Ringing Forums

Phil Burton

Hi there,

I currently have two learners, both of whom I’m facing a particular challenge with and I’m wondering if anyone has some ideas of how to overcome these challenges.

Firstly, we have a middle aged lady who has been ringing around 2 years. She’s got to the point where she can plain hunt on 5, on the treble to a poor standard, and struggles even more with plain bob doubles. The issues she experiences are around getting up in to 5ths place, she tends to get to 4ths, then drops her bell and never makes it to 5ths. When she does make it to 5ths, she struggles to change the speed of the bell to hunt back down to lead. She’s kind of plateaued now - does anyone have any ideas of how to move her forward?

We’ve tried various things - taking a few steps back, practicing dodging to encourage better bell control etc.

Secondly, we have a teenage boy who’s been ringing just under a year - he’s not plateaued like my first example above, and is making good progress with plain hunting and covering. His problem is to do with his handling - he doesn’t throw his hand strikes down far enough. His arms get to a 90 degree position, then they both stop. This causes his backstrokes to drop. Having chatted to him about it, he says he’s a little worried that his hands won’t “make it in time” on to the tail end. We’ve tried a few things with him - such as ringing solo using just one hand at a time on the sally etc.

I’ve no doubt he’ll cure himself of this in due course, but I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas or tips on how to overcome style issues like this?

For context - our bells are light, and short draft, very easy to ring, so our learners do tend to develop style issues because they can “get away” with it, so to speak.

Thanks in advance

Lucy Chandhial

For the first it sounds like the ringer is struggling to understand how to control ringing to the balance each time, and therefore how to be able to choose to wait before the next stroke.
Possibly some time alone to try to ring slower and slower and slower (but with control) might be useful for really feeling where the balance is.
It might also help to go through the mechanics again, a refresher on what the bell is doing and therefore how you can influence it can be useful once someone is able to ring but needs to fine tune.

For the second the most obvious exercise seems to be the hands down and look the tail end is right here for your hand to fall on, wrists together actions because then there is no reason to worry and it should become clear that it is actually easier and takes less time, because your hand arrives at the tail end at the bottom of the hand stroke (no ‘catching’ required).
It might help to demonstrate this yourself (and I’ll bet ART has a video for it) and to get him to try it while you hold the tail end or hover near the tail end so that there’s no pressure. It’s also one which can be practiced with a down bell, simply practicing the movement with no swing in the bell, to make it feel normal to bring the hands all the way down.

Hopefully some of this helps but bellringing.org will have more exercises and videos which might also help.

Ringing Forums

Some advice and ideas please

Welcome to your Ringing Forums!

Categories

More Discussions