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It’s very satisfying to do a drill perfectly. As an instructor, it’s perhaps even more satisfying to look around your classroom and see everyone doing the drill perfectly - every decision is correct, every execution is textbook, every pair is doing the exact same thing. Unfortunately, it’s also a sign of ineffective teaching. A much more effective class will have half the pairs doing an adaptation or variation of the drill, half the executions are flawed in some way, half the decisions are incorrect. This looks far messier, but there’s a lot more learning going on despite that.

When students are making plenty of mistakes, it’s a sign of working at the edge of their skill. They’re pushing the limits of their ability to execute the technique you’re trying to teach, or to recognise the situation at hand, or to make decisions in an instant. Working at the edge of their skill means they’ll learn faster overall, despite making more mistakes along the way. For example, if you want to teach someone how to decide between finishing their attack and restarting their preparation, if they get it right every time it means the coach is sending a very obvious cue very early. When the student then tries to do this in fencing, they will likely miss the signal given by their opponent - and make the wrong action. If the coach responds to successes by trying to make the drill harder, the student will naturally become accustomed to looking for smaller and faster clues to make their decision - they’ll get it wrong more in training, but still have a better chance of getting it right in fencing.

These are a few good tools which can be used to push the difficulty of a drill in a productive way. As a class leader, I’ve found it particularly useful to give these to the ‘coach’ in a pair up front, and empower them to pick which tools to use (and at what level) based on their judgement. While they’re actively leading the drill, their job is to use these tools to set the difficulty and ensure a good training situation for the student:

• Increase the amount of movement. Don't just practice at fixed or consistent distances - have the coach give cues both at the right range and the wrong range, so the student can practice discriminating between them and picking your moment appropriately.
• Increase variations in timing. A line opening while the opponent is retreating is very different to one opening while they stay still or advance. Vary the length of cues and the rhythms of footwork.
• Decrease cooperation. Make sure that incoming actions are committed attacks, allow the coach to ignore a feint if it's not sufficiently convincing, etc.
• Introduce randomness. Instead of specifying the parry, allow the coach to vary how they parry the feint, requiring a different finishing attack. Variations are endless.

This can be taken too far. The coach isn’t trying to ‘win’ the drill - while they are trying to make it difficult, they need to strike the balance between pushing the student to perform at their best and completely confusing them. My usual guidance to my clubs is to aim for a success rate around 2/3 of repetitions. If they’re getting it right more than that, make it a bit harder. If they’re getting it right less than that, make it a bit easier. By using tools like the above, the coach has some fairly powerful options to tailor the difficulty & focus of the exercise to the level of their current partner.

What's important is to keep the student's struggle productive, so they're challenged but are learning from that challenge. Unproductive struggle will generally feel purely frustrating and can become demotivating for the student very quickly. A good sign is that they are trying out new solutions to the challenge in front of them, instead of repeating the same attempted response each time. This indicates they are still engaged with the problem and trying to come up with solutions to it, not resigned to failure.

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

tea at fechtlehre dot org