Plateau?

So what is the deal in your fencing career when you reach a plateau? One of those most annoying times when you not only seem to stop getting better but actually seem to be getting worse.

First of all, don’t be overly distressed about it. This happens to every fencer eventually. In the college club zone it is usually a side effect of getting busy with classes. (or a girlfriend, or a job) Your practice time falls off, so your kind of auto pilot through fencing. You have stuff that works so you fall back on it all the time. That trick you used to use every once in awhile becomes a standard action because your disengage seems to be getting bigger, a bigger circle six can catch all kinds of attacks so who cares if your four too wide and slow.

Once you hit this stage, things go well for awhile. If you are around less experienced fencers you may not even notice that you have stopped progressing until you go to a tournament and get thumped. Everything you do is too big, too slow, too fast, sloppy, wide or just flaming misses. So you get back to club and beat up the less experienced fencers again and feel pretty good until the next tournament. Now you might think that you need to get back and practice, take a lesson or two, but whatever was keeping you busy before (job, classes, girl/boy friend, whatever) is still there and you don’t have any extra time at practice. You are usually coming in late, chatting with your buddies, then hooking up a strip and fencing because, well, you really don’t have time to do any drills, and they’re boring anyway, and bouting is great practice, after all, you can still beat X and Y……

After awhile f this plateau, or decline things can get pretty depressing. So how do you break out of it?

Well, for me, a return to the basics is always a good start. Footwork. Not fast, show off, fancy driven footwork, but simple, focused footwork. Take the time to do it right. Do the same things for blade work. After all, they go together. Check you basic positions. Is your guard position right? Or are your feet at the wrong distance and your front toe is pointing off to the right somewhere. Is your hand slightly higher than your elbow and point towards your opponent? Or is it hanging somewhere around your waist with the tip pointing off to the left, or at the ceiling, or at the floor. Is your weapon hand in the right position? Are your shoulders relaxed? When you advance are you taking huge steps and galloping? Are you leaning forward and off balance when you lunge? Don’t even think about working on your disengage until you get these right. These simple thing are the basic foundation of your fencing. If you are having strange problems, checking these can’t hurt. And, if you can focus a bit, your don’t even need to stand around in front of a mirror for hours working on them. You can do a lot of it while still doing that bouting with your buddies. IF, and this is a big if, if you can not get caught up in trying to win the bouts. Work on the simple things. If you lose, (in practice) that is ok. It does you no good at all to go squirrelly on your team mates and beat them in practice when you are losing on the weekends to others.

One of the hardest thing s to break in these time periods are ingrained habits that have become second nature. Most of these habits started out as good things. But when they became habits they went bad. For example, I tend to bring my back foot forward a bit before I lunge. That is nice when you do it everyone once and a while to give your self some extra distance and throw off an opponent. It is bad when it is what you are doing all the time to make your lunge longer. Your opponent will eventually catch on to this and clobber you as you telegraph your lunge. Learn your own bad habits and then concentrate on breaking them. Video is really good at this. Watch yourself fence, it can be pretty depressing sometimes because you will see all the foolishness you are doing. Then stop doing them
If you can get lessons, do it. And get drilled on the foundations.

One last thing, if you really can’t get a lot of time to practice, at least exercise. The better physical condition you are in the better you are going to fence. (note, being in great condition alone is not enough, but it will enable you to make the best use of the skills you have.) For me personally, if you can’t do anything else, do push ups. Forty a day (done all at once) will keep your upper body and core in pretty good shape. Run when you can.
I’ll write more on this later though. For remember, when you are in a slump, go to the basics, work through it. Get help from a team mate (who has a clue) or a coach whenever you can. When they say you are doing something wrong, don’t get defensive, wave it off as not important. Fix it. The slump will end, and often, the end of a slump begins a period of rapid improvement. Look forward to that.