How to Teach a Basic Class: The Swordsman's Quick Guide, #5

By Guy Windsor

*This instalment of The Swordsman's Quick Guide has been included as a chapter in the author's book The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts.*

 

This fifth instalment of The Swordsman's Quick Guide will help anyone who wants to start teaching basic classes, in any martial art. It covers everything from safety, to planning classes, to making corrections in class, to how to get your own training done while you're teaching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spada Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9798201512132

Guy Windsor

Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.

Book preview

The Swordsman’s Quick Guide

Part 5

How to Teach a Basic Class

Guy Windsor

The Swordsman’s Quick Guide Series

Hello, and welcome to The Swordsman’s Quick Guide series. Booklets in this series are concerned with various aspects of life in general and training historical swordsmanship in particular. I have been studying and practising historical European swordsmanship, mostly from medieval and renaissance Italian sources, since the early 1990s. In 2001 I opened my first proper school, and I have been making my living as an instructor (and writer on this topic) ever since. The instalments are intended to put my key ideas about a single subject together in one place for easy reference, and so they are not specific to one weapon, style, or system. As such, they should also be useful to most other martial artists.

In many cases, I cover the specific systems in detail in one or another of my books. For Fiore’s longsword techniques, you will probably find my The Medieval Longsword useful; for Capoferro’s rapier plays, see The Duellist's Companion. In this series I will do my best to stay general, so that the fundamental principles are not hidden behind system-specific jargon and examples.

The ideas for which topics to cover in this series mostly come from the questions I have been asked by my readers and students; so if you think of a topic you’d like me to include, please let me know! You can find me on the usual social networking sites, and also on my own website, www.guywindsor.net/blog

How to Teach a Basic Class

Making corrections

How to Structure a Basic Class

How to Write a Class Plan

Demonstrate, Explain, Demonstrate, Practice

How should you demonstrate?

Class Progression

Different Kinds of Practice

Teaching from a List of Requests

How do you get your own training done?

Using Beginners

What Happens if there’s an Accident?

Common Problems

Disruptive questions:

Your students know more than you do:

An Unresponsive Class

Hopeless Students

Aggressive or Unsafe students

Dojo Busting

Defining Success

Thanks and Credits

Further reading

How to Teach a Basic Class

Teaching a basic class can be quite daunting for an inexperienced instructor. The purpose of this instalment of The Swordsman’s Quick Guide is to give you a set of guidelines for organising and teaching a basic class. I have been teaching basic classes of one sort or another for well over twenty years, and it’s my nature to refine anything I do regularly into a system. If I wasn’t teaching swordsmanship I’d be teaching something else, because giving instruction is my best learning environment. If ever I’m having difficulty with any skill, be it woodwork, writing, or getting my sword to go where it should, I conjure up an imaginary student and in my mind teach them how to do it. Instant improvement, every time. This means that my job suits my nature, yes; but it also means that because I’ve never really studied teaching, I find it very difficult to pass on my teaching skills.