique, as all things have length and measure. And of course, it is best to keep the initiative – take the Vor – or regain it if you lost it – win the Nach.

I also realized (with some encouragement from the advanced students, as I am not as confident in this subject as I am to, say, my fencing skills) that I may have a chance to become a good teacher. And I was quite happy about it.

I wish all of you, students, assistants, and teachers, a good training session as this one!