We live in a generally informal society. Now, when I say "we" I mean specifically the United States since that's where I live, but I feel very confident that we, as in all of Western society, are informal.
Dress codes have loosened over the years. In some offices, it's acceptable to wear jeans and a polo shirt, at many schools its normal to wear fuzzy pajama pants, and there is no longer any opprobrium to wearing shorts to church. Once coveted titles now are very often put aside, so we often call our doctors, teachers, and avuncular relationships by their first names. Previously rigid rituals, like hand writing and sending a thank you note, have been relaxed to a quick text saying "thanks." Most anywhere we've had the chance to wear off the sharp corners of formality into complete relaxation we have.
We are indeed very informal.
One area in which I would strongly encourage all of our HEMA community to not be relaxed is at regular training, regardless of what weapons systems or styles you train. In this regard, we are all well to keep it as rigid and formalized as possible.
Here's what I mean: Let's say one of your club's regular training nights is during a two-hour block on Friday. In these two hours, time has been set aside to study a given weapon, which is why you and other people show up after having worked an eight-hour workday and a 40-hour week. You're tired, your club mates are tired, yet for the love of the art, you're willing to put aside this time to train in your weapon.
Now let's say the instructors spend the first 15 minutes of class just chatting with folks, catching up on their day, talking but not focusing one jot on your weapon studies. Then, after shooting the breeze for a while, they finally acknowledge it's time to begin, but they seem confused and turn to the group for suggestions as to what to do. You suggest one thing, a few people suggest some other things, there is a bit of debate until it's finally 25 minutes into your two-hour block before you begin training.
Then, because there was no formal plan to begin with, the instructors bounce from topic to topic -- almost as if whatever catches their fancy at the time is what the group will focus on at that moment -- so that there doesn't seem to be any cohesion or internal logic of what's being presented. Then, finally, the two hours just kind of fizzle out rather than end because, once again, there was no clear wrapup activity planned.
You'd most likely go home that night frustrated and annoyed, wondering why you wasted a Friday evening goofing around when you really wanted to train. Have one training session like this and it'll likely end at annoying, have session after session where you feel like you're wasting your time and you'll likely drop out of that club, or even quit HEMA altogether.
Any informal learning or training environment is doomed to fail. Not only is it doomed to fail but it is also almost guaranteed to drive away the people it is supposed to be teaching. Let's be honest, back in high school we all had that one class -- perhaps for some of us, it was more than one class -- where the teacher no longer cared and it was utter chaos. Most likely the only thing keeping you there was not being allowed to leave, or not wanting to get into trouble.
People at a HEMA club have no such restrictions. If they are not getting what they want they will leave. This is why keeping it formal is of such vast importance.
Please remember, I'm talking about the regular, weekly or several-times-a-week training you do as a club, not a specific class for novice members or for a different weapon. It should stand to reason that in such a case you'd have a tight, well thought out overall curriculum and specific lesson plans. It might be tempting to believe that once your club is passed the point of teaching novice members it's fine to allow for a looser, more democratic way of running regular club training.
Democracy is great, but not in the training environment. In that environment, you want to develop some kind of set program so folks will always know what the process is and what will happen first, second, third, etc. Ideally, you want someone to be able to arrive late and have a good sense of the time just by taking a look at what part of the training you're into.
You want the daily plan to be generally predictable with just enough fluidity that the learning doesn't become stagnant. What I mean by that is, for instance, if you decide to end every training session with a sparring game, don't do the same sparring game every time. Mixing the game up will keep people engaged and on their toes, but knowing that the session ends with a game of some sort will help give them a comfortable sense of structure.
Some time ago we developed a fairly rigid structure for our regular Longsword training sessions. Since then, I have noticed we tend to get far more done, what we get done is more focused and therefore effective, and everything is just generally more efficient than it was previously.
We begin every training session with line drills/warm-up drills. The specific set of line drills are different from session to session, so there's that flexible fluidity, yet there is still the obdurate fact of every session starts with line drills. After doing line drills for approximately 20 to 30 minutes we go into a set of warmup drills. There tends to be more variation with these so as to keep things fresh and interesting, but again it is a known there will be some drills of this type. We do these for, again, about another 20 to 30 minutes.
We then take a water break of about 10 minutes, then it's into the learning goal of the day. Here we have the most fluidity. Perhaps on this day, we're drilling Zorn hard, or maybe just focusing on the Mutieren, or doing learning drills to practice technique, or perhaps some other specific Longsword fighting skill, yet whatever it is we know we're going to spend approximately the next 45 to 50 minutes learning some given skill. And then, as our cool-down/wrap up activity, we go through the Haptstucke every session, identifying each technique by name, in English and German, and demonstrating the technique.
So while we might like living in our informal society, and while we modern types might usually thrive under such relaxed structures, when it comes to HEMA training we want to keep things as formal as possible. Give it a try, come up with some format that you feel works for your club, and see if you don't notice an exponential increase in your overall skill level.
What kind of session structure does your club (or you, if you're an instructor) follow? Have you ever been to a very informal club that has no real structure? Did you find it frustrating, as I suggested in the post, or did you prefer that? Are there things your club does every training session compared to some things you do time to time?
OK, everyone, stay loose and train formally!
-- Scott
Dress codes have loosened over the years. In some offices, it's acceptable to wear jeans and a polo shirt, at many schools its normal to wear fuzzy pajama pants, and there is no longer any opprobrium to wearing shorts to church. Once coveted titles now are very often put aside, so we often call our doctors, teachers, and avuncular relationships by their first names. Previously rigid rituals, like hand writing and sending a thank you note, have been relaxed to a quick text saying "thanks." Most anywhere we've had the chance to wear off the sharp corners of formality into complete relaxation we have.
We are indeed very informal.
One area in which I would strongly encourage all of our HEMA community to not be relaxed is at regular training, regardless of what weapons systems or styles you train. In this regard, we are all well to keep it as rigid and formalized as possible.
 |
| OK, maybe not that formal... |
Here's what I mean: Let's say one of your club's regular training nights is during a two-hour block on Friday. In these two hours, time has been set aside to study a given weapon, which is why you and other people show up after having worked an eight-hour workday and a 40-hour week. You're tired, your club mates are tired, yet for the love of the art, you're willing to put aside this time to train in your weapon.
Now let's say the instructors spend the first 15 minutes of class just chatting with folks, catching up on their day, talking but not focusing one jot on your weapon studies. Then, after shooting the breeze for a while, they finally acknowledge it's time to begin, but they seem confused and turn to the group for suggestions as to what to do. You suggest one thing, a few people suggest some other things, there is a bit of debate until it's finally 25 minutes into your two-hour block before you begin training.
Then, because there was no formal plan to begin with, the instructors bounce from topic to topic -- almost as if whatever catches their fancy at the time is what the group will focus on at that moment -- so that there doesn't seem to be any cohesion or internal logic of what's being presented. Then, finally, the two hours just kind of fizzle out rather than end because, once again, there was no clear wrapup activity planned.
You'd most likely go home that night frustrated and annoyed, wondering why you wasted a Friday evening goofing around when you really wanted to train. Have one training session like this and it'll likely end at annoying, have session after session where you feel like you're wasting your time and you'll likely drop out of that club, or even quit HEMA altogether.
Any informal learning or training environment is doomed to fail. Not only is it doomed to fail but it is also almost guaranteed to drive away the people it is supposed to be teaching. Let's be honest, back in high school we all had that one class -- perhaps for some of us, it was more than one class -- where the teacher no longer cared and it was utter chaos. Most likely the only thing keeping you there was not being allowed to leave, or not wanting to get into trouble.
People at a HEMA club have no such restrictions. If they are not getting what they want they will leave. This is why keeping it formal is of such vast importance.
Please remember, I'm talking about the regular, weekly or several-times-a-week training you do as a club, not a specific class for novice members or for a different weapon. It should stand to reason that in such a case you'd have a tight, well thought out overall curriculum and specific lesson plans. It might be tempting to believe that once your club is passed the point of teaching novice members it's fine to allow for a looser, more democratic way of running regular club training.
Democracy is great, but not in the training environment. In that environment, you want to develop some kind of set program so folks will always know what the process is and what will happen first, second, third, etc. Ideally, you want someone to be able to arrive late and have a good sense of the time just by taking a look at what part of the training you're into.
You want the daily plan to be generally predictable with just enough fluidity that the learning doesn't become stagnant. What I mean by that is, for instance, if you decide to end every training session with a sparring game, don't do the same sparring game every time. Mixing the game up will keep people engaged and on their toes, but knowing that the session ends with a game of some sort will help give them a comfortable sense of structure.
Some time ago we developed a fairly rigid structure for our regular Longsword training sessions. Since then, I have noticed we tend to get far more done, what we get done is more focused and therefore effective, and everything is just generally more efficient than it was previously.
We begin every training session with line drills/warm-up drills. The specific set of line drills are different from session to session, so there's that flexible fluidity, yet there is still the obdurate fact of every session starts with line drills. After doing line drills for approximately 20 to 30 minutes we go into a set of warmup drills. There tends to be more variation with these so as to keep things fresh and interesting, but again it is a known there will be some drills of this type. We do these for, again, about another 20 to 30 minutes.
We then take a water break of about 10 minutes, then it's into the learning goal of the day. Here we have the most fluidity. Perhaps on this day, we're drilling Zorn hard, or maybe just focusing on the Mutieren, or doing learning drills to practice technique, or perhaps some other specific Longsword fighting skill, yet whatever it is we know we're going to spend approximately the next 45 to 50 minutes learning some given skill. And then, as our cool-down/wrap up activity, we go through the Haptstucke every session, identifying each technique by name, in English and German, and demonstrating the technique.
So while we might like living in our informal society, and while we modern types might usually thrive under such relaxed structures, when it comes to HEMA training we want to keep things as formal as possible. Give it a try, come up with some format that you feel works for your club, and see if you don't notice an exponential increase in your overall skill level.
⚔
What kind of session structure does your club (or you, if you're an instructor) follow? Have you ever been to a very informal club that has no real structure? Did you find it frustrating, as I suggested in the post, or did you prefer that? Are there things your club does every training session compared to some things you do time to time?
OK, everyone, stay loose and train formally!
-- Scott
Comments
Post a Comment