On Practice

Greetings,

Practice is important. It is something which we hear and something which we are told again and again. This post is going to examine some of the details with regard to practice, how it is performed and why it is performed. Many will just skip over this one, but I suggest that you do not, as practice really is that important.

1. Importance
Everyone needs to practice. It does not matter if you are the newest swordsman or the most aged practitioner. Skills decay if you do not use them and thus practice is important. This also means that you should also practice everything. When you do not use a skill, it will decay and will not be as sharp the next time you try to use it.

2. Regularity
A post has already done a blog on this one, so why are we back here again? Simply because it relates to the subject at hand. More to the point it is important. You should practice every day, an hour is best, 30 minutes if it is all you can squeeze in. It does not have to be anything complex merely using some footwork and making some attacks will do.

3. Muscle Memory
There is a thing called "muscle memory". When you practice something enough, you will get to a stage where you can do the action without thinking about it, naturally this is a great advantage in any form of swordplay. It takes about 500 repetitions of an action to put it into your muscle memory, but you must practice it accurately. Any mistake you make in the action will also be practiced into muscle memory as well and it will take 50,000 repetitions to remove a mistake from muscle memory, so it is best to do it right the first time.

4. What to Practice
In a word everything. This being said some elements need more focus than others. Foundation elements ...

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.