Part 1: Planning For Successful Fencing Season: GOAL SETTING

The Importance of Goal Setting and Planning
Setting goals and planning for the season are critical parts of having a successful season as well as achieving longer-term goals such as fencing for a college team, making the international travel teams or making a national team.

For someone with competitive aspirations, a successful season starts with goal setting and “planning with the end in mind” and in this series of articles we will delve into an overview of the types of goals students can and should be setting at the start of the season and what types of planning should be happening based on those goals. 

Setting Good Goals For Yourself is a Team Effort
Setting goals and planning are a team effort that starts with the student and what they want to achieve and involves coaches and parents for younger students. 

There are Many Different Types of Goals You Can Set, depending on the aspirations, experience level and situation of each student there are different ways to approach goal setting. You don’t need to necessarily use or set every type of goal for yourself right now but having a good understanding about the different ways you can set goals is essential and below are a list of just some of the goals that are important to think about and set for yourself.

THE 13 TYPES OF GOALS YOU CAN SET FOR

YOURSELF THIS FENCING SEASON

Level: 1 The “Base Camp” Goals

1. Deep Joy and Passion Goals: If you love and have passion about what you are doing then you will always be a winner! Sounds hokey but enjoying what you are doing is critical and loving the sport and enjoying the process of working hard at it on a regular basis and all that comes with it including both winning and losing, success and frustration is a must have.  Please note: this doesn’t mean that every day will be fun(!) necessarily. There are always ups and downs in a learning process and a student needs to have that deep passion for what they are doing to sustain them in the long term. 

2. Learning Goals: These are small and often not necessarily tournament results oriented goals. These are the small victories of learning and gaining experience that are especially essential at the outset of a fencer's competitive career.  Learning something, even through a difficult experience, is always a victory! 

3. Hard Work Goals: How much you are training, that you are training consistently, how many practices you are attending etc. It is also important that your competitive and results goals align to your hard work goals. 

4. Participation Goals: Being at tournaments is already a victory that requires bravery and putting yourself “out there” is necessary to get the experience you need to be successful. 

5. Planning and Knowledge Goals: This looks different also depending on where you are in the process, but is critical for a successful season.

Some big “Planning and Knowledge' Goals for competitive fencers: 

1. Knowing generally how things work and how the “The System” works in fencing

2. Making a plan at the start of the season for what tournaments to attend, what goals you want to achieve and what things you want to qualify for during that season. (Summer Nationals and Junior Olympics are the big qualifying goals for competitive students and which events to qualify for at the start of the season) 

3. Based on a student’s goals: how much should they be training to achieve them?

4. What essential experiences such as camps, college visits, videos to watch etc. are essential for a student depending on their goals in both the short and long term? 

Level 2: Essential Competition Success Goals

1. Commitment Goals: Committing yourself to compete in a certain number of tournaments, length of time and/or a regular competition rhythm such as 1 tournament per month and sticking to it! You never want to stop or give up midway a commitment and committing to a certain # of tournaments allows you to have different moments to assess and reflect progress.
   
   One of the worst mistakes people make is stopping after a bad tournament or a few bad tournaments or experience. Everyone goes through a run of bad tournaments in the same way you can go through a run of good results. You want to give yourself enough of a data set to accurately evaluate. You probably aren’t as good as your best best day although this can show you your potential and you are definitely not or as bad as your worst day!

   As mentioned, you want enough tournaments to give yourself a good feel for where you are and it is a best practice to make bigger decisions about things with some space and time away from your tournament results so you can have some perspective. Involve others in your evaluation process.

2. Results Goals: Certain level of finishes at tournaments and different Levels. You want to finish in the top-8 of all tournaments in your age-category or finish in the top-32 in at least 3 North American Cups. You can also set these result goals with easily achievable, where I should be and reach goals in mind.

3. Measuring Progress Goals: Setting time to reflect on your progress and sitting down with your data and getting feedback from your coach and others about your progress at least 2x during the season is a goal that is easy to achieve and will have incredible benefits. BUT you can’t do this without first setting goals in the first place and ideally your goals should include measurable ones. If you have fenced multiple seasons, you can measure your progress against where you finished last year at similar tournaments. etc. Measure your progress in a similar age or level grouping over-time. Taking the time to reflect on progress and make adjustments when they are necessary is a winning move!

4. Qualification Goals: Qualifying for things such as the Summer Nationals,  Junior Olympics, traveling to international tournaments or making a national or Olympic team.

Level 3: Pathway to Long-Term Success Goals

1. Ranking Goals: Wanting to be ranked at a certain level in various age/level categories.

2. Long Term Goals: Fencing For a college team, competing internationally, making a national team

3. Long-Term Progress Goals: Tracking progress over a longer range

4. “Extra Work” Goals: If the only time you are working to improve is during a lesson or class and you aren’t an active participant in your improvement then you won’t be able to achieve your best. These goals can include things like doing 20 minutes of footwork on your own 3-4x per week, doing 20 minutes of target work at home or the club 2-3 times per week. Working out x # of hours per week. Etc. These are goals you should also discuss with your coaches. Watching fencing videos, doing video analysis etc. are all things that you can do to put yourself over the top. 

5. The “Make It Work” at Every Practice Goal:  (This is a big one)The key element to a very effective practice starts with the individual fencer having the mentality that they will make the most out of practice. As you start to get more experience, you will begin to see that your club or certain practices or coaches have strengths and “weaknesses”. This is normal!

   here is no such thing as a “perfect practice”, coach or perfect training system for fencers to achieve success. There are only effective and ineffective practices and if a fencer is thinking about what is missing from a practice then they aren’t thinking about how they are going to get better or what they need to work on.

   Our Olympic team members have come from varying different backgrounds and experiences. They didn’t have perfect practices or coaches. They made the most of what they had and never used what they didn’t have as an excuse to not succeed. 

   Effective practices can look very different but the key is that the individual fencer takes all the things they have around them and makes the most of it. If you spend your time worrying that you don’t have the perfect this or that and spend your time chasing things you think are “missing” instead of using all that you have around you then this will ultimately hold the fencer back from achieving things. Not practicing because you think there aren’t “good enough” people to fence with or not enough people or your main coach is traveling to a tournament and there is someone leading practice are all examples.

   Footwork is a HUGE part of an effective practice and there is nothing that should ever stop a fencer from working hard on their footwork. 

6. GOLD MEDAL GOALS: (BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOALS): Dreaming and thinking as big as you want about your future. Don’t put any limits. Envision it, feel it and think about it.

Personal Goals:
There is one final category which is the “Personal Goals” group and these can come in all shapes and sizes from wanting to beat a certain fencer, to executing a different move successfully to really anything! 

What NOT TO DO with Goal Setting and Planning: 

1. Just Measuring Yourself Against Other People: Your main goal process should NOT be based around beating certain people or finishing ahead of certain people or competing with a certain person or club but based on where you want to go and measuring progress against yourself over-time at tournaments. There might be a fencer that has your number but you can 

2. Other People Messing Up Goals: Don’t wish other people to lose or do badly. This takes your focus away from YOU achieving success and will hinder your success. Jealousy and feeling bad about other people will lead to your joy being diminished and worse results. Be happy for other people’s success and just push yourself to be the best you can be! 

3. “I Am Missing Things'  Mentality: This just takes away from having a goal oriented process. As mentioned above, chasing the “perfect” practice and always worrying about what you don’t have will ultimately destroy your joy for what you are doing and lead you to not achieving your best. This will also take away from your thinking about what you are working on at practice. 

The next articles will explore specific fencing goals to set based on your aspirations, provide you with some tools and resources to set goals and key resources for your planning.

Good luck with your upcoming season and make the most of it by setting goals and planning for success! Did we miss anything? Things you’d like us to write about? Let us know in the comments section!

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