OR - How Not to be a Sword-Wielding Zombie
Drilling, specifically paired drilling, is a big part of our classes in NYC, and likely almost everywhere in HEMA. It’s a way of learning a technique by executing it over and over to build up "muscle memory" and refine the movement until it works in a predictable setting.
Drilling, specifically paired drilling, is a big part of our classes in NYC, and likely almost everywhere in HEMA. It’s a way of learning a technique by executing it over and over to build up "muscle memory" and refine the movement until it works in a predictable setting.
What I kept coming back to was what it means to be a good drilling partner. If I have someone across from me, what do I need to do to make sure they succeed in their learning goals and what do I need from them to get the most out of my training time?
As I kept thinking about various scenarios that went well or poorly – I came to realize a few things:
- The most important piece of learning through drilling is mindfulness.
- b. We often forget that and become sword-wielding zombies.
- Mindfulness is a trainable skill.
- When it comes to moving from cooperative to non-cooperative drilling, we often move straight to sparring or trying to “win” the drill, making it difficult to execute the technique.
Usually, it is a very minor drift, not enough to be unsafe (though that happens too), but enough that we begin to preempt an action, aim for the sword rather than the person, or settle into a rhythm, among other things.
However, preempting an action will prevent your partner from feeling the correct response to stimulus. Aiming for your partner’s sword instead of their head will put your sword at a different geometric relationship to theirs, making it harder to succeed at a certain movement. Settling into a rhythm trains pattern recognition rather than reflexes.
How do you teach mindfulness?
I still had a fundamental problem: teaching people to be mindful requires mindfulness.Mindfulness is a trainable skill, as anyone who practices meditation can tell you. It is trained by doing – by bringing your attention back to the present again and again.
How do you teach people to do that, not in one class, but as an ongoing practice?
My experience of mindfulness comes from a theatrical context: meditation and Alexander technique – bringing your awareness to your body and breath. There is a particular kind of guided meditation that instructs you to practice measured breathing while focusing on your relationship to your body, one part at a time from your toes to your head.
So I decided to think of a drill as guided mediation. If training is a body, what are its parts?
I identified safety, speed, intent (vs force), distance, targeting, pacing, and (as one of my teachers says) “do the first thing first”.
In addition, I wanted to add an extra piece to address my third bullet point – moving from cooperative to non-cooperative drilling.
To be clear, THESE ARE NOT THE ONLY THINGS YOU CAN FOCUS ON. There are many aspects of practice that you can focus on in a drill. My main concern was improving the interaction between training partners rather than on other aspects that one can focus on to improve one’s own practice.
What's in your toolkit?
Focusing on an aspect of training is great, but ultimately useless if you do not give people ways to keep checking in with that aspect and make sure they are still focusing on it. I needed a “mindfulness toolkit”.We all have ways of checking our actions to make sure we are doing the right thing. There is no lack of “tricks” that we can use to make sure that we have, for example, proper distance. The problem with them is twofold.
- We do not always apply these checks consistently when we drill – either because someone is still learning them, because we are so comfortable with the movement that we do not feel the need to, or because we get so competitive that good habits go out the window
- We are not explicit about them. We believe we can perform an action appropriate for our partner’s needs without checking in and deliberately modifying our actions.
Being explicit, and in many cases verbally explicit, in the context of drilling is important. It accommodates people who learn differently, clarifies any unspoken assumptions, and allows people to ask for what they need.
Constructing a Class
The class that I designed was set up to repeat one drill over and over, while focusing on different aspects of training by using tools from the “toolkit” of mindfulness.The first thing we looked at was safety - ie, if you notice yourself or your partner doing something unsafe, stop the drill and reset.
Next, in focusing on speed, we began with setting the speed by having the “Learner” salute in at the speed that they wished to work at and then increasing incrementally from there.
The intent portion encouraged focus on good cutting mechanics balanced with control. It was also my way to emphasize that force and intent are not the same thing. Force doesn’t have a place in partnered drilling - intent does. You can execute a movement with the correct mechanics, control and intent to cut without using force enough to concuss someone if they make a mistake and do not parry. To put it another way, don’t put into motion what you cannot stop - both for your own safety and everyone else’s.
The distance portion began by checking distance and paying attention to how variation in distance affected the technique.
Targeting added in “honesty checks” of both roles not performing an action to make sure the person was not preemptively seeking out the other person’s sword rather than the appropriate target. The “first thing first” portion similarly added in honesty checks to make sure reactions were preceded by an instigating action.
Non-Cooperative Drilling
The last piece involved the spectrum of non-cooperation.Depending on how much experience you have, either with the technique or sometimes in general, you may want to increase the level of difficulty.
However, here’s where I think we can be better at this:
- It should be the LEARNER’S choice about increasing the level of cooperation unless explicitly instructed to by the teacher. As the Learner, unless you are getting the technique right most of the time, don’t do this.
- Also, “Make it harder for me” is vague and can sometimes push you from one side of the spectrum all the way over to the impossible side of the spectrum. It can also increase bad habits instead of making changes that help the Learner understand how fully they have grasped the technique.
I asked the class to brainstorm specific elements that could be added in, one at a time, to the drill that would make it harder or more dynamic.
Here’s what we came up with:
- Deliberately changing the distance
- Adding footwork
- Tracking the person
- Adding an after-blow to make sure they are staying safe after executing a technique
- Stepping back
- Changing the pacing of exchanges
- Changing the pacing within an exchange, tempo
- Switching dominant hand
I asked people to partner with others of similar experience to themselves. It can be done with people of various experience levels, but I wanted to give more experienced people the opportunity to create greater challenge for themselves and their partners, while those who were still struggling to do the drill in isolation could simply focus on that.
The Learner was asked to pick one element from the list and inform their partner of what it was. The Coach role would then build it into the drill.
After trying it out, they switched and then were allowed to choose another element or, if they were succeeding more than 80% of the time, keep the same element and build in a second element.
At the end, we tried all the tools in our toolkit with a new drill that I hoped most people had not seen before to see if deliberately building in the practices created a more mindful atmosphere for learning something new.
What I Learned
There were some challenges to the class – some of which were simple facilitation difficulties – fumbling with timers and swapping partners meant that it went very quickly and we were short on time at the end.The difference of experience levels in any class is a general challenge, and I felt I needed to reassure several newer students who were still having trouble with the basic technique that it was ok – they weren’t meant to focus on the success of the technique so much as the elements of drilling.
It demonstrates that these tools alone are not enough to help everyone learn a technique. Focusing on these elements does not mean people can learn a technique more quickly. In fact, because they are focusing on specific aspects, they may learn it more slowly, but hopefully, correctly.
I also sensed that more experienced students, many of whom have been practicing for years longer than I have, felt that the pacing early on was not engaging enough. If you can do Zornhau Ort in your sleep, focusing on the various parts of drilling, while useful as long-term tools, does not make a drill more interesting. It wasn’t until we got to the elements of non-cooperation that many of the more experienced students seemed to be fully engaged.
I would also love feedback on the tools other practitioner's have in their toolkits. What ways do you check your practice or guide a drill?
What did work, and the thing that left me with the most hope, was when students were asked to drill the unfamiliar technique, I saw several people build in these elements successfully and troubleshoot their own drilling practice. I saw people readjust their distance, not respond to check targeting, change their speed so that their partner could practice at a different pace, and succeed on their own without any need for me to step in.
A big thank you to all of you who gave me advice, empowerment, encouragement and who participated in the class! I learn so much from you every day!