Hello, Blog. It has been a while!

It is tough to hold all of the things that we need to remember. Lately, I have been working on remembering four things and it has helped my game, so I want to get them documented here.

1) Stay at advance-lunge distance until ready to engage. This is the resulting culmination of a YEAR of unlearning what I learned at my last club, where space was tight (length, width, and proximity of the strips) and we fell into the habit of fencing at lunge distance. This change has proved to be extremely valuable. Having that little extra bit of distance gives me the time I need to react to my opponent's attack. To help with this I have returned to judging distance by looking at my opponent's body or mask. When I was focusing on the arm for a target, I was getting deceived by where the arm was being held. Better to focus on the body, then just glance at the target for acquisition purposes.

2) Keep my feet moving!!! This, too, is an unlearning of what I was taught at my previous club. We used to come off the en-guarde line, take a step or two forward, plant our feet and start fencing. Now, thanks to some reading in Epee 2.0 and constant urging by my current coach, I am working on keeping the feet moving all the time.

3) Fence "legato". This requires some explanation. In music, a piece can be played "staccato", in with short, choppy notes, or "legato", with smooth, fluid notes. My coach has noted that sometimes, I fence "staccato". This is not my best fencing. I let my opponent get too close before starting my attack because "staccato" means my lunges are short. I am a fairly tall guy. There's no excuse for that. When I am fencing "legato", I am fencing smoothly, in control, and mount my attacks from way-out-yonder, controlling the action as I come in. When I used to race sports cars at road courses, we had a saying: "Smooth is fast." It applies in fencing too.

4) Have a plan! This was something that I picked up at a Walt Dragonetti epee clinic. This one thing is the difference between being in control of the action and being a deer-in-the-headlights. He said, "When you step off the en-guarde line, you better have a plan." True enough. When I have a plan, I fence better. Often, I execute the plan and it goes off without a hitch. I go beyond that, though. My years (and years) in Information Technology have taught me to have a "Plan B" and a "Plan C". That is, have something up my sleeve for those occasions (there will be many) when my plan doesn't work for some reason.

That's it. I wanted to get these documented because I sometimes go off to a tournament and can remember only two or three of the four. Writing it down will help me to remember. Writing it down will allow me to look it up.