A good teacher doesn’t just impart information to their students, they empower their students to be excellent learners. In my classes, I’m thinking not just about how I can increase my students' ability with a given technique in that moment, but what I can give them that will help them meaningfully practice, implement, and build…
Read More... from How to Create Empowered Learners; Not Just Competent Practitioners
This past week during my polearms class one of my students, who is hard of hearing, asked me to put on a wireless microphone (worn as a necklace). This microphone connects to a receiver in his hearing aids that allows him to hear me more clearly regardless of where I am in class, which way…
Read More... from Taking Charge of Your Learning Environment
The route from learning a new skill to pulling it off in combat is not a simple process. Though you can take many skills immediately into combat and make some progress, it is more effective to follow a formal process that targets the skill in a focused manner at each stage of its development. Stage…
One of the slowest ways to build a new combat skill is to try to practice that skill in combat. Yet I have many people who take a class from me in my school or at a workshop, and then attempt to bring that skill into their repertoire through sparring alone. The problem is that…
In many of our classes at Duello we have a section where students of all levels drill with one another, one-on-one. It’s a great opportunity for inexperienced students to gain from the physical knowledge of experienced partners, for members of the school to meet and connect with one another, and for technique to be tested…
Read More... from How to Help Your Drill Partner, Not Slow Their Learning
Provost, I feel like I need to get more practice in but I don’t have much time outside of the classes I do. What do you recommend? I think the solution here is to strive for quality over quantity. That is, make every minute in class or open floor be devoted to practice. Here…
Read More... from Ask Clint: Tips for Making the Most Out of Class!
Learning physical skills is a tricky thing. It’s important as a student that you’re practicing in the most effective and efficient manner for getting results in your desired performance environment (e.g. a duel, a tournament, a melee, etc.). Two Types of Practice There are two primary practice schema that can be applied when acquiring new…
Read More... from Optimising Your Learning: Blocked and Varied Practice Environments
Welcome to a new year of training and sword fighting! I hope that everyone has enjoyed their holiday and is ready to get back to their physical training regimes with a newly renewed passion. We are starting off this month we three rapier topics: receiving the opponent (for level 1), voids (for level 2), and…
This month we are taking the techniques out to three separate weapons: the rapier, sidesword, and longsword, with each we will be exploring the fundamentals of how to cut effectively, efficiently, and safely. If you have the opportunity, follow the exercises at each level so you can deepen your understanding of this essential form of…
Welcome to the last week of one of the most intricate and fundamentally satisfying months of curriculum at Academie Duello. In Longsword focus we continue to work on the fundamental blows, seeking to make them as precise and powerful as possible. In the Mastery program, Greens (level 1) take the techniques of the first three…
This week on DuelloTV: Green cords (level 1) are moving into the strategic side of the rapier with classes on Stringere and responding to the opponent, Blues (level 2) focus on the foundation of the Deceptive Fight, and Reds (level 3) on contra-tempo and how to defeat it. For our longsword focus we are moving…
Welcome to the first full week of November. This week we are including the first of our new longsword series that follows our technical focus classes. In these classes we run on a 6 month cycle of themes: 1. Precision, 2. Crossing, 3. Giocco Stretto, 4. Tempo and Provocation, 5. Guards, 6. Defeating Guards. Last…
It's a new month of curriculum at Academie Duello. Our focus this month is on Fundamentals pretty much all the way around. Mastery program classes at all three levels are working on single rapier foundations; longsword class is focusing on precision and posture in all the attacks; and Sidesword focus is working on the fundamentals…
I was doing some drills with a fellow student last week and noticed an interesting phenomenon. The drill was as follows: Agente controls Patiente's weapon Patiente disengages to strike Agente strikes in contratempo I was the Patiente for the drill. I gave my partner a few tries to get warmed up in the drill and…
We're into the last week of our rapier focused month at Academie Duello. Green cords are countering offhand parries, blue cords are exploring the diversity of rapier and dagger plays that can be found in each tempo, and red cords are concluding their unit on striking with the dagger. Also to keep your sidesword work…
This week at Academie Duello and on Duello.TV we're looking at advanced techniques for the unified defence of rapier and offhand (green cord), the 5th and 6th rapier guards with dagger (blue cord), and employing the dagger within disarms (red cord). We also have some longsword exercises that pertain to some of the exercises students…
This week at Academie Duello we're deepening our study of the rapier with further use of the offhand, dagger, and disarms. We're also checking in regularly on our work with the sidesword, this week with a series of excellent cutting exercises. Meanwhile we've started shooting new longsword content from our Longsword Focus classes. So look…
Read More... from Lesson Videos: Rapier offhand, dagger, and disarms as well as sidesword cutting
It's the turn of a new month so again our curriculum focus shifts. This month Green Cords (level 1) will be learning to use their offhand to support their defence, Blue Cords (level 2) will be stepping into the fundamentals of Rapier and Dagger, and Red Cords (level 3) are working into rapier disarms with…