BBF News & Articles

Fencing and Trying Your Best

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:01:57 GMT

Art of Fencing, Art of Life

Originally posted by: Igor Chirashnya in Mosaic

at: Academy of Fencing Masters Blog

Everyone wants to succeed. Athletes in general and fencers in particular are passionate about it. When you train hard you want to succeed. While everyone wants to succeed, success is an individual thing – it is different for different people. For Mariel Zagunis, success means a Gold Medal at Rio, as she considers her 4th place in London 2012 to be a failure. On the other hand for a novice fencer, success might mean winning one bout in a local competition. The road to success starts with you – in your club, in your trainings, in your preparations. There is only one person who can guarantee you will succeed – it’s you. It starts with you giving 100% of your effort to everything you do. The habit of giving 100% effort pays off later in the competitions, and in life in general.

The Effort Checklist
Here’s a quick checklist to run down and check the areas where you might be lagging in effort, giving you the chance to dig in and fill those potential problem sections.

1. How you prepare to go to your club:
Do you have all of your gear in order?
Are you uniforms clean and dry from the last training?
Did you pack it all in your bag so later in the club you do not discover that your knickers are in a washer?
Are all your weapons and body cords in a good working condition so you do not start your bouts with non working weapons?
Did you pack a spare weapon/cord in your bag so you have everything needed to not interrupt your practice in case of equipment malfunction?

2. Do you give your 100% to every drill and every bout?
100% does not mean winning every bout. It never means this. Because in reality you might face much more skilled opponent that you cannot beat. Nevertheless, succeeding in such bout possible if the goal is not a win, but an effort.

Every training bout you must approach with some goal. Such goals might be practicing some elements of technique you learned in a private lesson, or trying to create some tactical situation when you can realize a combination you are working on

If you do always win against some fencers in your club, then change your strategy. Try this one – fence to limit their scoring, not letting them score more than X points. Your goal is not to win against them (we know you always win against them anyway), your goal is not to let them obtain more than X touches.

Same with the fencers that you always lose to. Your goal should not be to win against them, but to score at least Y touches or not let them score more than Z touches in allotted time.

As you progress, modify your goals, make them more challenging every time. But you can never fence half force, half effort.
Do not bound yourself only to fencing objectives. Make it more – your conditioning, your flexibility, endurance, strength.
If you start going to competitions, make 100% effort to prepare for them.

That’s when you go on strip in competition and you do not give free points presents (or worse – whole bout) to a fencer that otherwise you should be able to win easily, or as fencers say, you do not give away “your” bouts. It also goes for when you are falling behind because you then know how to pull it off, how to regroup and turn the bout around.

When you fence your practice bouts at 100%, you push not only yourself but others as well. Your opponents will be pushed, those that always lose to you will have a motivation too to put their 100% and score more than your goal, making you to work even harder.

When you fence in your practice bouts with 100% of your effort, then when you go to the competition that’s the only way you know to fence – with 100% of your effort. That’s regardless of the fact that you just traveled eastbound and need to start fencing at local 8am which feels for you more like 5am due to the different timezone. You are just conditioned to fence your best no matter what.

Your habit to check and prepare your equipment before going to training will help you to be always ready in the competition.

Art of Fencing, Art of Life

This habit of giving 100% effort is not only for sport – make it a habit to prepare your school’s homework on time, or learn more from the music lessons you are taking. That way these few days of competitions will not be negatively reflected in your achievements in other areas. Don’t think that these are not related, they are totally interconnected. This is your habit to succeed, to take your mind off other things. Otherwise you might be running later and later and because of that it might affect your training and competitive schedule.

Your habit to set a goal and work to achieve it exactly that – a habit.

In your sport – it is a habit to be successful
In your school – it is a habit to be successful
In your work – it is a habit to be successful
In your life – it is a habit to be successful

The skills that are learned on the strip can carry you through to all areas of your life, driving you to get better and to be more in your life. When you give your 100% to every training, to every drill and bout.

7 Essential Types of Practice Bouts

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:01:55 GMT

A critical part of your complete training program

Written by Tim Morehouse
Originally posted at Fencing University.

Below is a summary of Tim’s excellent points.

Bouting is a critical part of a complete and well-balanced training program but just like footwork, bladework, lessons, and drills, bouting requires an intentional and diversified approach to yield maximal results.

The first big thing to mention is that trying to win every bout at practice and caring too much about practice bout results is a major reason why a lot of people get stuck at a certain level. Winning bouts should not be the only thing you try to do at practice.

#1 BOUTING TO WIN
This is the most obvious type of bouting, one I’m sure you’re all doing at practice! Are you doing it “right” should be the question you ask yourself on this one? If you are bouting to win then make sure to put forth your maximum effort to mimic the competition environment of an actual tournament…

#2 “FREE FENCING!”
This is bouting done specifically without a score and usually for a specific amount of time. You generally want to keep free fencing to between 1-3minutes per opponent and then rotate if you have other training partners. You can utilize free fencing to work on moves, warm-up and just generally get in a lot of points without the pressure of winning/losing…

#3 BOUTING AGAINST PARTICULAR TYPES OF OPPONENTS
In this type of bout, you’ve agreed with your partner that they are going to fence in a certain way to allow you time to practice against a certain style. It is up to you to figure out how to “solve” this opponent’s style…

Here are some starting points for this type of bout:

Have your training partner attack aggressively the majority or all of the time…
Have your training partner not attack and favor defense most or all of time…
Have your opponent take a lot of risks….

#4 BOUTING WITH A PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON PARTS OF YOUR GAME
Bouting during practice is the right time to try out things you might not normally feel comfortable doing (yet) at a competition…Starting each bout by declaring a focus, even if it is just to yourself, can be very helpful to give each bout more intention.

#5 EXPERIMENTATION BOUTING (i.e. “TRYING NEW MOVES”)
If you’ve read our article on Designing Winning Fencing Moves then you know that at some point putting your moves to the test in a practice bouting situation is essential before giving it the ultimate test in competition.

In a bout where you try new moves, you shouldn’t do the same move over and over again. Rather, you should mix them in with your established moves…

#6 SITUATIONAL BOUTING
This is the type of fencing where you put yourself into particular bout scenarios.

Here are some examples:

Fencing with a big/small lead that you have to hold. i.e. You are up 13-10.
You are down by a certain score.
You fence a bout but you are at the end of the strip.
For Epee, you fence with priority or without priority in an overtime minute
There are A LOT of options here. Practicing scenarios you’ll find yourself in during competitions will help you get more familiar with what to do during each and will help you to have more of a plan and feel more comfortable when you end up in them!

#7 “NEXT POINT WINS” BOUTING
This could fall under the situation bouting category, but I think it bears special mention. Often times the difference between winning and losing comes down to 1 point. The score is 4-4 or 14-14 and you’ve got to pull it out. There are some people who have mastered the art of scoring that last point and like anything, you need to get comfortable in that situation.

Why Private Lessons are So Important

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 22:49:54 GMT

A valuable investment

(by Damien Lehfeldt, originally posted on Fencing.net)

Private lessons are not a luxury in the sport of Fencing—they’re a necessity, an investment in expanding the athlete’s repertoire, gaining an advanced tactical understanding, and building a bond with one’s coach.

It’s no surprise that parents beginning in the sport have a healthy skepticism regarding their value, given their price and length. Lessons will typically range for 20 minutes with a nationwide median price point of ~$40 (my estimate), making them an expensive addition to an already pricey sport.

The reasoning behind the length of lessons boils down to this: over-inundation of information is counterproductive and a hindrance to the athlete’s learning curve.

To the naked eye of a new parent, fencing looks like a simple game of “hit other guy with pointy end.” Beneath that simplicity, your child is learning a variety of subtle technique, including proper movement of the hand, movement of the feet, distance control, and blade leverage, all while enduring a physically and mentally demanding lesson that is forcing them to digest loads of information in a short period of time.

Imagine a piano lesson in which the student’s goal is to learn Liszt’s Études d’exécution transcendante. To expect to teach such a complex piece in a single lesson would be impractical. Perhaps, the teacher would plan to teach the student a few measures at a time, adjusting to the student’s proficiency and competence. Perhaps, as the student fails (as anyone does in the learning process), his frustration begins to mount to the point it stifles his ability to learn the piece further in that moment.

Time goes on, and 30 piano lessons later, and after rigorous practice, the student can play through, but further refinement is necessary. The student plays the piece mechanically, negating the emotional components; or perhaps the student lacks the touch and intonation necessary to resonate with the listener.

The same, subtle nuances a piano teacher corrects in a lesson are akin to those a fencing coach must fine-tune. The short length of a lesson provides the student with just enough iotas of information to subsequently apply to practice bouting and tournaments thereafter. Just as a piano teacher would not urge his student to learn Beethoven’s Pathetique in one sitting, a fencing coach would not expect mastery of a Chamley-Watson or an aerial Heinzer backflick in a single lesson.

A twenty minute fencing lesson is an investment in the tiny building blocks that progress the fencer through his/her learning curve. Longer than that, and the fencer has too much to think about, too many mistakes to turn into corrections, and a wide-open door for repeated lesson failures—ultimately affecting the fencer’s confidence and commitment to applying what s/he’s learned.

The lesson may be short in length and lacking in an immediate, visible return on investment (in the short run), but the twenty minute lesson is the most valuable expenditure a parent can make on the athlete to plant the seeds for long-term success. As Jim Cramer would say on Mad Money: “buy, buy, buy.”