This section is presently still under construction.

Soon we hope to be sharing information on our training methodology and interpretations of techniques and principals in both written form and videos.

Watch this space......

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Drill Work:
Drills are the core of picking up fandemental skills, developing competency in base techniques and improve the flow and sequence of motion.
However drill work can quickly become disengaging for a learner unless they are challenged to apply these skills under increasing levels of pressure and duress.
For this reason we separate our drills into multiple levels and types of drills with varied purpose and learning aims.

Form Drills:
Form drills are the foundation of good technique, they focus on individual techniques and work to correct basic structure, sequence of motion, timing, breathing, application of principals and biomechanics
Examples:
Warm Up Drill, Angle Cutting Drilling, Static Long-Point drills (beats,winding thrust etc)

Technique Drills:
These make up the majority of the curriculum for new learners, they take all basics techniques and counters and train them against opposition in escalating levels of difficulty starting with poor attacks or defences being broken by basic technique and continuing to increase in difficulty as the learner progresses to deal with functional attacks, counter strikes and defences before moving to more advanced drill work..
Examples:
All opposed drills

Flow drills:
Flow drills build on technique drills allowing multiple techniques to be practices one after the other with the opposing learner either defending or countering multiple times.
Flow drills teach chaining of multiple motions, aiming to improve timing and sequence of motion. 

They often present their own problems when on action in the sequence is incorrect or the brain wants to skip steps to take the final action.
Examples:
Variation drills which allow the agent or patient-agent to continuously apply one motion to next, parry riposte, multiple attacks etc.

Dynamic Drills (Branching Scenarios):
Dynamic Drilling is the first step towards assaulting in sword play and sparring in pugilism and unarmed arts.
This is something we aim to move all learners to from their second term onwards.
Dynamic Drills can be done at ever increasing levels of speed, compliance and complexity, where an action may have multiple possible responses and the agent must trigger the response and then counter it.
To be done properly it requires each learner to have their own head, body and hand protection.
At a higher skill level Dynamic drills become Dynamic flow drills where each branch continues to develop with the agent or patient needing to stay in motion while they box their training partner in.
Examples:
A learner is allowed to use all variation responses listed under a drill in an attempt to limit, obstruct, confound and restrict their training partner.

 
Limited Assaults/Limited Sparring/Limited Free Play:
These are a form of sparring game which can be used to limit the risk of injury with limited the safety equipment.
They do risk the formation of bad habits due to their own limitations but are used as a learners first steps towards actually applying the skills they have learned.
They are generally where we cease progress for new learners until they have all the required equipment for full assaulting.
Examples:
Bind work game/Bind assault, single ward assault, head shot only, ringen am schwert, clinch wrestling, set hold folk wrestling styles.

 

Assaults:
Assaults are a traditional term for sparring with swords, we try to avoid the anacronysm of using the term "sparring" for any sword play related activities as traditionally it is a term for boxing.
The aim at this level of training is to always make assaulting as realistic as can be safely achieved, this means as much as we can we try not to restrict techniques or introduce rule systems but instead rule on what constitutes a kill shot, a yield position or a disabling your opponent.The aim of assaulting should be to apply the techniques, mechanics and principals learned in previous drill work, ideally with assaulting taking around 20% of all training at an advanced level.

Tournaments:
To us tournaments are simply another learning experience, since even the Martial Sports we study are used in our self defence curriculum and we are not trying to warp or distort historical arts into modern sports.
We have our own local tournaments for our students where members from other NZSEMA schools are welcome to join, we also have students attend the national NZSEMA tournament in Wellington.
Our students are welcome to compete in "sports H.E.M.A" tournaments hosted by groups outside of the NZSEMA group but we do not train to meet the requirements of other groups rule sets.

Test Cutting:
For weapon arts, Test Cutting is one of the most valuable aspects of training, test cutting allows learners to apply the techniques they have learned with a live weapon (sharp sword etc) and to complete the technique against different target mediums.
The aim of this to ensure their application of technique actually does what it is meant to do and to ensure we do not fall into the trap some groups do where their weapon arts are simply "tiggy with swords"
In the future we hope to keep developing our test cutting rigs to create more realistic simulations and rigs that are set up to test all weapons and techniques.
Put simply if you cannot apply the technique with a sharp weapon it needs to be questions whether you should score off that technique in an assault.

Uneven Drills:
These drills normally apply to self defence arts more so than other systems and can include dealing with an armed assailant or having to manoeuvre to not be confronted by more than one assailant at a time.
Example:
Unarmed vs Dagger, Mixed Sword (ie Longsword vs Messer or Sword and Buckler) in the future we would also like to do Armoured vs Unarmed.

Coaching:
We believe in dissection of techniques through recordings.
We like to have our learners dissect drill and assault videos published on youtube as they learn to interpret and apply principals but beyond this the greatest learning aid that coaching can apply is having practitioners dissect their own technique applications.
For this reason we encourage learners and practitioners to record their own drillwork, assaults and test cutting then slow them down and pull apart everything that is done well and everything which needs to be improved.
When a learner shows enough dedication to their own growth and development we as facilitators and instructors will be able to offer additional coaching services to provide room for continuous growth.