On the subject of teams

I rarely think of fencing as a team sport. I have participated in a few team format competitions, but for the most part it's me alone against the hordes. And those same hordes often include other members of my club. But when it comes to practice, and seeing the same guys (I am the only female epeeist at the moment) week in and week out, sweating along beside me, I find myself referring to them in my head as "the team."

I am now at my third club in three years. Three very different clubs with different demographics, styles, and levels of competitiveness. So I feel somewhat qualified to speak on the topic of camaraderie in fencing practice. All have been mostly friendly places, though fencing, by its nature I think, always breeds a few standoffish, haughty types. But I've never felt as really welcomed into, and as much a part of, a group as I do now with the other epeeists at my club.

While I suspect this has a lot to do with me and an increase in confidence overall, I think it also has something to do with the level of competition at the club. Of the three clubs I have belonged to, my current club is the most competitive-minded, with nearly everyone competing at least at the local level. It has the most people competing at the National level and the most rated fencers - not that that is a valid measurement of anything by itself. How does this contribute to a team atmosphere? Common goals for one. Plain ol' human nature for another: No one wants to be left behind so no one is slouching off at practice. We're constantly egging each other on and pushing one another and sharing feedback. It helps, I think that we're all competitive with one another and no bout is ever a sure thing. It seems to mean absolutely nothing that I am the only female, which is good for me.

What does all this mean? It means that when one of my teammates wins a tournament, I am nearly as excited as if I had won it myself. (It was a rough day on Sunday, watching two of my teammates fight the gold medal bout and not really knowing who to root for. I just cheered for all the good touches and congratulated both guys at the end.) It means I always look forward to practice. It also means that I'm scared to death of falling behind these guys, of being a drag on the team. Whether it's because they're younger, stronger, or just have more free time, I am spurred to work as hard as possible on our two practice nights a week to make sure I can keep up.

I've had a lot more thoughts about the subject of teams, but I'll save them for another post.

Lunge Into 08

Since the fencing season really started back in September (give or take), the first tournament of the calendar year is little more than a convenient demarcation. However, this particular tournament felt like more to me because it was the first tournament I've competed in since beginning training with our new coach. And it felt like a whole new ballgame, to use a phrase loosely.

As I wrote about previously: my tactics have been taken, placed in a jar, shaken vigorously and then dumped back on the strip upside down. That is to say, I am fencing differently. It is by no means second-nature yet, requiring still a great force of will on my part not to revert to passivity and relying solely on counterattacks. But the verdict: the new style, it works. I lost only one bout on Sunday. After making it through the pool undefeated and the quarterfinal DE, I lost the semifinal DE to one of my club mates. It was not a terrible loss, 15-10, and he beat me fair and square by continually taking over tempo and being faster than me. Another day perhaps, the score might be different.

The tournament did end on a high note, however. We had a fence off for third and even after a couple of mistakes that nearly cost me the place, I managed to win 15-14. I did feel like there was a lot of room for improvement in that bout though; I was still more reactive than I want to be. It's funny that after I got home and checked my RSS feeds, one of my quotes for the day was:

"Never confuse movement with action." - Ernest Hemingway

Which is very apt. Because I am moving a lot more, but it is not always producing the ownage of the strip that I'm aiming for. Sometimes I have to think so much about the moving, that it drowns out thoughts of attacking and/or defending. I'm hoping that once I can make the movement more instinctual the other aspects will follow.

Eating Before a Tournament

Though this article originally appeared in a hockey magazine, it is still pretty relevant I think. I like it for its straightforwardness and for not being overly scientific.

Via, Fitness Tips for Life: http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/eating-for-your-workouts.html

Me, I usually try to eat a bowl of oatmeal on tournaments mornings (and a lot of other mornings) though sometimes I find I'm too nervous to eat more than a few bites.

Embrace the Bubble

Since starting our "new" epee program, I feel like I've learned so much; more than can be communicated here, even with italics. When we switched from drills to bouting last night I felt out of sorts, my head swimming with all the things we've been discussing and practicing these many weeks. So many things to be aware of, to remember, to do or not do; I was overwhelmed and started out by losing the majority of the touches in that first practice bout because I couldn't get a handle on everything at once.

But then we moved to more focused bouting with immediate feedback and direction and that really helped. The word of the night was bubble. This is the space where fencing actions which result in a touch can occur. Basically it's advance-lunge distance, but being aware of this distance actually pushed us even closer in many instances, uncomfortably so sometimes. My goal, both mentally and tactically, was to keep myself from relying solely on defense and attempt to be the one controlling the bout as much as possible. Whoa! This is so antithetical to my status quo that it was actually easier than I thought it would be. If I had been instructed to only change one aspect of my fencing, then it would have been too easy to lapse back into habit, but with this 180º turn, it was all I could think about: I didn't have a chance to become reactionary like usual and I felt like I actually did pretty well.

Still, I am nervous about the tournament this weekend. My normal plan for tournaments is to let myself be ruled by instincts. I don't try to incorporate new or more complicated maneuvers in tournament play until they become instinct. But I think more is expected of me this time around and I hope I can pull it off. Also, everyone else preregistered so far is from our club and I never like fencing teammates in tournaments. Am I more scared of losing to them or winning? I know, but I'm scared to to tell you.

In Praise of 350Newtons

Overnight a cold front single-handedly introduced the South to Winter. South meet Winter; Winter, South. All acquainted? Good. What is usually a pleasant, brisk morning walk with my dog was suddenly a frost-bite inducing misery at 6:30 this morning. We both kept our heads down, whimpered a little, did what we had to do, and got back to the house as quickly as possible.

It's times like this that make me feel for die hard athletes who are at the mercy of the elements. Runners and road bikers who insist that nothing short of a flood will keep them off the streets. I don't really understand it myself; even when I was a competitive runner, I always found an excuse to take the winter off. It's times like this that make me thankful for the burden which I schlep to the club at least two days a week.

Shorts, knickers, shirt, plastron, jacket, knee high socks all things to be thankful for this time of year. For while the bikers are being treated for frost bite of the buttocks, I will be sweating and loosening my collar.

Of course, in the summer, we can all suffer together.

I'm Not Really Fencing....

Is it a social consciousness or just coincidence? There was an article by Gina Kolata in the New York Times yesterday about an aspect of competition I have been thinking about a lot recently.

I'm Not Really Running, I'm Not Really Running

Myself, I keep thinking about it as mind-over-body, a term that is used once in the article also. The article is largely about how athletes push their bodies beyond the limits which our minds set for us. Kolata speaks mostly of endurance sports, but I find the same ideas very applicable to fencing. I have, in fact, exercised some of these ideas in both practice and tournaments.

A relatively new thing with our epee squad is conditioning. Holding the arm out straight at shoulder height for minutes at a time is something that some of my clubmates seem to have trouble with, but I've found it manageable. If I think about my shoulder, then I realize that it does indeed hurt like crazy after a couple minutes, but I find that if I focus on some spot on the far wall I almost don't even notice.

But the limits of endurance are not often tested in fencing - for me anyhow. The limits that I do find pushed are those of coordination and mechanics. And this is when mind-over-body really comes into play. If I envision a move or series of actions I want to make, can I force that action to come out of my limbs though it is foreign and unpracticed? Occasionally we have played a fun game at practice, mostly for the kids, where the leader will announce an animal and each person must attack the target as they think that animal would attack it. The bull rushes headfirst at the target while the butterfly dances across the floor and lands a delicate touche. These are not things we ever have or ever will practice, but if you can suddenly command a strange series of actions from your body, then I think that bodes well for performing other actions when under pressure.

On Wednesday, we did a fun drill where only touches to the mask counted. When both opponents are trying for the same target, it requires increasing complex combinations of feints, parries, and footwork and in the end I felt really proud of some of the maneuvers I was able to pull off at the spur of the moment.

This is, of course, an optimistic post. One of the reasons that I think about mind-over-body so often is because it often fails me. How often have I tried to tell myself to fleche and then not been able to convince my body that it was capable at that very moment. But I'm hoping that having an awareness of this disconnect is the first step to resolving it.

Junior Olympics...

...are going to be in Charlotte next year. And today the website, designed by yours truly, was launched. In a shameless attempt to bump the site's ranking on Google, I am posting the link here. If you happen to have a fencing website, feel free to link as well.

Fence Charlotte - 2008 Junior Olympics

I haven't felt terribly inspired to write lately, but I have been doing a lot of thinking about fencing lately. Stay tuned for assorted attempts to wrangle these thoughts into words.

Belated update

So I won another tournament this past weekend. Like the last, it was small, but not without a reasonable amount of competition. I did in fact beat a D07 to win. A young energetic college boy D07 no less. It was a close bout all the way and the final score was 15-14. I nearly beat myself, however, because I had at least a two point lead most of the time and upon reaching 14-12, got a little over eager to end it. When the score hit 14-14 I thought I was going to throw up. Really. This has never happened to me before. I was balanced upon a rather precarious edge between simply scoring one more point and giving myself over to fear, like has happened so many times before. It was solely a triumph of will that allowed me to keep my cool and get the last point.

I have had some other thoughts lately besides about tournaments and I will try to post them soon.

And now, we rejoin our hero in the Swamp of Lassitude

So since the last tournament I've missed several other opportunities to compete. I even skipped a tournament at my own club. Partially, this has been due to other Saturday morning commitments, but partially it has been due to a sort of lethargy which I described out-loud to my coach as being burnt out. I just plain haven't felt like it.

If I wanted to get psychological and whatnot about it, I'd probably blame it on being worried about not being able to live up to unrealistic expectations after my recent first place finish. But I'm not giving myself that much credit.

I don't want to ever force myself to fence; I always want to look forward to a tournament, so I'm going to skip this weekend's tournament in Boone as well. The good news is, I still look forward to practice and last night's practice was awesome. Two hours of wall to wall fencing with a satisfying mix of wins and loss inspired lessons.

Best quote by yours truly, during an in-fighting exercise, after leaping out of the defined drilling space: But he was so SCARY!

The Titanic

Sweet monkey dumplings! I won a tournament. The Titanic Open (a women and children only event...get it?) was this past weekend so I took the short jaunt up to Greensboro to play. I knew it wouldn't be a big event, and at close of registration there were seven ladies lined up for the fight. I like seven person pools. More bang for the buck. Lots of fencing.

It was a nice pool and everyone was friendly and in good spirits throughout. I ended up winning all my pool bouts, but none were too easy. My entire purpose for attending this tournament rather than the much larger one in Columbia on the same day was to get as much experience fighting other women as possible. My few forays onto the National scene, where only other women are involved, has lead me to the realization that I need this experience if I ever want to break the top 16 at a NAC. Though it's been mentioned previously, I will just reiterate how different it is fighting women rather than men. And at practice, I mainly fence the latter.

Beyond the victories listed on the score sheet, I am most proud of my secret mental victories. Of not losing my head and giving up leads (as I did in the last tournament). Of having enough self-possession to take control of my mind and my body to come from a deficit in the gold medal bout and then maintain a lead.

That last bout was the hardest and I'm not above admitting that I was quite terrified during most of it. My opponent counter-attacked successfully nearly everything I did. Nearly everything was a double. And taking advantage of some foolish attacks I made in desperation, there were a few single lights on her side. So it is that we came to 12-11 in the third round, me with the 11. It took all my energies to remain collected. I carefully maintained my routine of walking back to the warning line after every touch of any kind and then calmly walking back to en garde. I find this ritual helps me to "reset" after any touch, good or bad. I muttered my mantra constantly: "one touch at a time...one touch at a time". And so that's how I managed to find myself at the final "Halt", with time expired at 14-12. I was trembling so bad, I could hardly shake hands, but I was happy too. Beyond beating my opponent, I had overcome that defeatist voice, and today that makes me happiest of all.

This weekend has me thinking a lot about the place of women in fencing and I mean to write more about it soon.

Blog Action Day

That it is. But since this is not really an action-taking type of blog, I'll just point you towards some that are.

Treehugger
Grist
Lighter Footstep
Ethicurean - probably my favorite
EcoGeek

Season Three Premiere

After my first bout of pools, my hands were shaking so bad I could barely take a drink of my water. This is not unusual for a tournament for me, especially at the beginning. It's like all my energy comes up from my core and gets caught up in my arms and legs, vibrating there, waiting to be let out.

I did not win that bout, nor did I win the next. In both of these bouts, both against C's, I started out in the lead and held the lead at 4-something. But then I lost both of these bouts 5-4. I don't think that I was outclassed in fencing mechanics. I think I was outclassed in terms of strategy and constancy.

Technically, I am starting my third competitive season. I told myself that I simply lacked the experience that I needed this weekend to recognize what I should have done when the score is 4-3 or 4-4; that I was facing more experienced fencers that did have this experience. All true perhaps, but at what point do I start to glean this information from bouts and squirrel it away for use in similar situations? (Of course, it was only toward the end of the last season that I was even able to consistently score four touches in pool bouts.) And now, the time between "Halt" and "Ready?" seems to whiz by in a stuporific haze. I assume this is the time when I need to be telling myself that I don't need to rush in like so many fools to wrest that last point from my opponent, that I should be patient and worst-case, go for the double.

So that is this weekend's moral. The final result is less important. I felt like I was strong and relaxed in my fencing. I was the top-finishing woman and I made it past the first round of DEs. All in all, a great improvement over the first tournament of last season.

Now...for some strategory.

Within the sound of my voice

I recognize that it's been a while since my last post. To be truthful, I haven't been thinking that much about fencing. I'm sure this is due largely to the fact that it's been over a week since I've been able to go to practice, but hopefully I won't suffer for that too much tonight.

What got me thinking was this weekend's episode of This American Life. The subject was the devils inside each of us and one of the stories was about the Voice that many of us suffer inside our own heads. I have several of them. One of them makes me stay in bed too late. One of them makes me eat things just because they're there. And one of them likes to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body.

I first became acquainted with this last voice when I was a runner in high school. The voice was sometimes kind and sympathetic and would say to me in the middle of a cross country race, "You're tired. Who do you need to prove yourself to? There's no need to push so hard." Sometimes the voice was cruel but practical and would say, "You know you're not going to win this race anyway so just knock it off. What's the difference in 10th place and 15th place anyway? They both suck." Yet again, sometimes the voice was just downright wicked, "Look how tired you are! Look at that hole! If you were to twist your ankle right now, you'd be able to rest and everyone would want to take care of you." Luckily I never gave in to that last voice, but it was unfailing in its arrival on steep inclines.

During my years of sloth after college, I lost touch with this voice. Perhaps it was sated by my indolence and lulled into gratified slumber. But since I have started fencing, it has roused itself again and I find that often during tournaments I am facing two opponents, one of which lives inside my head. I suppose I should be glad that it is not ever present, but it likes to strike when I am weakest: when I have slipped up or am facing an especially daunting opponent. The voice was the winner during my div 2 event at nationals.

Unfortunately, This American Life did not extend its broadcast to offering ways to foil our inner devil. Attempting to drown out the voice with an internal mantra has met with some success, as has simply getting better and more confident in my fencing. But I have a feeling that the voice will never be squelched entirely and that my best recourse is simply to become better at arguing.

The Part Where You Let Go

The club has been shaken up. Shaken up enough so that I think that those who aren't holding on tightly may be lost to the turbulence. I wonder...how tight is my grip?

Just because it's a good new song: The Part Where You Let Go

Label making

I am in the process of labeling old posts so it will be easier to find posts on specific topics. So exciting, I know.

Dorothy Parker was a fencer?

"I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid."

Ms. Parker has quite a few biting quotes to her name, but I happened upon this one again today and suddenly thought: why that would make a perfect fencing opponent!

Stupid: I guess that one's obvious. If I could spend an entire bout winning touches with the same attack over and over, and my opponent not figuring it out, well that'd be just fine with me.

Handsome: Well, he's going to take his mask off at some point, and it might as well be something good to look at. It's convenient that whites, like other uniforms, are attractive on most men.

Ruthless: Perhaps this one requires a little more explanation and perhaps I am a little loose with the meaning of ruthless. But I have in mind that opponent (you know him) who wants with every fiber of his being to assail you with huge beats, sweeping parries, and fleches from halfway down the piste. These types are often daunting for a woman upon first meeting, but they can be solved quite easily with a few studied derobements, small disengages and point control.

Without question, there are many strengths of male fencers that I find very difficult to overcome. With some men I fence frequently, I simply know that I cannot get into a shoving-parry match with them because I will lose. But the lady fencer should keep in mind that she too has strengths that can be played successfully.

Camp

This weekend I participated in a camp at our club. Two days, 9-3, billed as an intensive, start-up-the-season experience. A basic summary:
Saturday
1) General warmup with various running and stretching exercises
2) Taking of our "fitness temperature", doing a little sprint around the salle, vertical jump, and standing broad jump.
3) Footwork drills
4) Target drills with weapon
5) Break into two groups: foil and epee for dry exchange drills
6) Switch to electric for more drills, then bouting
Sunday
1) Warmup with running and a bit of jump rope (!)
2) Distance keeping drills
3) Footwork drills, including a bit of scrutiny and extra drilling for the fleche.
4) Target Speed drills
5) Breaking into two groups: foil and epee for dry exchange drills
6) Switch to electric for more drills, then bouts

Overall, it was a good amount of activity for me. I was okay after Saturday, but today I am feeling a bit of soreness in my legs. I've never been to a fencing camp before so I didn't really know what to expect or if my expectations were reasonable, especially for so short a time period. For the cost, I wish that there had been more individual attention in case during all those drills I was reinforcing the wrong behaviors. Being so technically driven, the drills are my favorite part actually. I always worry about whether my execution in bouts is technically correct so I enjoy the time to study particular moves at a more granular level.

I think that I did not so much learn new things at this camp, but it helped me to determine my areas of weakness which need the most immediate attention. Perhaps the most focused portion of the whole experience was sitting down Saturday morning to fill out a form that asked us to determine our goals for ourselves and for the competitive season.

If this camp serves me, I hope it serves as a momentum-building device to get me going on a season of similar intensity. I want to work hard and sweat a lot and go to bed exhausted, but I'm not working for nothing.

Ve vant to pump! you up!

So I bought a smallish weight machine this weekend off craigslist. It doesn't do everything, but allows me to do a full circuit of the muscle groups. Last night was the first time I really used it and I concentrated on lower body

3 x 10 squats
3 x 20 toe raises (calves)
3 x 10 leg curl
2 x crunches to failure

I kept the weights very light last night because I haven't lifted weights in a couple years since I gave up my Bally's membership. The next step is to crack open the copy of Strength Training for Fencers and sketch out an actual routine. In college, I lifted weights quite a bit, with guidance in the beginning from the cross-country coaches, so that's what I base most of my planning on. My experience is in training different muscle groups on alternating days so that your muscles get the proper rest; upper body one day, lower body the next, repeat. But since I won't have time to train on nights that I fence, it may be a bit of a juggling act at first to make
sure I am working hard enough. It only took me about 19 minutes last night to finish my circuit, so there's plenty of time to adjust without eating up too much of my evenings.

Meanwhile, I need to add some intense all over cardiovascular training on the weekends. I'm toying with a bootcamp workout I read on another blog.

I might add, it's always like this at the beginning of the season. Big plans for reshaping my physique, my fitness. How long do I usually stick with it? Hard to say - two steps forward, one and a half steps back. I've come to grips with the fact that I'll never be as fit as I was in college again, but every little bit feels like a lot of good to me.

Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed on the stormy billows of the world.
Johann von Goethe

This weekend we cleaned out our garage. The floor is wide open and there is a nice clear space on the wall, just waiting for a target. I think it is a commonly accepted statistic that the majority of fencers have only a few things that they do really well. I've decided it ought to be my goal to figure out what those things are (or what they will be), and learn to execute them perfectly. I foresee hours of repetitive point control drills and thousands of advance-lunges.

The crux comes, however, when it is time to prove what practice has wrought. Damn those character-forming stormy billows.

Patience? Not one of MY virtues

Nationals, nationals, nationals. Tired of hearing about it yet? I wish I could stop thinking about it - dreaming about it. So I'm going to keep writing about it for a while. If you're bored, feel free to pop over to ICHC till I get done.

I just finished listening to this interview with Soren Thompson. He is exactly the type of fencer I want to be. Granted, I have no delusions of fencing anywhere near that level, but I want to occupy the same mind space. Among other admirable confessions, the thing that he mentioned that most struck home for me this week was his recounting of a recent team competition. Soren describes how his team slowly builds a lead and concentrates on not making mistakes, instead letting the other team make mistakes.

What a brilliant f-ing idea! How many bouts last weekend did I take the lead in early on, only to lose it, and the bout, in a blink? At least three, maybe more. And the DE that I lost 15-13? Yes, I was in the lead more than once and then, poof, bye-bye.

Perhaps you cannot sense my incensed mood through this 2-D medium. Take my word for it: just thinking about it makes me so angry. I wish that I'd had a bit more presence of mind on Saturday to record exactly what caused me to lose the lead, but I know that each of the following culprits was to blame at one time or another.

1) "OMG! I have the lead. Quick, close it out!" Followed by leaving my brain at the on-guard line in favor of spastic flailing.
2) "OMG! I have the lead. Quick, stop everything you've been doing so far (that's been working) and freeze up!"

OMG.