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Paired exercises are a core component of training at most HEMA clubs. I previously wrote about three different types of paired exercise: technical, coached and competitive. Coached exercises focus on decision making: one participant has a selection of possible actions and the other is facilitating a decision point to choose between those actions. These form a very important ‘bridge’ when learning fencing, since they help students to refine their sense of when to apply an action and how to select which action to apply. Even if the execution is imperfect, using a good action for the situation will lead to better results. There are a number of factors which affect the effectiveness of a coached drill

First is efficiency. It’s a waste of time to have long choreographed sequences before or after the student’s decision. If absolutely necessary you can use them, but often you can save significant time by starting from the ‘middle’ of an action. Instead of a sequence of cuts and parries, try designing coached drills to simply begin from a blade engagement. Once the student has made their decision, ideally the next action should end the drill. An exception can be for drills that are also testing execution with more advanced students, where you can have the student and coach ‘fence it out’ after the student’s decision, to ensure their execution is up to scratch as well.

Next is clear feedback. The more directly that the student discovers whether their decision was good or bad, the more effective the drill will be. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is by connecting the decision to a result, most obviously ‘hit’ or ‘get hit’. If the student is correct, they hit (maybe with a parry & riposte, or because they attacked at good distance). If they are incorrect, they get hit (perhaps the distance of their attack was incorrect and the coach can parry & riposte instead). It’s best to have the feedback occur as close as possible to the decision point — not only does this improve efficiency, as discussed in the last section, but it also means that the connection between decision and results is clearer.

Most critically, success or failure should be the result of the student’s decision. If the student hits sometimes and is parry-riposted sometimes when executing the same attack from the same distance, this is not an effective drill. The coach provides an input, the student decides on their reaction, and that reaction should be the determinant of whether they succeed or fail. Especially when there is a skill mismatch, this may require the coach to ‘fence down’, for example deliberately not parrying when they could potentially parry an attack, so that the student is consistently experiencing the same patterns.

Coached exercises require high attentiveness from the coach. They are facilitating the exercise by creating the decision point and providing feedback, primarily by ensuring that a correct decision leads to ‘success’ (typically making a touch) and an incorrect one leads to ‘failure’ (typically receiving a touch). This must be done as reliably and correctly as possible, which can be a challenge when asking students to take the role of coach for each other. Incorrect or random feedback in a coached drill makes it much less helpful, since it obscures the connection between the student’s choices and the results. Particularly when asking students with less experience to coach each other, keeping the exercise more constrained normally makes it a better feedback cycle for the student.

Traditional fencing lessons are an extended version of this idea. One of the main adjustments is to add additional decision points and cues for the student — for more advanced students, this can be done without an explicit explanation first. If you have experienced students or assistant instructors (or if you have a club organised in a way which lets you focus on giving individual lessons) then this can be really effective, because it helps integrate the new skill a student is developing into the rest of their fencing game in a very natural way. However, it demands more focus from the student and lots more from the coach.

I welcome questions, comments or feedback on this article. You can reach me by email:

tea at fechtlehre dot org