Tag: constraints led approach
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Causing Attraction: Non-Dominant Foot Forward in Longsword Fencing
In ecological dynamics, the term Attractor or Movement Attractor shows up every now and then. Attractors can be seen as preferred motor pattern solutions in the current activity context. When an action is seen as intuitive or habitual, it might be the attractor at work. Habit and intuition can be nebulous concepts however, so to…
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Constraining the Squinter to Fix Cutting Issues
At Bucks, we go through the Lew Gloss in order on a cycle, which helps inform what we will work on in a particular practice. We recently started the schillhaw (which I will henceforth refer to as “squinter”), and it reminded me of common issues people tend to have with it. One of the most…
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Game Design Process: The RPS Method
Designing a good training game is not easy or straightforward. But having a method to help guide the process makes it easier.
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Exploring Differential Learning (Part 1)
Class at Bucks Historical Longsword follows a fairly regular format, we usually do about one “simple” game and one or two “complex” games (simple game being a game with fewer viable paths to success than a complex game, IE direct attack is simple, sabre march is complex), usually based on a passage from the Lew…
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CLA Adventures with the Zornhaw
Over the last week or so, we have been going over the zornhaw at my club, and I wanted to go through some of the process of trying to find a game that encourages people to do it without explicitly telling them to do it. By that I mean I’m trying to avoid things like…
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The Direct Attack Drill is Special: Self-Scaling Games
The direct attack drill is a drill that I was first introduced to by Adrien Pommellet, who learned it from a Giovanni Rapisardi video. I later read about it in the book Make the Cut by John Chow, in reference to modern Sabre fencing. Over the last couple of years, we have used this game…
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Buy-in: Implicit Rules in Games and Drills
The idea of “buy-in” is something that I think a lot about when designing drills and games, so in this article I’d like to give a clear definition and breakdown of what I mean when I talk about buy-in. I don’t want to create a definition that everyone has to use, but this will be…
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Introducing Students to Fencing through a Constraints-Led Approach
When talking about using an environmental approach for coaching, one of the first questions which people bring up is typically aIong the lines of “ok so that sounds like it might work well for more advanced fencers, but how would you handle a newbie? Surely you have to teach them techniques first, right?”. Well, no,…
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Fencer vs Fighter: A Case Study on How Adding More Options Can Make You Worse
This is an interesting case that has come to light over the past several months for me, which involves two games: Soviet Foil Drill (SFD), and Fencer vs Fighter (FvF). SFD: One side has a sword and the other doesn’t, sword side tries to land a hit to the head, if they hit they win,…