Historical Pedagogy

Constraint-Led Training for HEMA

By HILT Official · Nov 01, 2025 · 8 min read

Stop telling students what to do. Start designing drills that make the right technique the obvious choice.

Why "Keep Your Hands Up" Doesn't Work You can tell a student to keep their hands high. They'll do it for about 5 seconds, then drop them again the moment they're under pressure. Verbal correction addresses the symptom. It doesn't fix the cause. The cause is usually that the student hasn't experienced the consequence of the error in a way that creates genuine learning. They know intellectually that low hands are bad. They don't know it in their body yet. The Ecological Approach Constraint-led coaching comes from sports science (it's big in football, rugby, and tennis coaching). The idea is…

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