The Curse of The Pen

On Saturday morning at the Academy we had the bi-weekly ladder fencing. We decided to deploy the 'pen for priority' move in the event of a draw at the end of three minutes. You know the one, the pen is spun on the floor, the fencer who ends up with the pointy end gets priority so if a minute is fenced without a score that fencer wins. It increases the eventuality of a result in a fair way. One young gentleman was involved in four fights like this and didn't get priority once. On the fourth occasion on he was heard to say "I never get priority and I always lose - it's just my bad luck!". I'd seen a couple of his previous fights so I watched this one to see if there was a pattern and yes indeed, there was.

The problem the young gent had was that on the command "Play" he would come charging down the piste, over-balance and almost hurl himself on his opponent's parry riposte. He had become obsessed by his perceived disadvantage and getting in the first hit quick. He would have been much better off taking his time and composing his attacks; in fencing 60 seconds can be a long time......
Did I tell him this? Well I'd just given him a lesson where I had reconstructed his footwork for him and addressed his momentum issues so thought I'd let it percolate for a while..... too much info can be a bad thing.