Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Class structure

SCA classes are notoriously un-structured. I sutddied for a time under Paul but I was not close at hand so did not take regualr classes with him. His (and possibly the Asgard and Grendelus systems) is the most structured learning program in the SCA. Everybody I know who was a product of Paul's program--doing unarmored slow work and pell work for six months to a year, then practice based on drills not combat for another year, has turned out to be a truly good fighter and, at the end of those two years, was fighting at either a Knightly level or very close to it. I've tried at various times to institute such a program, but it never sticks. People want to do what I admittedly did: lace it up and go!

I once heard that every John Wooden practice was exactly the same. They did the same drills in the same order every single day. I don't need quite that much structure, but a little bit is good.

With that in, I copied this from Korwyn's LJ. It is his proposal for a class structure for his Monday night gatherings in Vegas (I used to do 1000 blows at the pell, but not all of them were always full speed, and in the end it gave me bursitis and I had to stop fighting for two months). What do you all think?

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In general the way I think I need to conduct this is as follows:
0. Warm up 6 point drill on one of the pells
1. Ask if anyone has a specific thing on their mind, sometimes this turns out to springboard a lecture.
2. Do an unarmored drill, specific to what we are trying to focus on (last night was stepping into blows to suck the power out).
3. Do at least one show me a shot session with the whole group.
4. Split up and do some blows to the heavy pell, or the targeting pell just to get the arms loose.
5. Specific discussion of whatever topic is (Mental fight, range, killing on the ground, blocking with specific shields).
6. Some discussions and creating new drills.

I know that this can be less organic, and more formalized, but I am not sure I need/ want it so.

Next week's unarmored drill is throwing 2 liter bottles (empty ones).

Oh, the variation on the 6 point drill (72 shots) we seem to be trending to is as follows:
Throw the drill from each guard (High Right, High Left, Low Right, Low Left)
When that gets dull, do the same, but in each of the foot positions (Right lead, Left lead, center or horse).
When that gets dull, do the same but you must step between each blow.

So at it's most extreme it is serious cardio, and you throw 864 blows. Then of course there is the left hand...

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