Why Trying Out Different Coaches Can Only Help Your Fencing

Not every coach was a world champion. Not every coach was even a high-level fencer. 

But EVERY coach has experience in this sport that you don’t have! And every individual has experience to share which could mean the difference in securing touches, understanding an opponent’s tactics, or even winning entire bouts. Learning from multiple coaches’ experiences is CRITICAL to high-level fencing.

With the multitude of fencing hotspots in the world, there is no single dominating style. From the specialized technical Hungarian form to the brutally physical Korean approach, each variation has its strengths and weaknesses to offer. The advantage of being in the USA and at Tim Morehouse Fencing Club is the wide spectrum of styles exposed to you. This means you can pick and choose certain aspects which suit YOUR genre of fencing. 

Additionally, if you can identify your opponents’ school, you have a HUGE advantage fencing them! 

Strip Coaching

Your coach won’t be with you at every tournament. Working with multiple coaches increases the odds that one will be at your event and has a good handle on what you are and are not capable of as a fencer. 

In terms of style, some fencers THRIVE off a high-energy strip coaching presence with continuous cheering and yelling. Others require a calming coach to keep them level-headed. Your personality type and your coach’s might mesh well in lessons but conflict during tournaments when pressure and anxiety are at peak levels.  You need to find the best approach on both the lesson strip and the real strip.

Ideas

Coaches can have personal preferences on how to execute technical actions. There is no “perfect” way to parry, attack, counterattack, etc. Even if a coach gives you a technical correction you might not agree with, just having this change in your arsenal is invaluable. For example, one coach might teach a shallow and efficient method of parry which will just barely keep the opponent’s blade off target to minimize excess movement. While this might work for some adversaries, you will need to adjust your defense a little against that 6’6” fencer. Be versatile!

Expression of ideas is also a benefit from multiple coaches. Each student learns differently, and one coach might be able to explain a fencing method better than another. My first coach always told me to use my fingers more when attacking, but I didn’t understand what that meant physically (and proceeded to keep using my entire arm to attack.. because fingers are part of the arm, right?). It wasn’t until I had a much more eloquent coach demonstrate in-depth that I finally understood it years later.

While you eventually will need a main coach, learn what you can now from everyone! Be hungry for knowledge. Expand your fencing experience and repertoire by trying out different coaches. Find the ideal one who fits YOUR style the best to accelerate your fencing level! 

How and why to study bouts on Youtube

Almost a year ago, as we were all finding new routines of a summer in lockdown, instead of baking bread, making a jungle of houseplants, or going on long relaxing walks, I found myself watching tones of Youtube videos.  Being ever mindful of my father’s admonition that “screens will melt your brains,” I justified my binging by watching, not aimless content, but World Cup finals of my favorite fencers.  Now, I’m going to share a few pieces of advice that I wish I had at the start of last year.  

First piece of advice: watch on a computer with a screen larger than your cell phone.  It’s important to get as many of the details as possible, and watching on a phone just doesn’t cut it.  Additionally, the Youtube phone app skips forwards or backwards in ten second increments as opposed to five seconds.  While that may seem trivial, those five seconds can mean the difference between skipping through the dead space of fencers resetting or skipping into the middle of an action and losing all context.  

There are a ton of channels on Youtube.  I’d recommend starting with fan favorite channel “Cyrus of Chaos,” then move into the FIE Fencing Channel (Their bouts are less well organized, but they have more of them, and commentary besides), and Fencing Vision.  There are a few channels specific to each country – channels from France, Russia, and the Asia-Pacific, although these channels have the draw backs of often being untranslated or in different alphabets.  

There are a few important hotkeys to remember.  Spacebar is the pause button.  Period is the command for “one frame at a time FORWARD,” and comma is the command for “one frame at a time BACKWARD.”  Using period and comma in conjunction with spacebar will allow you to really zero in on the exact moment a fencer starts their attack, or the precise technique they use to execute their motion.  Many videos from the FIE channel will already have high frame rate slow motion replay, although the replay doesn’t always start at the right time or have the right angle to really understand what’s happening.  We also have the arrow keys: right arrow will skip forwards 5 seconds, left arrow skips back 5 seconds.  I’ve found that skipping forwards in 5 second increments will often cut out all the dead space in a bout, letting me watch the best parts of a match.

As a fencer myself, I can say that just by watching high level fencers I was often inspired by their tactics, their execution, their form and ability.  I clearly remember the first moment that I saw 2x World Champion Sofia Velikaya deliver an incredible low-line attack that inspired me to mimic her for years afterwards.  High level fencers are all the time watching and learning from their rivals, their teammates, and from youtube itself.  Now, you can too, with just these few simple hints to get you started.  

6 Tips For Running Great Drills in Fencing (Or Any Sport!)

This article is all about creating and running great drills for the sport of fencing! (Or any sport!)

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more great fencing content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzHI9iuvaORC0VGT_WtRgqQ

Drills are a critical part of a complete training program when they are structured and USED correctly. There are a lot of common mistakes that people make when designing activities and this video will address how to make what you are doing with drills as effective as possible for your students.

Principle #1 Be Objective and Skills Focused

The activities, drills and games you play with kids are the vehicles for teaching skills and content! Not an end to themselves!

Too many people make the mistake of creating activities that are about the activity instead of being focused on what they are trying to accomplish!

You need to have a clear idea of what you want the kids to learn and convey that to your students.

Always Ask Yourself: What do I want the kids to be able to do, understand or what skill are we practicing with this drill? And, Don’t forget to share that with the students so they understand what they should be learning also!

Pro-Teaching Tip: Sharing the “WHY” something is important is always critical for student understanding and buy-in. You need to be able to know and explain to students why what they are working on is important!

Principle #2 Start with Bite Sized Objectives

Great drills start with a basic concept or objective that is easily understood by everyone.

I have a saying, a good starting point for a drill is “something an Olympian would do while also being something that someone on their first day fencing could understand and do also”.

What does that mean? A great drill starts with a small focused idea to work on. Olympians work on the small details so a drill that starts on something small would be something an Olympian would do but is also something that someone on their first day could understand.

For example, keeping distance with someone moving back and forth.

Principle #3: Great drills have levels!

You start with something basic on “level 1” and then you slowly add pieces and ideas once the students have mastered and understood level 1.

Level 2 should build upon what has been done in level 1. Level 3 should build upon level 2 and so on.

This layered approach allows you to build up even younger students to complex ideas.

Pro-Teaching Tip: Always remember to take time to “Check For Understanding” with students. You can’t go fast until they have down the concepts and how the drill rules work. One way of doing that is you can have each pairing go once or twice while everyone is watching and then you can affirm when they are doing it right or correct understanding not just for that group but for everyone.

Principle #4 Have a FUN Factor an Gamify your Drills

I often call our drills “Games” because we always have a way for both sides to score even if each side is working on something different.

Having a way to “score” provides feedback as well for students to know when they are succeeding or not and often motivates them to try harder and modify how they are doing something on their own.

I am not a huge fan of straight technical drills where students are just doing rote movements without a score. Oftentimes, students end up just practicing bad habits in technical drills but of course there is a place for them and I advocate for teaching kids a technical routine they can use but ensure they are doing the movements correctly.

Principle #5 Discovery Elements are Essential

You are of course sharing with students the goals and rules of the drill but a good drill also leaves an element of discovery. When students figure things out on their own with the structure of a drill it is a powerful way to increase retention of concepts.

Pro-Teaching Tip: When you spot a student trying something different or discovering something interesting, don’t be afraid to stop the activity and call that out and discuss!

Principle #6 Teach Your Students To Be Great Training Partners

It is really important that students understand that even when drills are like games and they are trying to “win” that they are first and foremost teammates and club-mates trying to get better together.

Sharing with them what it means to be a good training partner including helping each other if someone is struggling will make any training routine you do more effective. I will talk more in-depth about being a good training partner and teammate in another article/video soon.

I hope these tips help you in your practices! We will start posting some of our partner drills/games over the next few weeks but I wanted you to understand where we are coming from in how those drills have been developed.

If you’d like to learn from our Elite coaches either in-person or online, you can go to:

www.timmorehousefencing.com

Self-Analyzing Your Bouts on Video

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! 

2 Training Videos To Help You Practice Fencing at Home!

Even though you may be snowed-in we wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to keep active and moving like a true champion! We have created two interactive training videos so that you don’t have to let ANYTHING stop you from fencing! 

Just like in class, these videos come with warmups and drills that you can practice anywhere to ensure that when you are on the strip your movements are powerful, and controlled. This Virtual Sabre Lesson with Coach Tim also has a goal of helping you work on your reaction time and practice how to fake out your opponent!

Plan on shoveling? Stretch and try this 10-minute footwork exercise with National Team Member Khalil Thompson to get your body moving before you head out to decrease the chance of getting sore! and when shoveling, remember, just like with fencing your power is in your legs!

Finish your exercise with some cool-down stretches and enjoy the rest of your night, we’ll see you all soon!


All the best, 

Your Friends at Tim Morehouse Fencing Club

10 Minutes of Daily Extra Fencing Footwork - An "At Home Training Challenge"

Tim Morehouse Fencing Club’s “At Home Training Challenge” is encouraging our members and participants to do an extra 10-minutes of footwork each day using our new weekly series of Footwork routines you can do at home, the club or really anywhere!

Saber National Team Member and Morehouse Fencing Coach Khalil Thompson is our first in a series of footwork videos in our challenge series. Watch his video and try to keep up with his 10-Minute footwork routine! Do this in addition to the regular training that you do.

Each week, we will have a new video on our youtube channel from an elite fencer, Olympian or national team member doing 10-minutes of their personal footwork routines that they will explain and you will be able to follow along and do with them. You can do this at home or any place where you have enough space to move a few steps and make a lunge.

We are all about talking about champions habits and this is an important one:

Champions always do a little extra on their own.

It is the small daily work outside of structured practice that can often have a huge impact and separate the best from the rest. This challenge epitomizes that champions value.

Share with us! If you take a video or short picture of yourself doing our workout, tag us on Instagram with the hashtag #ExtraFencing

Want to Train with Khalil? If you would like to take online private lessons with him, please go to: https://www.timmorehousefencing.com/khalil-thompson-fencing-lessons

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