With the current dearth of competitions, you may feel like your improvement level has plateaued. Hopefully you’ve been keeping up physically (as enticing as your couch with all its cushions may be), but how do you advance yourself (figuratively) mentally?
One way is to examine your actions in a real bout. If you have video of yourself fencing in a tournament (thank you, loving parents!) then you can do this for any pool or DE match. If that’s not accessible, you can always set up a camera or recruit a cameraperson during a practice bout!
Here are the things you should look for:
1. What was your best / worst move?
Pick a match and track both yours and your opponents’ points. Keep a tally: how many attacks did you land? Where? How many parries? How many did your opponent hit? This is a very simple way to explicitly recognize your strongest and weakest actions.
2. Mistakes: tactical or technical?
Almost every point against you can be classified as either a tactical or a technical mistake (unless it was by pure luck, in which case the opponent might be practicing voodoo to get that one light).
On the tactical side, fencing is like a hyper-complex version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Every action has something it’s strong and weak against. Did you perform a good action, but your opponent just played the counter? This is a tactical error. Wrong action, wrong moment.
The technical side is how you execute your action. Did you read the right parry and it was insufficient? Did your attack keep missing by inches? These are technical errors. Keep your hand higher on the parries or take one more step to stretch your attack! Plan how to correct the technical issues early rather than train the same mistakes over and over again.
Establish why your action didn’t work! Note your needed adjustments!
3. Analyze any “tells” on your actions
This is one that’s VERY difficult to perceive on the strip but easy to view on video. Did one of your attacks get repeatedly parried by that opponent? Did you get counterattacked to the wrist a dozen times? (Note: not as effective in foil)
Since you KNOW what’s going to happen, watch the touch in slow motion (unless you’re a vet fencer… then maybe you can watch it in normal speed). What did your opponent see you do that made them decide on that action? Did you move your body before your hand? Show your parry too early? Look at the bout from your opponent’s point of view.
Analyzing your own video bouts gives a new perspective on your fencing that you would never be able to see otherwise. If you inspect your independent actions and note what you did well and what you need to sharpen, you’ll form a stronger mental plan for your next fencing bout. Deeply scrutinize your actions to improve your long-term bouting game tenfold!
