How To Scare Off New Fighters Day One

I see a lot of folks talking about what things we SHOULD be doing to get people to come back after their first practice. It can be helpful at times to look instead at the counterexamples of what NOT to do. Here’s an inexhaustive list of things I’ve personally seen at practices over the years. If there’s anything you think I’ve missed I’d love to hear your take and add it to the list. In no particular order here’s what I’ve seen.

1. Literally any sexism. This is an obvious one and while things seem (to my very male eyes) to have gotten better there’s still loads of improvements to be made here. Examples of this include men saying things like “Well women do this…”, jeering “Take it off!” as someone changes out of their sweaty gear, or letting that one dude in his fifties spend an inordinate amount of time with all of your college girls. It can also pop up in more subtle ways such as giving more attention to the men who walk in the door, dismissing women when they say that a particular action physically hurts for them to do, men coming over and interrupting a woman giving a lesson, talking over women, the list goes on. If you’re a man and you think you’ve never done any of these, you’re wrong. We could all do better.

2. Having a bad website. This is the easiest one to fix and is the most impactful if you mess it up. Your group needs a website and that website needs to have up to date information about when and where practice is every week. “Well we have a Facebook group.” College kids don’t use Facebook anymore. Do you want our populous to age out? Put up a website. See also having the wrong address up. If I drive forty five minutes to get someone, park, knock on the door, and then shoot someone a message only to find out the actual site is ten miles away, I’m not going to end up liking any of you. As well, make sure you have an email address on your website that someone regularly checks. I spent a whole semester in college studying in New York City. I found the local group’s website and sent an email to the marshal. They never got back to me, so I didn’t bother packing my swords. I just assumed the local group had folded. SURPRISE, they were active the whole time, I just had no good way of finding out. Have a website, have an email address, keep them up to date, and check them regularly. Same thing goes for any and all events. I’ve literally had to make a website for an event with the tournament schedule as one of the marshals in charge because the autocrat refused to do anything besides set up a Facebook event.

3. Over explaining the rules. When a new person comes to my practice I spend day one teaching them footwork, how to hold a sword, and how to lunge. They don’t need to know about the difference between rigid and puncture resistant armor. They don’t need to know about the five different experiments being run (I say this as someone who has spent years running two of them). They don’t need to know about the SCA’s award system or how ranks work at your HEMA school. They don’t need to know about baronies vs kingdoms or how your school is/isn’t a part of the HEMA Alliance. That person showed up to learn how to sword fight, let them spend their first while swinging a sword around.

4. Talking at them for the entire time. I’ve written on this before, but I’m going to emphasize again here that you shouldn’t be talking at them for the entirety of their first lesson. I realize they might not be at that stage where they know what questions to ask yet, but infodumping on them is not the answer. They are going to remember maybe three things you taught them that day. Let them get their reps in and stop overburdening them.

5. Trying to explain every different style all at once. When new folks come my way I hold up a rapier and a longsword and then ask which one they’d like to start learning. They do not need to know that for rapier they could be doing Fabris, Pacheco, or Meyer. If you do Italian, then teach them how to lunge. If you do destreza, teach them how to perform an atajo. If you do German then I don’t know, I don’t do German. You know when you open up Netflix and don’t know which movie to watch? Now imagine that same thing, but for someone who’s never seen a movie before. That’s called choice paralysis. I realize you’re trying to be helpful, but unless that person is an incredible outlier who came in the door already knowing what style they wanted to learn, you’re not helping them by trying to cover an entire century’s worth of swordplay in an hour or two. I’ve tried running that class for folks who’ve been at this for a few years and even they had trouble with it. Just give them one, maybe two options to start and then teach them the basics. If they want to branch out in a couple months that’s fine, but stop overloading them day one.

6. Only doing footwork. I realize that this is the “old school” way of doing things and it’s what my foil class was when I was a kid. You don’t have to go all the way to free sparring on day one, but I guarantee you every single person coming in your doors came there to learn how to use a sword. If you want them to come back, then put a sword in their hands. Our art is not so popular that we can afford to force people to prove themselves worthy of instruction. Hand them a sword and let them hit you with it.

7. Shit talking other groups. There are few qualities less attractive than constantly putting everyone else down. Whether you’re complaining that the other practice is just a bunch of “gun slingers”, that rattan isn’t “real sword fighting”, or that the folks a couple states over aren’t real masters of defense; none of that makes you look like the hero. Sure, once someone has been around for awhile you can start kvetching to them about whatever, put putting everyone else down day one just makes you seem like Cobra Kai.

8. Overload them with vocab. I’m in no way against using specific jargon to teach any given system. However, if day one is “memorize all twenty one of these guards” no one is going to remember a thing. See also, “All of our officers have fun medieval titles. Let me explain all of them to you.” That’s too much and it’s not relevant that early in the game.

9. Assume they’ll go up to people and ask for fights/lessons. There’s was a big issue for me early on. I didn’t feel confident with everyone’s names and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be trying to learn next. I would literally stand by the side of the field for ten to fifteen minutes at a time wondering if I should just up and quit. It’s one thing if your new folks need a break, but if they’re just standing around holding a sword you need to personally go over to them and ask them to dance. You can’t just assume that someone else will pick up the slack. Go over there and do it yourself. These are people who have spent years dreaming of learning how to fight with swords and now they only have a couple hours each week to try and fulfill that dream. Don’t waste that time having them just standing around. More importantly, humans want to feel included. There’s a tiny number of extreme extroverts out there who will invite themselves into things, but 95% of us are going to need someone else to make the first move when we’re first starting out.

10. Not having enough equipment/equipment that doesn’t fit. I realize that unlike the others this one requires money, but people want to feel good in their bodies. If all of your gorgets are built for linebackers, anyone smaller who comes in the door is going to feel physically unsafe as the armor their wearing won’t adequately protect them. If all of your jackets are made for runway models, then those of us who enjoy simple carbs aren’t going to be able to participate unless we decide to go out and buy something for ourselves. If the head instructor prefers really beefy blades and demands that everyone else follow suit, anyone with tendonitis is being sent the message that they aren’t welcome and need to go and find the door. You don’t need to go out and buy top of the line gear for people who may or may not stick around, but you should have enough so that people can play and not have to fight their equipment in addition to their opponent.

11. Not answering questions. Alright, I get it, your method has worked for whole swathes of people and you just want this new person to follow the plan. It turns out, though, that our brains aren’t all set up the same. Now of course there’s such things as dishonest questions or you might not have time that day to answer everything that one student is asking you. Overall, though, questions shouldn’t be seen as someone challenging your authority. They should be seen as someone wanting to more deeply engage with the material. There are times someone will ask me about feints when they don’t even know how to lunge, but broadly speaking if someone is far enough along to ask the question then they’re far enough along to hear the answer. I don’t know if this is the best way to make someone a super star in under two years, but it is how you make people feel valued and like they have a hand in their own learning journey.

12. One size fits all approaches. Look, pretty much any high level practitioner is going to teach from a system and that inherently means there’s options that are inside of that system and options that are outside of that system. Within any effective system, though, there can be more than one correct answer. If I’m teaching someone to lunge I’m going to be dogmatic about their front knee being in line with their front foot. I’ve seen what happens when people do a full on sideways lunge. That said, if it’s uncomfortable for them to keep their back foot at a 90 degree angle and want to turn their foot in a bit, that’s fine. Everyone’s bodies are built differently. My master of defense is left handed and has bad knees. While my game is pretty close to his, there are going to be forks in the road where he went one way and I went the other way. He didn’t beat me into never using a deep lunge, he beat me into making sure I covered my face.

13. Just hitting them in the face without any real instruction hoping that they’ll figure it out. This is something a good friend of mine has done a fair bit of research into. Out of the twenty or so people at my local practice, I can think of two of them for whom this has somewhat worked. I’m not stats wiz, but 10% is not a great success rate. If I go out to do twenty passes and got beat twenty different times, that’s an overwhelming amount of data to sift through. If I was told to work on just one specific thing, tell my training partner what I’m working on, and then they set up a scenario where I can succeed 70% of the time, now I can start to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Give people a lesson and then let them get that lesson into their bones via freeplay. Don’t use the new people to show off how much better you are. You’re not impressing anyone.

Alright, that’s enough for one day. Wherever you’re seeing this, I’d really appreciate if you could respond in the comments which of these you’ve personally experienced as well as what all I might have missed.

If you appreciate my approach in these articles, then good news, I’ve got two big workshops coming up.

First I’ll be teaching a day long track on Bolognese longsword at The Longsword Symposium just outside of St. Louis on November 9th. If you’re looking a deep dive into a system that doesn’t get the love it deserves, then this is the event for you.

https://shatteredcrystal.midrealm.org/longsword-symposium/

Second, I’ll be teaching a class on “Finding Your Area of Excellence with Longsword” at Indes-Cember in Urbana, IL on December 7th. While I’ll of course be pulling from the Bolognese masters for this, the class is designed to be applicable regardless of which style of fencing you yourself practice. https://www.temperedmettlehistoricalfencing.com/events/

Finally, I’m currently working on the finishing touches of my first book “Bolognese Longsword: For the Modern Practitioner” which should hopefully be out in early December. I don’t have a way to set up pre-orders, so make sure to watch this space for updates.