Monday 9 March 2009

Free training musings

I thought it would be fun to have some free training last saturday. Free training is an unofficial class where students can pick and choose what style or techniques within a style to train without any organised class structure. Saturday saw us split into two groups, one concentrating on the abrazare plays, the other on 1.33 (see previous post).

Despite my reservations on the outcome of the sword and buckler group, I think the idea was generally a good one. Nevertheless, it seems to be the case that in our group at least, quite a few people like to have a class leader to tell them what to do and take them through or suggest material to train. I was kind of hoping that our lot are independent or comfortable enough to pick something that they want to train and then just get on with it by themselves. Some are, some are not. Ok, so perhaps the next free training will be divided into a structured class for half of the training period and the remaining half will be designated "free".

Perhaps I missed something from saturday's training. The free training is a relatively new event for a lot of our group and even training 1.33 (which we have trained sporadically before) was sufficiently "new" to put some people outside their "comfort zones". When things didn't go exactly to plan, I was left with the feeling that I "failed" in leading the 1.33 class. I guess that in hindsight, this being out of the comfort zone applied equally to me as I'm not used to leading a group in sword and buckler and this reflected on my performance. Still, to look at it more positively, we need to train 1.33 more, and while I may not be good at leading a class in it yet, repetition will make me better.

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