Teach Them What They Want to Learn

A question I’ve been getting a lot lately goes along the lines of, “I have a student who wants to learn X, what should I do?” My response as of late has just been, “Wait, you have someone so excited about swords that they went out and find something on their own and now want your help diving deeper into it? May we all be so lucky!”

One of the beauties about teaching swordplay to a 21st century audience is that there’s nothing people “have to” learn. Alternatively, if I go to a martial arts school that proclaims it’s solely focused on self-defense but doesn’t ever go over how to deal with multiple attackers, how to respond when someone pulls a knife, or even just de-escalation, then I know that place won’t give me what I need. If I live in a particularly rough neighborhood or work a job like being a bouncer at a night club, there are self defense skills that I need to have if I want to make it out alive. I don’t have the luxury to go on academic tangents, see how Capoferro plagiarized dall’Aggochie’s chapter on tempo, or worry about memorizing katas. These days, though, fencing instructors aren’t under any such pressures. No one is showing up to our doorstep saying they have a duel in forty days and have never picked up a sword before. If you do somehow end up in a situation like that as a fencing coach, feel free to give me a call because there’s no way I want to just hear that story without wanting to have been a part of it.

At this point it could be easy to view what I’m saying as “well swords don’t really matter”. They do. They matter a ton. Swordplay is my life’s work. It’s how I met most of my friends, it’s how I met my partner, it’s how I ended up being the best man at a wedding, it’s what I wrote a book about. For me, at least, swords are one of the single most important things in my life. I’ve turned down work just so I could go to practice and get myself to tournaments. Instead, what I’m saying is that the consequences to not focusing on this or that part of swordplay are pretty insignificant.

I’ve been teaching folks how to swordfight for most of my life and have had the pleasure of getting to do so across the globe. From that experience I can tell you right now that the single hardest thing to teach is drive. I can break down Fabris’s ramblings in book II into just a few lines, I can take Marozzo’s nearly illiterate chicken scratch and tell you how to win a longsword tournament, I can help you finally click with feints, and I can demystify the often forgot pillar of fencing that is tempo. The thing I can’t do is make someone care about taking the next step. I can show someone my passion and move aside as many barriers as possible, but ultimately it’s up to the student to want to go deeper.

If someone comes to me with “this is what I want to study next”, I will do everything I can to meet them where they’re at. I may not have studied saber, but I understand sidesword well enough that I can probably get you started. My heart when it comes to swordplay will always lay in Italy, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been able to train folks to be successful Meyerists.

Sure, there’s definitely areas of focus that won’t lead to tournament success I might warn someone of that at the outset. At the end of the day, though, I teach adults how to play with swords. If they want to make the choice to try and do I.33 in every sword and buckler tournament even when they have to face folks reading books from two hundred years later using complex hilts, that’s fine, they can make that choice. I’m just excited that they want to learn. That part’s hard enough on its own that I’m not going to come in and tell someone they need to focus on something else instead. I might intervene if I see that their idea of a lunge is my idea of a knee surgery or I might say, “Hey that’s a great step five to aim at, let’s work on these four pieces you’ll need to get there”, but ultimately my students are responsible for whatever direction they want to take in their learning.

Now yes, there’s a time and place for everything. If I got hired to come and teach a Bolognese longsword workshop, interrupting me mid lesson to ask a question about differentiates Spanish and German rapier is not the move to go with. There’s also times that instead of trying to help a student with something myself, I’ll point them to somebody else in the room who’d be better at explaining it. Sure, I have a pretty wide knowledge base when it comes to swordplay, but there’s entire traditions where my answer is just going to be, “Go ask that person over there”. Even within traditions I have studied, there are of course going to be better people for certain topics. There’s a reason professional sports teams have dedicated coaches for different areas. Sure, your head coach could probably help you craft a strength regimen, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone better for it on staff.

Yes, there are of course folks out there who ask questions just to show off and even if those questions are on topic, that moment might not be the moment to answer them. My response, though, isn’t be to dismissive. Instead, I promise to do my best to help them find the answer they’re looking for later on. Now I don’t always have time to work with everyone at an event (or even a practice) who asks, but with what time I do have I’m more than happy to spend it trying to answer whatever questions people have. Even if someone approaches me just trying to show off what they know, my answer is to answer them genuinely. Lots of students just want to be heard, and if I can do that without slowing everyone else down, then I feel like I’ve done my job well.

I’ll be teaching at three different events this fall. First, I’ll be teaching a class on how to coach, as well as spending a few hours afterwards providing one on one coaching at the Midlands Academy of Defense on September 6th just outside of Urbana, IL. https://placeforstuff.net/events/2025/MAD/

After that I’ll be teaching a brand new class on Bolognese case (two sideswords), an incredibly fun part of the tradition that almost never gets the love it deserves. The class will be at the Pferdesdadt Rapier Classic in Caledonia, OH on September, 13th. https://pferdestadt.midrealm.org/pferdestadt-rapier-classic/

Finally I’ll be leading a panel discussion on how the Italian, German, and Spanish fencing traditions as a whole compare to each other at the Royal University of the Midrealm just outside of Chicago on October 11th.

https://ayreton.midrealm.org/royal-university-of-the-midrealm-fall-2025/

As always, my book “Bolognese Longsword for the Modern Practitioner” is for sale at FoolOfSwords.com.