Foil and Epee: Catching up…

It’s been a while since my last fencing post (link provided so you know I’m not talking about barbed wire or something). A lot has been going on, especially with foil, but I’ve had difficulty putting it into words, hence the lack of any real updates. Towards the end of last month I realized I was hitting some kind of wall in both weapons. This wall took the form of some unknown, self defeating behavior whenever I took the lead in touches. I’d start off strong, scoring two, sometimes three touches right out of the gate and then the whole thing would fall apart and I would end up losing the bouts five to four or even five to three. Now, don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t expect to win every bout; there are some fine fencers in our club and I have a lot yet to learn. You would think, though, that if I could score three good touches without getting touched myself, that I could finish and win out? For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me.

At first I thought perhaps I was giving something away in those first few touches that gave my opponents and edge. I still do not discount this might have, at least, been partly to blame, but in questioning my opponents they didn’t seem to think so. Woody had told me a couple of times that it was like I gave up, but he too was baffled and I think a little bewildered as to how to coach me out of it. Not his fault, I’m just dense.

I spent a lot of time reflecting on this. I remembered reading, somewhere, before this started happening (or I started noticing it happening) that the first and third touches, statistically, are key. On average the fencer who scores these touches wins the bout. I have a deeply engrained animosity towards statistics. I think perhaps this was the slight push that started the snowball tumbling down the hill. It occurred to me that I was spending a lot of time keeping track of my touches in a bout; a cardinal sin. I resolved to only think of the next touch: where, how, and when to score it. I told myself to ignore the scoring box and block out the score as announced by the director. This, surprisingly, worked better than I ever expected it to.

I had some additional weird difficulties earlier this month, but those were easily attributed to me taking my work into the salle with me. Not a good idea. I have resolved to better hold to a quote I read a couple of months ago:

Fencing is like holy communion. You must come to it in a fit state of body and soul. If you break that supreme law, then punishment is bound to follow.

This quote can be found in The Fencing Master, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I judge it not only to mean that you should leave all other concerns out of your head when you step onto the piste, but you should also think of nothing other than the motions of the body and the blade, or you will be sorely punished. I was, anyway. I am far from perfect, but I am not, now at least, plagued by inexplicable nonsense. Now the explicable nonsense must be dealt with.

I had my first solo coaching night just this past Friday. Oddly it was for epee and not foil, but it still came off very well, I think. Kathy was a great help in wrangling everyone. I planned a brief lesson, one that built on one I’d taught with Woody’s help the previous Monday, gave the lesson to what seemed like an attentive class, and got that little pang of satisfaction when I saw a couple of them use it in bouts later in the evening. I think I’m going to like this.

Coaches College is only two short weeks away. Let’s all hope I’m ready for the altitude and the pain.