British Youth Championships

Good luck to James, Joseph, Luke and Alex at Sheffield on Saturday.... Keep calm, keep it simple and keep thinking!

Strains, Pains & Acheing Joints

It's been quiet around this blog for a bit so apologies if any of you have missed your fix of my random ramblings! I've been a bit out of whack recently as I tore a tendon in my right elbow a couple of weeks ago which has put me out of commission combat wise. This is the most persistent injury I've had since I last cracked a rib and I must admit it's a bit frustrating as I can't really grip my epee firmly enough to fence with it so I've had to confine myself to coaching, observing and presiding. As the old maxim has it, "those who can, do: those who can't, teach and those who can't teach write about it!" It seems like my life is developing into the middle and end of this scenario at the moment!


So I've been doing some thinking and reading instead. The summer term at the academy is usually quite interesting as due to the school using the sports hall for exams we have to use the old hall which is smaller. Thus in fine weather you'll find fencers out in the tennis courts or even in the corridors! This can make for a bit of a headache for the coaches trying to organise things. As we can't sometimes get the club in one room for instruction we try to think of different things to do. I was pondering this the other day and have come up with this idea that I'm hoping we'll try.

Set some foil fencing problems

Divide into groups of four with the following scenarios to solve..... they have 20 minutes to come up with a solution for each one, demonstrate it to the whole class and explain it. It's up to them who demonstrates what but they must all take part.
1. Deal with someone who has a good broken time attack
2. Deal with someone who steps forward and engages in sixte prior to lungeing
3. Deal with someone who has a good first counter riposte
4. Deal with someone who has a persistently low blade position of octave
5. Deal with someone who presents a straight arm
6. Deal with someone who has a good beat attack on the preparation
7. Deal with someone who engages in sixte, then disengages and feints on your pressure before deceiving your parry of quarte

Each group would work on all problems but only demonstrate one for time purposes (although we won't tell them that at the start). The point is to provoke debate/thought about all the problems plus put them under a little bit of pressure.
If we want to make it competitive the coaches could score out of ten for:
Feasibility
Quality of demo
Imagination/thinking

Obviously I have thought through some of the potential solutions but I won't publish them here as I like to get you all thinking as well. The problems are predominantly aimed at foil but some are also relevant to epee, but anything that prompts analysis can only be a good thing in my book. I might publish my proposed answers in a couple of weeks as a comment on this post.

I've also been doing a few bus/train journeys lately and regular readers will know this is when I tend to review my favourite books. There may well be a post on Munenori's "Heiho Kadensho" or "Household Book On The Art Of War" soon......

"Bouncing" some Kata

An anonymous poster has pointed out the following link to me with a comment on an old post regarding fencing kata. I thought it was worth 'bouncing' it here as it's a very interesting link...... Thanks Anonymous!
 www.coachescompendium.org/GERMANEPEE.HTML

Not the Face!

I discovered a new and interesting target at the club last Wednesday; my opponent's mask. Obviously this would not apply at foil but I'd been reading something about epee fencing and it had been mentioned so I thought I'd give it a go. I noticed it was particularly effective against opponents who fell forward when attacking and as a stop hit against those who attempted to attack to foot. In general it seemed to catch people unawares and seemed quite difficult to defend against. I guess it's not something that is generally encountered and as such has a surprise effect. It also made me feel a bit underhand as it seemed 'not quite the done thing'. I don't know why I felt this way about it, after all it is a valid target and sabreurs are whacking each other round the head all the time! It is a strategy I shall continue with though as it adds a few things into the repertoire:

Surprise: Being hit in the face is unusual and can be quite unsettling - therefore it can upset the opponent, either making them nervous or even irritated. Useful!
Another thing to worry about: Anything that makes the opponent concerned about another vulnerability is a good thing
A good distraction technique: Once you have hit your opponent there a couple of times it might make a good feint for a compound attack to the arm, or a way of drawing a stop hit which you can then bind onto and score
Unusual: It is quite difficult to parry and it might just freeze the opponent long enough to prevent a stop hit

So there you are, despite it's slight sense of unfairness, it's something I shall continue to try (but not too often - predictability is bad). It's not quite Musashi's oar but every little helps......