In terms of orc culture, Rise of the Horde indicated that the final test of training was the first solo hunt. I believe the orc was allowed one weapon but no armor, and he/she had to take down a specific prey and smear its blood on his/her face. I'm not sure, but I think it was said that the orcs would go on group hunts with the clan before this event.

Other than that, I don't think it really went into detail about how weapons training was done specifically. It did specify that training with war weapons was different than training with hunting weapons.


EDIT: Tides of Darkness also has a scene where Doomhammer is instructing a Grunt how to chop down a tree properly, during the burning of Quel'thalas. The soldier had just been chopping normally, but Doomhammer takes the axe from him. He then focuses and chops halfway through the tree in the first strike, then all the way through in the second.

To be honest, though, I wasn't sure if Doomhammer was insisting on this method for the sake of training, for the sake of speed, or for the sake of preserving the logs as better firewood or battering rams.

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Speaking of solo hunts i believe there was one in the Warcraft legends volume 4 and 5.

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What I've seen in other works is mostly just that a weapons trainer gives the kid a dumbed-down weapon (usually a wooden version of their weapon of choice, sometimes even just the full version) and says "Come at me, bro" with a wooden weapon of their own They usually just spend a large amount of time sparring, where the trainer simply defends and points out everything that the trainee is doing wrong, and whacking them with the wooden weapon every time they overexpose or something. Through trial and error, pain, and the pointers that the trainer gives them, they eventually learn how to fight, at which point the trainer will begin to teach them the finer things, maybe even some of the trainer's own styles. At some point in the learning process, they might even spar with other trainees to learn other people's methods. Through this process, they also learn toughness and the ability to fight through pain.

There might be another preliminary stage, but I like this idea when it comes to forcing a kid to learn how to fight. Because really, there's no good way when it comes to learning how to kill someone. You kind of just get thrown into it.

For hunting purposes, weapons training is totally different. It would be more of a study session on the animals you're interested in and maybe some practice with a weapon on an inanimate object. Then, when deemed ready, the trainee would go out on the aforementioned hunt and come back victorious or dead/almost dead.

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Slaman,

Yes, I like your idea. Give the kids toy axes and let 'em have at it, and then the trainers would correct their form.

However, this story takes place before there was a Horde, and these boys are Warsong. I suspect the Warsong had more methodical ways of teaching their children to fight since they were known for having such fierce warriors. I figure either they had better ways to train them, or they had the children carry their weapons 24/7 - or maybe both. The only thing I've come up with is karate. My daughter took karate when she was young, and we used to watch the older kids sparring. They didn't use axes, but there may be books/websites on children's martial arts that would help.

But that's the annoying way I write. I may end up with one paragraph on weapons training in an entire novel, but I research a subject till I feel like I know it. I want the lies I write to be believable.