Calibration and the Correct Execution of the Thrust

Greetings, Everyone has been struck a too hard by their opponent before, and indeed the same could be said of ourselves in the same situation. This blog, as noted by the title will focus on calibration in the execution of the thrust. The thrust is the primary attack in many forms of fencing and knowing the correct calibration so that we do not injure our opponents is important and is something that needs to be discussed. This blog will address various details with regard to the execution of the thrust and examine how we can minimise the chances of over calibrating our thrust, or in more simple terms hitting too hard. The two root causes of over calibration in the thrust comes from a problem with knowledge of distance or from the technical execution of the thrust. Each one of these will be addressed with some pointers about how these can be improved and why there may be problems. The last part of the blog will address some problem solving suggestions as to how we ourselves can prevent over calibration and how we can fix the same problem in our students. Time and distance are the two root principles of fencing and any flaw in them will be expressed when we come up against an opponent. In this particular case it is distance which needs to be addressed. Knowing your distance is about situational awareness. Knowing your own distance with a thrust, and also the distance to the opponent. This particular element will be affected by other things going on during the bout such as movement and each one of these elements needs to be addressed in some form. The lunge is equally important in this equation but at the moment it is the thrust that will be the focus as the lunge is simply a thrust with a forward step added to it. The same elements which will be raised apply equally to the lunge as they do to the thrust. The first element is your own distance. You need to know how far your point will be away from your body at the full extension of your thrust. If your opponent is within the distance of your thrust it is important that you realise this and do not extend to your full length, otherwise you will strike your opponent too hard. This is the first element, and is forms some of the basis of the others. Once you know your own distance you can move on to the examination of the opponent. You need to be aware of the distance to your opponent in comparison to your own thrusting distance, as stated if they are too close you will over calibrate if you fully extend your thrust. Thus both elements need to be taken into account at the time that the thrust is made. The final element of distance that needs to be taken into account is movement. Both combatants will be moving, during the bout and this will change the distance between you and your opponent. This is most easily seen in the use of the retreat in response to a thrust. You need to be aware of your own movement during the execution of the thrust, but also the movement of the opponent, especially if they close distance as you are thrusting. The elements described above; your distance, the distance to the opponent and movement, all form a part of situational awareness and it is a lot of information that you need to assimilate in a short amount of time. Situational awareness is also important in order to be aware of the environment. For the classical and sport fencers, this means being aware of your position on the piste. For the Renaissance fencers it is being aware of any boundaries or obstructions that may be present on the field which you are using. These elements also need to be taken into account, but for different reasons. Situational awareness is something which is important as you need to know the distance elements in a very short amount of time, in fact when the thrust is delivered, and even a little before it is delivered. With the awareness of distance discovered, the next element that needs to be addressed is technique. The correct performance of the thrust, and indeed all skills in fencing is vital. For the current discussion, the correct technical execution of the thrust is vital to correct calibration. Technique is vital to the correct execution of the thrust and it is something that needs to be examined in some detail. It seems like a simple action, but there is a level of skill in it. The thrust must be examined in some detail in order to see how it works and how this may affect our end result. Accuracy is an element which extends from proper technical performance of the thrust, and while it is not the focus of this discussion it does have elements which are important. An accurate, but slow thrust is substantially more important that a fast but inaccurate one. The accuracy allows us to hit the target that we are aiming for and this can be important in calibration in order that we hit the target at the correct distance rather than some closer one by accident. Thus it can be seen that accuracy in the thrust can be of great importance in its execution and calibration of the thrust. In order to investigate this the technical detail must be addressed. The thrust is not merely shoving the point of the weapon at the opponent and this must be realised at its most base level. There are various elements which come into play in the execution of the thrust and only if all of these elements are combined together properly will the thrust be executed properly. Each one of these elements can affect the calibration of the thrust, some will more than others. Each part of the thrust needs to be examined in order to understand the action properly and be able to do it properly. In the execution of the thrust the point should move in a straight line from its starting position to its target with very little deviation. This will ensure that the point has travelled the shortest distance to its target. This is important for accuracy and also speed. A change in direction of the thrust can also affect calibration as the point may gain more velocity, or it may change the distance. Thus it is important that the point travels in the shortest line to its target. ....

The rest of this article can be found in Un-Blogged: A Fencer's Ramblings by Henry Walker, which is available in paperback from:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blogged-Ramblings-Henry-Leigh-Walker/dp/098764470X
Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/un-blogged-henry-leigh-walker/book/9780987644701.html
Among other places...

It is also available in electronic format (pdf) from: https://buy.stripe.com/fZecP419c7CB9VKeUV

... or direct from the author.

Ego: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Greetings, Your personality will have an effect on how you fence and how you approach it. This is an important point that must be considered with regards to all aspects in your fencing. This blog is an examination of the effects of personality on fencing, and more to the point an examination of the effects of ego on fencing. The information below will address various aspects of personality and ego and its impact on training and competition. It is something that we should all consider as to how our own personality and ego will affect the way that we train and the way that we fence. The blog will address both the positive and negative effects of personality and ego upon the fencing process including training and competition. Your personality will have an impact on your training it will affect the way that you approach your fencing and how you perform on the field and this is an important point that we must all realise. There are good aspects that will promote the best in us and there will be negative effects that will detract from what we do and how we are percieved in our fencing. Both of these aspects need to be taken into account and the positive enhanced and the negative reduced as much as possible.

"You must keep egotism out of your fencing. Egotism has no place in your training, ... or your fencing persona. It is an ugly, misleading companion." (Evangelista, 2000:219)

Your personality will affect your approach to fencing. This is more focussed on our personal philosopy that grounds the reasons for fencing. The reasons for fencing are many and it is these reasons that will drive us to succeed or not. If our aim is simply to beat every opponent that we encounter on the field, this will have a different effect than if our goal is to further our search for the truths in swordplay. A person whose simple goal is to beat every opponent on the field may reject certain approaches in their fencing in order to enhance their ability to win. In most cases once this person has found what will work best for them on the field they will stop learning and just attempt to enhance these skills. A person who is seeking the truth in swordplay, however, will seek more than the simple win, and will search out better technique and train this. This will lead this individual to learn more and more and thus enhance their knowledge of the art that they have chosen to pursue. Thus it can be seen that the overall approach is affected by our personality and approach. Personality will affect your conduct on the field, where it is purely driven by ego, any hit against us will feel like an assault on our ego. On the other hand if this is approached as a learning experience any hit against us will be seen as a chance to learn something from the experience. Thus in this approach every encounter with an opponent is a learning experience and benefits the fencer regardless of the result. The person who seeks to enhance their experience in fencing will take every chance to learn and this will benefit them in the long run. This will also affect the way the person trains, seeking to learn from every encounter and every lesson in order that they can become a more complete swordsman. We must examine how our personality affects or performance and approach to every encounter.

"I’m not sure if I can stress enough how important having confidence is to your success at fencing (or life in general). What I’m talking about is not brash, loud, empty bravado or egotism, but the quiet assuredness you can feel emanating from people who are secure in themselves and their abilities." (Kellner, 2009)

Ego is a necessary thing in fencing. It is what drives our aspirations in fencing, it is what enables us to succeed, and also to accept successes. In this way having the effect of ego is a necessary and good thing for the fencer, but this must be tempered by the fencer's approach to what they are doing and learning. The ego must be balanced with the knowledge that fencing is a learning experience, thus the ego must realise that there will be elements where you will not succeed the first time. These times must be taken as a chance to learn rather than a personal affront. In this way, with the ego kept in check and used to drive a person to succeed through the best methods, ego can actually be a good thing. Of course, as with everything there is a negative side which must be taken into account.

"there is a point when ego takes a step beyond the normal scheme of things, when feeling good about yourself and having aspirations become self-inflating conceits. When this happens, you will most certainly get in the way of your own progress." (Evangelista, 2000:219)

....

The rest of this article can be found in Un-Blogged: A Fencer's Ramblings by Henry Walker, which is available in paperback from:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blogged-Ramblings-Henry-Leigh-Walker/dp/098764470X
Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/un-blogged-henry-leigh-walker/book/9780987644701.html
Among other places...

It is also available in electronic format (pdf) from: https://buy.stripe.com/fZecP419c7CB9VKeUV

... or direct from the author.

Bibliography Crown, A. A. (2006) Why Study Classical Fencing, http://www.classicalfencing.com/whystudy.php Evangelista, N. (2000) The Inner Game of Fencing: Excellence in Form, Technique, Strategy, and Spirit, Masters Press, Illinois, USA Kellner, D. (2009) Building Confidence in Your Fencing, http://www.sofaemployed.com/?p=1507

Conduct of Training

Greetings, Training is an aspect of all sports and martial arts. It is something that we all need to do. It is important that the teacher in the lesson is able to construct a training session that has all the elements necessary for the students to learn what they need to learn in their lesson. This blog will focus on the conduct of training, from the planning to the execution and dealing with some of the problems that will arise in training. Hopefully this will be of interest to students and teachers alike so that you can examine your own training sessions and see how they compare to what is written here. For the teacher the training session needs to start before they turn up for training. Planning needs to be the first stage of any training session. This is a necessary process especially in order to remain in control of the training session and to ensure that you are able to teach all of what the students need to learn. The first thing you need to look at in the planning stage is the overall plan for training. You need to look at how the students will progress from the beginning stages to the end where they are able to fence with a level of competence and then further to include more advanced techniques. You don't need to plan out the entirety of the student's career at this point in time, more you need to give them the skills in order to progress in that direction. This is the first stage of the planning process. Once you have an overall plan for the training sessions on the whole you need to have a look at the individual lessons. The lessons should build upon one another like building blocks. This means that the first lessons establish the foundation for the student's fencing and then the others build on top of this. What this means is that the first lessons are some of the most important as if the basic skills are not established to begin with it will be difficult to build upon these in order to get to more advanced techniques. Each one of the lessons should be connected to the others in some way. Obviously they are all connected due to what is being learnt, but the connections need to be on a more specific level as well. Basic techniques should lead to more advanced ones as the basics are the foundation of the more advanced techniques. This needs to be established in the planning process for the training program. The next part of the process is to look at the individual lesson or lessons that will be taught on a particular night. The decision of how much to teach in a single training session is an important one and needs to be considered. There is a sliding scale from teaching not enough in the session all the way up to teaching too much. In general it is best to focus on one particular area in a lesson, though in some instances this can be branched out into more. This is highly dependent on the lessons being taught. For example, lessons on footwork all link together and may be taught as a single block as they are all related to how the feet move, but trying to link a lesson on footwork to some aspect of the use of the hands is probably not a good idea to start with. In general you should teach a maximum of three lessons per training session otherwise you will give the students problems in remembering all of the information that you have presented. This is, of course, highly dependent on the lessons themselves and also the students being taught. It is important to look at how the lesson relates to others as has been noted before. This will allow you to decide whether the lesson is best taught alone or in conjunction with another lesson. Some lessons will tend to lead to other ones and this should be noted as it will give some directions as to how the lessons should be taught. Remember though, that each lesson should have a particular area of focus and this should be what is being aimed at for the lesson. If this is not clear then the students will get confused as to what they are supposed to be learning and this is not good. The next part of the process is examining the content of the lesson and what will be taught in the training session. This can be approached in one of two ways really. You can have a lesson planned out as to what will be taught or you can see what the students want to learn and then focus on that for the session. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. The second gives the students what they want, but if the entire program is based in this method then the program tends to be very disjointed and aspects can be missed in the process. This is a very spontaneous form of lessons and should really only be used for more advanced students and the more experienced teachers as it does not allow much time for planning. The first is good as there is a structure which is followed lesson by lesson, this method does, however lack spontaneity. This means if a particular problem comes up it is somewhat difficult to deal with that problem instantly without deviating from the program. It does, however have the advantage of being able to plan what will be taught in a particular training session. The most important part is regardless of what method you use, you should focus on one aspect of the training per lesson and ensure the students understand which aspect is the focus of the lesson in order that some structure is maintained. The lessons need to have content which is interesting to the students. This means that in most cases the lessons will be dominantly practical in nature. Lessons with a great deal of theory and very little practical aspect to them tend to be seen to be rather boring by students. You should try to include some aspect of a practical nature in the lesson in order to keep the students interested in what is going on. The only way to keep the students' attention is to make the lesson interesting to them. The lesson may be very important to their progress, but if it is not interesting to them their attention will waver and they may miss important parts of the lesson. The theory lessons should be directly related to practical aspects. In this way the theory is demonstrated to be something that has great benefit in what is going on in actual fencing. Keeping the students interested in what is going on is important and should be considered carefully when planning a lesson and also teaching it. ....

The rest of this article can be found in Un-Blogged: A Fencer's Ramblings by Henry Walker, which is available in paperback from:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blogged-Ramblings-Henry-Leigh-Walker/dp/098764470X
Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/un-blogged-henry-leigh-walker/book/9780987644701.html
Among other places...

It is also available in electronic format (pdf) from: https://buy.stripe.com/fZecP419c7CB9VKeUV

... or direct from the author.

Drill Design and Construction

Greetings, Drills are an important part of the learning process for students and it is important that teachers know what they are for, how they are constructed and their inner workings in order to get the greatest potential from them. This blog is about drills, sometimes called conventionals in sport fencing. It will address some of the issues associated with the construction and use of drills in a training situation. Whether you are a teacher or student of fencing, the information provided will hopefully provide you with some thinking points with regard to this most useful tool in fencing. Before we can look at drills in any sort of detailed way it is important to examine the purpose of drills as a training tool. Drills are most useful for the practicing of skills which have been learnt in a lesson. By using this method the theory present and the isolated form of the skill or skills that have been taught can be seen together working both with and against other skills. This is essentially seeing the skill in a practical situation or in another way of thinking, seeing the technique in action against the movements of an opponent. Through the use of drills and their repetitive fashion muscle memory is also built designed to instill the skills in the muscles and subconscious of the student. In this way the student will know how to respond to the stimulus presented by the opponent by use of the skill learnt in the drill. This is important as it then frees the fencer's mind up in order to be thinking about what he will do against his opponent once the action has been completed. Next it is important to look at drills specifically. In order to do this without detailing all examples of skills and their drills, more general terms will be used in the address of their purpose. In all cases a drill should highlight the importance of the skill being drilled, and it should also highlight the importance of the correct performance of that skill against an opponent. There needs to be a reason for the drill being performed, it needs to be more than just a mere repetition of a particular skill for no seen purpose. Purpose must be injected into the drill so that the student will understand what both the skill and the drill are designed to achieve. This purpose must be specific to the skill and also the drill rather than the general terms which have already been discussed in the previous paragraph. The next part of this is the actual design of the drill itself. This must relate directly to the skill being taught and must place the skill in a situation where it is the best option available. This design phase of the drill is important and must be thought about carefully in order for the drill to achieve its purpose. In designing a drill the focus of the drill must be upon the specific drill being trained or learnt by the student. Without this focus the student will become confused about the purpose of both the drill and also the purpose of the skill. While in many cases the drill will involve the use of other skills, the focus must be on a specific skill. For a drill to be effective the other skills being used in the drill must be skills that the student already has in order that the drill is not sidetracked on to the attached skills rather than the particular focus skill of the drill. This is an element which is of great importance in the design and development of a drill. For example, if the drill involves the use of a particular footwork step along with a blade action, which is the focus of the drill, the footwork needs to be already known to the student in order for the drill to work. In many ways the drills will stack upon one another in a similar way that the skills will. With this in mind design the drill so that the focus is upon the new skill being learnt, and in a way that this is possible. The drill should actually end with the skill being learnt so that it is the last thing that the student does in the drill and thus it will become the most significant action in the drill. Use simple steps in the construction of the drill in order that there is little confusion with regard to the drill. Speed is always a factor with regard to fencing and choosing the speed at which a drill should be performed is of great importance. The drill should always start by being performed slowly so that the skill is developed and examined in a very specific way. This will enable the student to focus on the technique of the skill rather than the result of the skill. The student should understand that the goal of the drill is the correct performance of the skill rather than whether or not they are able to hit their opponent. If the student is able to perform the skill and the drill correctly striking the opponent should come about as a result of the correct performance, if that is appropriate to the skill being learnt. Drills, in most cases, should result with a full speed version of the drill being performed. This will enable the student to see the action in practice. This should only be done once they are able to perform the technique properly at slower speeds. Full speed drills are necessary for those drills where the skill will be use in a full combat situation. Without these drills the student will be able to perform the action slowly but will not be able to do the same at full speed, thus it can be seen that drills at full speed are necessary. There are times where the slow drill actually achieves its goal, this is most evidently seen in the physical demonstration of time. It is much easier to see tempos at slow speed than it is to see them at full speed. This form of drill is more aimed at the student understanding the concept behind what is happening more than the skills being used. For drills to work properly and achieve their goals various things are required. First of all the students must have been taught the skills involved in the drill, and most importantly the skill being drilled. Next is that the participants in the drills must participate completely in the drill. This means following the drill according to what has been directed by the teacher. This means that the participants need to stick with the drill as it has been directed and sticking with the purpose of the drill. There should be very little deviation in the action of the drill, save those points where the participant is having trouble and needs help. ....

The rest of this article can be found in Un-Blogged: A Fencer's Ramblings by Henry Walker, which is available in paperback from:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blogged-Ramblings-Henry-Leigh-Walker/dp/098764470X
Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/un-blogged-henry-leigh-walker/book/9780987644701.html
Among other places...

It is also available in electronic format (pdf) from: https://buy.stripe.com/fZecP419c7CB9VKeUV

... or direct from the author.