An Unexpected Gift

I received a surprise gift from a student the other week. She came up to me and proudly informed me that at a recent competition she had scored with an attack made down the blade from an engagement of sixte. She was particularly pleased about this as she had been practising and attempting the attack for a number of months with no success and it was doubly significant as she is mostly quite a defensive fencer, so an aggressive attack is a little out of her comfort zone. The way she described it to me it was almost as if the rest of the competition was unimportant apart from that one attack. I regarded this as a nice present because it shows that some of my teaching regarding technique and correct form might be beginning to show fruit, plus it was very refreshing to hear from someone who was keen on getting the technique right rather than just attack blindly to win. It was also nice that she took the time to tell me about it as it must have been apparent that this was important to me too. Just when you least expect it you find something pleasant on your journey...........

Viewing the Distant Mountain

There is a Japanese phrase that reads "Enzan O metsuke" which roughly translates as "viewing the distant mountain". This is pragmatically associated in budo with looking slightly beyond the opponent in combat in order to keep a general focus on everything that is happening without being distracted by specifics. It can also be used to mean thinking strategically rather than tactically, moving toward a goal beyond the immediate one.
As a fencing coach it is often quite easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of the every-day problems of a fencing salle. Someone is chewing gum, not everyone is doing the warm-up, here comes that fencer who is always late again, why are the students so inattentive tonight etc etc. These all build up like cloud, obscuring the view of the distance. It is important to keep one's eyes on the distant mountain, which for me is the fact that my role is to introduce an activity I value, spark an interest in it, keep it entertaining, challenging and fulfilling and hopefully create something that will mean as much to my students as it does me, whilst accepting that not everyone will get it. Now that's what I call a view...... if I can just remember to keep looking at it.....      

Back to Basics

I have been giving a set of lessons lately that are designed to take the students back to basics. Some of these lessons involve putting the mask and foil down completely. There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly I have got really bad tennis elbow (a story in itself) and secondly it is very easy to forget the hands and feet once you have a sword in your hand. After all, fencing is a very swordy thing at the end of the day. Well, yes but also no..... without the feet and balance being right the techniques will fail.
Here's my footwork lesson plan, fresh from the post-it note I wrote it on!

Basic position - revision (hand out in front, feet a minimum of shoulder width apart, knees bent etc)
Balance - (the weight sunk between the hips)
Feet in the lunge - (foot follows the hand, front foot straight, back foot must be flat on the floor for power and balance)
Types of footwork action

• the appel - (useful for distracting/unsettling an opponent  )
• ballestra - (as above, good going forward, must be along not up)
• cross step - avoid at all costs as it disrupts balance completely!

varying rhythm - (it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Too predictable = not being able to move opponent closer)
Exercise: pairs work on getting close enough to lunge and hit partner's raised hand through footwork
Controlling momentum - (very important for compound attacks  - small step on the approach feint, deep lunge to deliver)
Exercise: Pairs work on stepping and engaging on sixte whilst retaining control of momentum, then respond appropriately to partners opening

The interseting thing about fencing is that the more you learn about it you realise that it is the basic things that really make the difference. You can learn all the fancy blade movements in the world but it's the basic things that you must return to again and again. It can take a whole fencing lifetime to get that lunge right......    
   

Reishiki

The title above is yet another term I stumbled across in one of Dave Lowry's books, in this case 'Moving Toward Stillness'. The term is an old Japanese word meaning form, etiquette or respect and Mr Lowry uses it in reference to correct and appropriate behaviour in the dojo. It is a very nebulous and encompassing term that is very difficult to pin down and is similar to the old British expression of something "that really isn't cricket". Sometimes you know instinctively when behaviour isn't right. Such an incident occurred on Wednesday in the club.
I was talking to Coach Andy when all of a sudden there was a tremendous clash and clatter. Everyone looked round to find one of our younger sabreurs smashing his sabre on the ground in anger. I don't know what had sparked the hissy fit but young sabreurs do tend to get quite pumped up as a matter of course. A silence descended on the room and I half expected someone to say "Oh I say old boy...... that really isn't on, don't y'know" (In fact I nearly did - but I'm not quite posh enough). The best bit was that the silent wall of mild opprobrium obviously impacted on the young man because he rather sheepishly apologised and saluted the class in a gesture of contrition. And quite right too; it might be difficult to define but the collective group had shown the youngster that he had breeched the boundaries of fencing reishiki and it's good to see that it's still in evidence as an instinctive reaction to behaviour that doesn't belong in any self-respecting salle.