The Show Always Goes On...

On Friday my wife and I went to the theatre to see 'Les Miserables' and had a brilliant evening . I always get a buzz from seeing true talent at work and there was plenty to enjoy in the performance. But in my eccentric way, one thing really stood out for me. The singing and set design were all excellent and the performers were outstanding but there was one point in the second half that made me smile. For those of you who know the plot it was at the point where Valjean rescues Marius from the barricade and the actor playing Valjean picked up the other chap and carried him off. In doing so Marius inadvertently dropped his sash. Nothing major, a trifling but niggling detail perhaps and the scene continued apace. However, the next scene was the soliloquy of Javert, a key scene and one of the major plot moments. So, the actor playing Valjean did something very clever. He allowed the scene to continue, singing and acting seamlessly but as he moved off the stage he subtley snagged the offending sash with his left foot and took it with him.
Now you may think this is no big deal but I think it was a great example of presence and attention. a) he noticed it and it's significance to the impact of next scene b) whilst continuing to perform he formulated a plan c) he carried out the plan successfully and with minimal fuss. All whilst delivering a faultless performance.
I don't know about anyone else but I was impressed. A true example of someone fully present in his craft. There is a very good story about Yagyu Munenori and a Noh theatre performer but I will leave that for another post. If I don't come back to it someone remind me.....!

Lightness of touch

This weekend I was giving several individual lessons at my club and one of the moves I was geteting my students to perform was stepping in, engaging my blade in sixte and then reacting to my opening with either an attack down the blade or a disengage on pressure. The one thing that most of them got wrong was the initial step in to engage. They all invariably over-commited and then found the distance was wrong for the atttack. It's another of the essential paradoxes of fencing; in order to attack aggressively you have to be light and relaxed. Too aggressive on your initial movement and you risk telegraphing your attack to your opponent so there should be no difference between a reconnaisance and the actual attack. Sometimes you just have to rein yourself in and relax, which is very difficult to do but worth the effort in the end. I'd like to come up with something profoundly Zen-like at this point such as "to attack, you must give up on the idea of attack" but I can't think of anything adequate...... ;0)

Get Kata....*

One thing that I have been pondering for some time is whether fencing needs Kata in the way that most martial arts have them? For the un-initiated a Kata is a routine of pre-defined moves that the exponent repetitively practices either on their own or with a partner in order to gain proficiency. They also form part of the grading system of the art in some way or another. We in fencing don't do this, preferring to have some group practice on the moves and then some demonstration of them in the grading system. Would it be weird to practice some choreographed moves with a partner? Would it be beneficial in any way? I can't help but think it might benefit some fencers to practice the same move again and again with a partner until the subtleties are mastered. Variety could be added by speed, distance even emotion etc until it became quite a rich experience. But then again I am old fashioned. Perhaps I will retreat to my cave and ponder some more. Besides 24 is on in a minute!

* Apologies to Michael Caine - the Sylvester Stallone version was not a touch on the original....

The Indefinables

No, this is not the title of a Kevin Costner movie about gangsters but something I nicked from Maestro Andy the other night. We were coaching a lesson on counter time, particularly the act of inviting an attack so you could parry riposte it and I mentioned to him that because I have been assisting him for nigh on 15 odd years we probably make techniques look relatively simple in the demo stage of a lesson. I kind of know what Andy will do and he kind of knows my rhythms etc. I continued with my exposition to the end that this particular technique is actually quite subtle and whilst mechanically simple (i.e. you step in and open your line so that you look vulnerable, then parry riposte the inevitable attack) it is actually quite difficult to do convincingly. You either get it or you don't. He agreed and said "Yes, it's the indefinables.....". I thought "Hmmm - I'm having that for the blog..." So here we are Dear Reader!
The point I am trying to make is that it is sometimes relatively easy to grasp the basic mechanics of something but the spirit of it can sometimes take years to finally comprehend. You can practice a technique for a long time before it actually starts working. In some martial arts a Kata can be repeated for a very long time before final comprehension makes it really work. In fact in some of the Kata from some sword schools the real meaning and application has been lost in the translation to the modern discipline, such as Sword combinations designed for fighting in enclosed spaces etc.
Another example from fencing is the step-feint-disengage attack. If the step is too long you fail, because you have insufficient room to conduct the compound attack. If it is too short the feint will be unconvincing and will not provoke your opponent's parry. You need what is referred to in astronomy circles as a 'goldilocks'* step. Not too long, not too short, but just right..... This is just one instance of some of the indefinables of fencing and it's what makes doing it and coaching it such fun.

*For those of you who are unfamiliar with astro-physics in the exo-planetary department, in order for a planet to evolve life it must lie in an orbit from it's star that is just the right temperature; not too hot, not too cold hence the 'goldilocks zone'.

There Ain't No Such Thing as a Nailed On Cert....

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was at a competition this weekend and fencing once again demonstrated to me that there's no such thing as certainty involved. When I arrived I took a look around at the other competitors and was not hopeful when I saw the opposition. Whilst having been a fencer for over 20 years now I have only really been doing epee seriously for the last year or so and in that regard was not expecting to do that well. However, a number of things happened to show that fencing chickens should not be counted before they hatch...
I won my first fight, with a satisfying final point of bind disengage fleche. Put me in a good mood, but I knew my next fight was against someone I didn't expect to beat...
I won that fight as well, 5-3. Crivens! I was then reasonably confident that I would beat the next opponent as I had watched him and planned some tactics to use
I lost (badly) 5-1. Curses! Also, I didn't expect to win my next fight either
I didn't (so sometimes I'm right) but I did get a nice broken time hit in to the wrist. I thought I might win the next one but knew it would be close.
I won that one. Could I win the last one and make it 4 wins 2 defeats? I was feeling confident as I had a plan for my next opponent, a left hander.
The plan worked to an extent but I still lost. I had planned to feint to leg and deceive his octave parry and hit to arm. This worked but my other techniques didn't.
So I finished 3 up 3 down, which in retrospect was pretty good and probably went against my expectations.
I then went into the Direct Elimination stage and the story of the first fight is in the previous post. So then I ended up in the last eight and found myself fencing the left handed fellow from my pool. My strategy was to stay with him for as long as possible and then change rhythm to try and win it. At the first period I was 5-4 down so the plan still looked on, however I had a poor start to the next period and quickly found myself 8-4 down. From then on I was trying to chase the match and finally ended up losing 15-7 as my fleche attacks simply weren't good enough and I began to snatch at my disengages, meaning I was missing a lot. Most significantly, my opponent had better point control than me and fenced well, picking me off on the arm a lot.
Ultimately I finished in the top half, which was better than I expected. Plus, I did better than one of my main training partners, which was even more of a surprise. But one of the significant things I continue to realise is that you can never predict how things are going to go.... and that I still have loads to learn.

Enthusiastic or Just Excessive?

I was at an epee competition at the weekend and had an interesting experience in my first direct elimination fight. I was fencing against a young man who I'd never seen before who was quite stocky, powerful and had a pronounced square shouldered stance. He was also obviously very..... hmmm.... enthusiastic. I had overheard him saying to another competitor earlier how he had imbibed several Red Bulls for breakfast to compensate for a late night and was now 'buzzing' and this was indeed the case. Basically his technique consisted of flecheing..... continuously. With a bent arm. This he did until he realised that I was simply stop hitting on his arm and he was now 8-3 down. Then he started to bind in sixte and fleche, which was marginally more effective in the sense that I basically parried in seconde and only occasionally got a stop in. I then figured out that when I attacked him he simply didn't know what to do and was 11-5 up at the break as a result. In the second period he became more desperate and as a result he began to fleche direct again with the same results as before. Now, I didn't mind him haemorrhaging points but what I did mind was as a result of his bizarre square stance he was running into me every time and there were two occasions where he came close to (accidentally) shouldering me in the face. Not much fun, particularly considering how 'enthusiastically' he was attacking. In the end I had him at 13-6 and he decided to leap upwards like a frog in a blender, allow me to stop hit him and then come down sideways on his ankle and probably sprain it. Net result 14-6 to me and him on the floor in obvious pain. I and the President suggested he might want to retire but no, with the Red Bull coursing through his veins he vowed to limp on heroically. So I lunged and hit him to get it done before he hurt himself even more.
Talking to several people after the fight this is apparently quite normal as the young man has a 'bubbly' character and always fences like that at his club. And there's the rub. Someone, either a fellow fencer or better still a coach, desperately needs to take this chap aside, put a metaphorical arm around his shoulder and say "Look chap, if you carry on like this then three things will happen: a) you'll continue to lose b) you'll hurt yourself c) you'll hurt someone else. He obviously is a very keen young fellow and it would be a shame if he eventually goes out of fencing through disillusionment at continually losing or injury. There's nothing wrong with enthusiasm but it needs to be tempered with some realistic and pragmatic coaching, rather than just letting someone get on with it because that's just the way they are.

Three F's of Fencing

Quite a few years ago I (for no particular reason apart from wanting a challenge) had a go at bodyguard training. One of the things that stuck in my mind from that period was when one of the instructors asked the group "what is a bodyguard's most effective weapon"? Lots of hands went up with suggestions of fists, feet, guns etc but the instructor just shook his head and said "Your brain..."
This also applies to fencing; there are many weapons a fencer can use, but for me the three that stand out are their Foil, their Feet (Footwork) or their "Finking"! The foil is the most obvious, but if you can't get your opponent into range then it's no good as a weapon. That's where your feet come in; you've got a 14 metre piste to play with so use it!
Finally, if you can't think your way through problems (i.e. "I've just been hit twice in a row by that disengage attack... what asm I going to do about it?") then you are also destined for disappointment. You must cultivate a balance between all three to be truly effective.