A Touch of the Niggles

I've gone down with a case of the fencing niggles at the moment. The last couple of weeks I have been dogged by really irritating little problems when I've been on the piste. The velcro on my mask keeps coming loose, all my electric foils have stopped working properly, my foil handle won't stay screwed tight, I keep getting ahead in fights then losing them, been getting irritated at my performance etc. All these things have served to make for a frustrating time and have somewhat detracted from my enjoyment. But life's like that and it is quite easy to let these little things take you away from the big view. Take today at work for instance. I was talking to a colleague about the most minute and IT specific issue that you can imagine as if it was the most important thing in the known universe whilst in reality it was the most insignificant subject in the grand scale of things. We were both deeply embroiled in the conversation, work jargon and intellectual importance of the whole thing when I suddenly thought to myself "Whatever are we talking about? Is this really that important?" I didn't share this thought at the time but it enabled me to ditch a lot of the emotional stuff that I was associating with it and the anxieties and tension this can reinforce. Then I was able to go out for a walk at lunch and actually enjoy the sunshine instead of churning stuff over in my head. I think that for some reasons human beings are hard wired to need something to think about and worry over and occasionally it's great to be able to clear your mind and forget about all that! Some individuals seem to be better at maintaining this than others but it's worth trying. I guess it's the same with the fencing. I've probably started attaching too much importance to certain elements of my performance (I can be a bit of a perfectionist) so maybe it's time just to stop expecting, thinking and just fence!

On a brighter note..

England beat France at the rugby last night! (Apologies on the remote chance any readers are French). One thing that struck me was how Jonny Wilkinson, who has been the subject of a lot of media criticism lately kept his focus right when it mattered. He missed a couple of penalties but then had the control to drop a goal and hit another harder penalty straight between the posts. It's like he can completely put previous failures out of his mind and focus on what is needed right there and then.
Wish I could do that!

Quote of the week

"Focus on your true purpose"
Japanese Motto

Einstein was probably cr*p at sport

I fenced at the Norfolk County championships today; not a contest that is at the heart of international or even UK fencing but a microcosm of all that goes on in the sport. Highs, lows, tears and celebrations. I wasn't particularly pleased with my performance. Realistic appraisal reveals that despite getting into the last 16 I only really beat two young lads who had three competitions between them, lost closely to one of my students (well done Ben), lost not so closely against another competitor and got knocked out 14-9 on time in the direct elimination. So I am writing this not only with a vague sense of disappointment (and aching limbs) but also perhaps a faint sense of things passing by.
The thing that struck me particularly today is how keen we are to measure a person's worth by results and victories. "But it's a sport Dave, what else would we measure success by mate? Like DUHHH..." I hear some people saying and quite rightly so. But I guess as a coach I see the effect this false construct of success can have on someone when once again they have tried so hard and got no discernible (in a record book sense) result. Even from my personal perspective I felt after the end of my fights that I had achieved no more than I did last year but luckily I have my coaching and writing to fall back on. But many fencers do not and must find some other reason for continuing with the hobby. It is this very reason that I first started this blog in order to discuss the other sides of the fencing experience, the self learning and what I'd pretentiously call the 'philosophy' of the whole thing. In my mind you are not judged by your results but your attitude. Besides, when I walked back to car I could hear a woodpecker in the woods and the crows in the trees. They weren't bothered about fencing results so why should I be?!?

The different sides of learning

Last night at the salle I saw examples of the good side of learning and the bad side. One of the things that reflected the good side of the whole learning experience was one of my students who got a bit frustrated that she couldn't master a certain aspect of technique. Whilst frustrating to the person experiencing it, this is actually a good thing. As I have mentioned before in this blog, it is much better to be aware of what you're doing wrong than be blissfully ignorant of it. If you know what needs correcting you can at least do something about it and move forward. Once you reach a certain stage learning becomes more difficult as it becomes much more incremental with fewer major break throughs and can feel very slow. However, it means that when the break through does occur it can be much more significant. Unfortunately I also saw the not so good side of fencing with a young fencer who had unfortunately developed the opinion that they had nothing more to learn and got in a sulk when coached in a different way to which they were used to. This is quite common when a person has not had enough involvement with a coach in the early stages of their development and can result in a bad experience for both student and coach when a new relationship is initiated. When a coach takes the time out to give an individual lesson it will work much better when the student is open minded enough to realise the coach is trying to help them in their development. Every fencer should be open to feedback if it is well intentioned. I have fallen into the trap of being convinced I knew all I needed to know in the past but now appreciate that there's always an opportunity to learn....

If in doubt, watch

It's been a hard week this week and by the time I got to the salle for the weekly session I was feeling distinctly jaded and hardly had the energy to keep my eyes open, let alone fence. As it happens I was able to observe some fights from the vantage of the sidelines and found that yet again this is a very instructional use of time. The third person viewpoint is really a good way of recognising other fencer's habit patterns and giveaways; turning that to your advantage is another trick entirely!

Always the Bridesmaid

Here's a picture of me with my Coach Andy. Andy is on the right and we are obviously in the middle of demonstrating a technique to a class and it looks like I am not very happy with his opinion!

Andy and I have been working together for nearly twenty years now and it's always good to run through lessons together. I sometimes make a joke out of the fact that I am always the one who has to get hit but then he's the chap who taught me all I know so I'm not complaining really. When we work a lesson through even though I am the 'stooge' it gives me an opportunity to practice my lunging or various other techniques and I always look to hit him in the same place every time for two reasons; one, because it improves my accuracy and two, because it allows him to make the technique look as good as possible. Students tend to mimic what they see so it is vital to ensure the demonstration is as accurate and neat as possible. So I'm happy to be taking the hit to further the cause of good fencing!

Ichi go, ichi e

It's a Sunday night and The Dear Lady Wife is watching Lark rise to Candle fluff or whatever it is called and here I am doodling away on my blog and for once I AM STUMPED FOR A TOPIC. Oh my God, is this it? Is this the first sign of a decline in my literary career?? The thing is with blogging that you've only got a few words to get your point across; it's not like a conversation where you can take as many words as you need (and my students will tell you that I take a lot). There's a saying in Japanese familiar to many martial artists which goes "Ichi go, ichi e" which can be translated as "one encounter, one chance" and whilst I could use the fantastic edit facilities to change this entry later I prefer to see where it goes. In fencing and martial arts (and blogging) we generally have more than one chance as it's not normally a matter of life or death when we participate in our chosen art. In the old days of Samurai Japan it certainly was one chance only. A duel back then would usually result in the death of one or both of the protagonists. If they got a technique wrong they didn't have a chance to correct it later.
In my previous post I discussed the fact that we are lucky in our modern sport that we can afford to make mistakes. We can always have another go. However where the saying holds true is when we stop ourselves during the execution of a move because we think it's gone wrong. If you were fencing for real you wouldn't stop; you'd have to carry through with the move and hope it worked. Hesitation would be fatal. So next time you're fencing and you pull up short just remember "one encounter, one chance".
Wow, I seem to have come up with a topic after all!

Lose the battle; win the war?

Sometime's it's ok to make mistakes. That's the great thing about fencing, it's not actually for real. Last night I was fencing a chap who I will probably encounter in an upcoming competition. I hadn't fenced him for over a year and decided to treat it as a recce mission. I ended up losing 10-2 but learnt a lot. Obviously if life had been at stake I would have been in trouble but I was content to lose the fight and contemplate my mistakes so that I could learn from them.
The real problem with mistakes is if we get stuck on them and are unable to move past them. If it is at all possible it is better to let them go and get on with the next lunge, hit, fight etc. There's no point in kicking yourself over these things at any point. I suppose if I had been a Samurai sword master I would have retreated to a mountain cave (with scenic waterfall of course) where I could have contemplated my defeat and licked my metaphorical wounds. As it is , I had to content myself with a drive across the fens to Peterborough!