Well, I went to a tournament yesterday, didn't do particularly well. It doesn't help that on Thursday I ran two miles for the first time in 18 odd months and my legs were totally dead. I went 3 and 2 in the pools which isn't so bad (although I was fencing a lot of relative beginners so I should have done better) then I tanked my first DE to a pretty good fencer who was suffering from tendinitis so badly that he could barely lift his arm.) but he lifted it enough to beat me 15-14 and go on to take third in the open (and eventually be on the winning team in team event too)
In the team event I finally got my legs back and fenced well. It wasn't a serious event by any means, the young beginners came out with great enthusiasm. I really liked the fact that they did not let themselves get intimidated at all. If something didn't work they would try something else. (including at one point what can best be described as crouching lizard/hopping toad style fencing) Much fun was had by all in the team event.
Other than my personal sucking in the open the only down side to the day came from a young fencer from Canada by way of North Carolina. I have seen him at two tournaments. At both of them he has had a screaming hissy fit involving a great deal of stomping around and cussing (in French) as soon as he loses. The kid isn't a bad fencer but he really needs to learn to chill out a bit.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
I went to a tournament a week or so ago. For a variety of reasons I did not use my new mask. Instead, I pulled the Beast out of retirement.
This mask, more commonly referred too as the Biohazard, is an old Allstar FIE mask that I picked up back in the mid 90’s. It was either 95 or 96, heck, (maybe 94) they were having a NAC in Atlanta, probably the first one ever held there, as part of the build up/preparation for the 96 Olympics. I was working as a volunteer at the armory table test the masks with the 12K punch, (If someone who isn’t a fencer is reading this, all fencing masks are supposed to be checked before competitions to see if the mesh on the mask can withstand 12 kg of force delivered by a small punch, if the punch can push through the mesh the mask is failed and the fencer is not allowed to use it for safety reasons. We prefer not to perforate each others heads.) On this particular day one competitor came up with an Allstar FIE mask. This was a German manufactured mask that was certified for international competition. The head strap on this mask had come out and the rivets that held it in were gone. I looked at it and asked the head armourer if it could be used. He asked if the punch would fit through the hole, since it obviously would I turned to the fencer and said it didn’t pass but could easily be fixed by putting new rivets in the holes. He shrugged and said he needed a new mask anyway, turned and left. I promptly tagged the masks with my name, took it home at the end of the event and fixed it. Several years later it was still passing the tests easily but had acquired such a rough appearance that at one point an armourer actually flinched when I handed it to him. I joked after this that I needed to make a Biohazard sticker and put it on the mask. A friend who works in the Port of Savannah GA brought me two genuine stickers and I fenced with it ever since. I retired the mask eventually because I was tired of watching people at tournaments spend inordinate amounts of time trying to find the one spot on it that would fail and because at a national championship in Austin if I recall correctly, one young armourer refused to pass it because the lining of the bib was torn. (WTF?) (I took it back to a different armourer and it went through with a any more problem that him flinching and punch testing it about 15 times)
At any rate I bought a new mask at that event, (FIE Negrini) and put the Biohazard down as my practice mask. I eventually retired it from there because it was getting pretty old. I would still pull it out for the Halloween tournament every year for awhile but stopped that eventually too. But, last week it came out to play again. IU got the usually Oh My God! Comments when people saw it, it did pass the test (barely) and then I fenced really well and and took second in the event. (losing 15-14 in the final to some young fast A rated fencer who had to come from behind to beat me) It is almost enough to make me consider wearing it more often. But I won’t because I really do think it has aged out of it being Really safe. So it will hang on the back of my throne in retirement now. I don’t plan on ever wearing it again for actual fencing. But it is nice to have around.
This mask, more commonly referred too as the Biohazard, is an old Allstar FIE mask that I picked up back in the mid 90’s. It was either 95 or 96, heck, (maybe 94) they were having a NAC in Atlanta, probably the first one ever held there, as part of the build up/preparation for the 96 Olympics. I was working as a volunteer at the armory table test the masks with the 12K punch, (If someone who isn’t a fencer is reading this, all fencing masks are supposed to be checked before competitions to see if the mesh on the mask can withstand 12 kg of force delivered by a small punch, if the punch can push through the mesh the mask is failed and the fencer is not allowed to use it for safety reasons. We prefer not to perforate each others heads.) On this particular day one competitor came up with an Allstar FIE mask. This was a German manufactured mask that was certified for international competition. The head strap on this mask had come out and the rivets that held it in were gone. I looked at it and asked the head armourer if it could be used. He asked if the punch would fit through the hole, since it obviously would I turned to the fencer and said it didn’t pass but could easily be fixed by putting new rivets in the holes. He shrugged and said he needed a new mask anyway, turned and left. I promptly tagged the masks with my name, took it home at the end of the event and fixed it. Several years later it was still passing the tests easily but had acquired such a rough appearance that at one point an armourer actually flinched when I handed it to him. I joked after this that I needed to make a Biohazard sticker and put it on the mask. A friend who works in the Port of Savannah GA brought me two genuine stickers and I fenced with it ever since. I retired the mask eventually because I was tired of watching people at tournaments spend inordinate amounts of time trying to find the one spot on it that would fail and because at a national championship in Austin if I recall correctly, one young armourer refused to pass it because the lining of the bib was torn. (WTF?) (I took it back to a different armourer and it went through with a any more problem that him flinching and punch testing it about 15 times)
At any rate I bought a new mask at that event, (FIE Negrini) and put the Biohazard down as my practice mask. I eventually retired it from there because it was getting pretty old. I would still pull it out for the Halloween tournament every year for awhile but stopped that eventually too. But, last week it came out to play again. IU got the usually Oh My God! Comments when people saw it, it did pass the test (barely) and then I fenced really well and and took second in the event. (losing 15-14 in the final to some young fast A rated fencer who had to come from behind to beat me) It is almost enough to make me consider wearing it more often. But I won’t because I really do think it has aged out of it being Really safe. So it will hang on the back of my throne in retirement now. I don’t plan on ever wearing it again for actual fencing. But it is nice to have around.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Greetings
Greetings.
Welcome to the ramblings and reminisces of a long time fencer and coach at the mid level of fencing in the southeast of the US.
I began fencing in the fall of 1981 when I registered for classes in my freshman year of college. I needed a PE and saw fencing and thought that it would be fun. I was a gamer geek at the time. (Hell, in the back of my mind I still am) I read al the fantasy novels, played dungeons and Dragons, had crawled through the storm drains of my home town with a friend simulating being in a dungeon. (no, we didn’t carry torches and swords) Unlike many mouth breathing games though I was also something of an athlete. I had been a competitive swimmer for years, I played (practiced more than played) football for two years in High School and had run track. So I felt reasonably confident in my ability. Little did I know that this simple PE class was going to infect me with something that has quite literally dominated my life ever since.
I recall the class well, I can remember some of the people in it. I remember the book we used. (Charles Simonian’s Basic Foil Fencing
) I was lucky and got a whole jacket, some folks were fencing in half jackets. Of course since the gym we used had no AC maybe they were the lucky one. I got an old black Castello mask that was well used. In fact I still have it. Years later when we were replacing old masks I took it and brought it home as a souvenir.
This blog will be used to recount stories of past fencing trips, tournaments, parties whatever. I will also expound a bit on my thoughts and philosophy of fencing. Tell how and why I became an unpaid almost full time coach instead of getting a real job and life. I have my doubts that anyone much will read this but that is ok. A few may and find it interesting.
Welcome to the ramblings and reminisces of a long time fencer and coach at the mid level of fencing in the southeast of the US.
I began fencing in the fall of 1981 when I registered for classes in my freshman year of college. I needed a PE and saw fencing and thought that it would be fun. I was a gamer geek at the time. (Hell, in the back of my mind I still am) I read al the fantasy novels, played dungeons and Dragons, had crawled through the storm drains of my home town with a friend simulating being in a dungeon. (no, we didn’t carry torches and swords) Unlike many mouth breathing games though I was also something of an athlete. I had been a competitive swimmer for years, I played (practiced more than played) football for two years in High School and had run track. So I felt reasonably confident in my ability. Little did I know that this simple PE class was going to infect me with something that has quite literally dominated my life ever since.
I recall the class well, I can remember some of the people in it. I remember the book we used. (Charles Simonian’s Basic Foil Fencing
) I was lucky and got a whole jacket, some folks were fencing in half jackets. Of course since the gym we used had no AC maybe they were the lucky one. I got an old black Castello mask that was well used. In fact I still have it. Years later when we were replacing old masks I took it and brought it home as a souvenir.This blog will be used to recount stories of past fencing trips, tournaments, parties whatever. I will also expound a bit on my thoughts and philosophy of fencing. Tell how and why I became an unpaid almost full time coach instead of getting a real job and life. I have my doubts that anyone much will read this but that is ok. A few may and find it interesting.
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