Recently
I was listening to an older fencer talk with a younger fencer. He
asked the fencer why he was doing something he was doing. The fencer
gave an answer, and honestly, what he was doing was not the most
adaptive choice he could have been making. The older fencer responded
that the kid wasn’t wrong in his choice because he scored the touch
so it must have been right.
Later
in the night I was giving a lesson and the athlete I was working with
commented that when he kind of follows instructions he can sort of
make the action work, but that it seems more solid and consistent
when fully follows the instruction. This should kind of be obvious,
the more correctly you do something, the better the result.
My
response to him was something along the lines of “You’re at a
point where almost right isn’t good enough.”
Thinking
about it later made me think on the two different approaches to the
idea of an error. Both students could score with what they were
doing. One would continue his error because it worked in practice,
the other was going to fix it.
The
student continuing the error will eventually find that against a more
serious opponent or a better opponent, the bad choice won’t work as
well. The student working to improve his mistake will have a tool he
can use in a broader number of scenarios than he can use now.
A
tough thing with recognizing that we have to do things right even if
the wrong thing works is that sometimes our mistakes get rewarded and
our efforts to correct how we make an action get shut down.
In
a bout a student might do something ridiculous that scores because
his partner does something poorly or ill chosen. Or it might just be
too weird for their opponent to figure out how to stop. A student
recognizing an error and trying to fix it might think he’s fixed it
and might just be fencing a better opponent, or someone who knows how
to stop that action, or someone who gets lucky with a weird touch.
They might take steps to fix their action and the steps might just
not be enough to fix it…yet. Not scoring might reinforce not using
the action or not making the correction, and so sometimes we have to
help illustrate the incremental improvement, or how the execution is
better even if its not yet successful.
On
the flip side, sometimes we have to make the awkward choice of
explaining that something was not a good choice even when it seems
like it worked. Students don’t always get this when it’s
explained because the positive reinforcement from scoring is stronger
than us telling them otherwise. Even if we show them that the mistake
loses against a better executed response, the positive reinforcement
of scoring is stronger than the positive punishment of getting scored
on. So if we let the mistake go long enough it can be tough to
extinguish it.
A
helpful element in this is if the student has a cohort of teammates
they’re close with and they all have a sense of what the right way
to execute the actions are, even if they can’t all consistently do
them. Not only do they help remind each other to correct errors but
having that culture of being committed to correctness allows the
students to focus on it themselves as well. When they begin to
correct themselves as soon as they notice the mistake it can help get
them on track before the error is reinforced.
While
having some sort of negative response to poor execution isn’t
necessary, I’ve had college students who would assign themselves
push ups if they realized they were executing actions incorrectly.
I’ve had youth fencers successfully extinguish some basic errors in
their teammates with the same approach. Self-directed and peer
directed correction can be pretty powerful and offset the strength
that reinforcement through scoring with the wrong choice would
otherwise have.
The
biggest piece of this though is just instilling a sense of the
importance of correct execution and the broader success that it will
lead to. That said, students still need to understand that once they
have it right then they have room for personalization and innovation.
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