Rivals

Rivals. Is it a good thing to have a ‘RIVAL” in fencing? Well like so many things the answer is yes, but sometimes no. A personal rival can be a very useful thing to have in fencing. It is good to have someone out there when at the end of the tournament you can say, “Well, I didn’t win but at least I beat you.” In a friendly way that is. What makes a good rival? Well he (or she) should be at about your level of fencing. IF you are picking one, try to find someone that is a bit better than you so you have something to work for. The rival should be at a close enough level that you can either beat him periodically or at least come real close most of the time. You can’t have a good rivalry with someone who beats you silly every time you fence or that you pound on. The rival should also be at a club close enough to you that you get to fence him fairly regularly. To really be a productive rivalry, you should actually like the person enough to sit down and talk to them or go out and eat after the tournament. Lastly, your rival should also be interested in having you as a rival. It is pretty pointless to drive yourself to beat someone who couldn’t care less about you.

Semi humorous tale here. I had a rival like that once. I didn’t know it until several years later. There was a fellow in the club who it seems to have developed an urge to defeat me in every way. If I said something in club about the rules, he would go home and look it up to try and prove me wrong. He would watch me fence and take notes on what I did to try and beat me later. I found out about this several years after the fact when his ex girlfriend was talking to me about the “good old days”. Needless to say I was surprised because he had never registered on my radar as that big a deal. Something on an annoying personality but and as not bad fencer, but I never felt the need to really push myself to beat him. This is a failed rivalry.

To have a good rivalry both of you have to buy into the game. Always bring a bit extra to the bouts against that rival. Always care about winning those bouts. Strive for it. But never get pissy about it if you lose. Ina good rivalry you will lose periodically. That is what keeps it exciting.

Now one question remains. Should your rival be in your club or out? Serious rivalries should be out. Where you fence each other pretty much only at tournaments when the shit is serious. But inner club rivalries can be a lot of fun. It adds a bit of excitement to practice when you can call someone out at the end of practice for a full on tournament intensity bout.

So, when you go to tournaments, start looking for someone who is fun to fence, and then start setting it up. YOU can’t just go up and say, Hey, want to be my rival? It doesn’t really work. But if you talk to him before and after every tournament you are in together. Start dropping lines like “Ah, you again, this will be fun!” Pretty soon they will start to play along and presto, you have a friendship and a rivalry. Or they just look at you like you are weird. In which case you start over with someone else.

Bad rivalries. Yes, there certainly can be bad rivalries. If for example when you use that line, “I didn’t win but at least I beat you.” You aren’t being funny but are being an asshole that is a sign that you are taking this whole thing wrong. Your rival should be a friend. If you actually dislike him then you are doing something entirely different. Fencing should be fun. If you are generating hostility than things aren’t working right and you probably need to rethink your approach to the game.

Just out of curiosity, is anyone but Amanda actually reading this thing?

Starting fencing

So, I am sure that most beginning fencers ask themselves at some point, “Why can’t we just fence instead of doing all this STUFF?” Well, frankly, at some clubs you can. These clubs tend be either the REALLY good clubs, or the REALLY bad ones. For example, I have been told by members of the club that when a beginner walks into Nellya he or she is dressed out and told to go fence. One of the mid range fencers there takes him over to a strip and they start to fence. This works because there is such an abundance of talent available that the Coach, excuse me, Maestro, is absolutely confident that The beginner will be steered away from any bad habits and, if he gets those habits he is confident that he and his coaching staff can break the beginner of them. Judging from the fencers that come out of Nellya, it seems to work for them. On the other end of the spectrum, some small clubs, generally those without any real coaching at all when the get a beginner tend to dress the fellow up and let him learn from osmosis and he fences the others in the club. This tends to turn out pretty scary fencers. Not scary because they are good but scary because they do really wild and crazy shit on the strip. If the beginner is athletic and coordinated he can often get good enough to earn at least a D, sometimes a C (in foil) or even better in Epee if he is really fast too. But once he hits the point where his wild and crazy stops intimidating his opponents, he stops winning. And unfortunately, once those wild and crazy things get embedded in a fencers psyche it is VERY hard to get them back out. Bad habits are real easy to pick up and REALLY hard to lose. It can be done if there is a good coach available and the fencer has a lot of time and desire to change. But it is hard and time consuming.

Now, in my case I will not let someone “Just fence.” In fact I will get annoyed with you if you start to do it on your own. In our club I unfortunately do have the time to give every fencer the individual attention needed to overcome those bad habits picked up by early bouting. And there are not (yet) a strong enough cadre of senior fencers back fill the time. And in a college club we will rarely get a lot of members who can do that much because about the time you get good at it you graduate and leave.

So the best bet to become a competent fencer in the situation we are in is to learn all the basics first and then start to put them together. I know it isn’t as fun, but it is a system that works for us.