Drill of the Week - Solo Drill: Steps and Attacks (20-May-06)

Description
The fencers are spread out to form a line (or multiple lines) with adequate space so that none of them interfere with each other when performing the steps and attacks of their system. One fencer will serve as the caller (in our school, he will also perform the drill as he calls it). The caller will state the technique which is immediately performed by all of the fencers. The selection of techniques is stated beforehand--usually a subset of all of the techniques of your system. An example of this drill might be:

Start in the guard of Fabris' Terza, all lunges and passes are in Quarta, the Girata is of the left foot (i.e. the void sometimes known as the Inquartata):

	What Caller Says	What Fencers Do
1	In Guardia	From 1st position, come on guard into Fabris' Terza
2	Advance	Advance forward one step
3	Lunge	Lunge in Quarta and maintain lunge until next command
4	Recover	Recover back into guard of Terza
5	Advance Two	Advance forward two steps
6	Pass Quarta	Perform a pass in Quarta, ending position should be that illustrated by Fabris' Plate 20.
7	Recover Forward	Bring right foot forward to return to the guard of Terza
8	Retreat Two	Retreat two steps backward
9	Girata	Perform the Girata of the Left Foot so the ending position looks like that illustrated by Fabris' Plate 19.
10	Recover Forward	Bring right foot forward to return to the guard of Terza
11	etc...

Prerequisites
The participants in this drill must be able to correctly perform all of the techniques that will be called, otherwise they will not be able to perform the drill or they will reinforce bad habits.

Goal
In addition to providing an excellent way to warmup and judge or improve your fitness level, this drill forces you to perform the fundamental actions of your system as they are called and without mentally analyzing them before you perform them.

Notes
This drill might be familiar to those with a sport fencing background, and in fact, that was my source of inspiration. This drill can include more specific techniques or combinations of techniques. An example might be "Feint with cavazione with advance" which would mean at the same time you advance, you would perform a cavazione to feint an attack on the new line, then you would elude the parry by performing another cavazione and lunge. This is an excellent way to train the mechanics of these actions so that they become second nature.

List of Drills