Continuing from the appetizer:

Step one, starting quite some time ago, before even worrying about technique, was to build up physical and mental abilities. My fencers needed a lot of strength work in the legs and core. They lacked aerobic and anaerobic endurance. We needed to work on foot discipline, agility and speed. But before all of these, we needed to work on basic balance and body control. We still return to these things quite often to keep building and maintaining physical

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OK, I had to split this into two posts; the first one is an overview and the second is the meat of the issue.

This is likely to be a very rambling post. As always, I welcome any and all questions, thoughts, commentary, compliments and criticism; one of the major reasons I post things like this is to get interesting discussion going and get fresh opinions on my own ideas.

I've been working for some time now on building up a framework of fencing based around distance

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An experiment I've been trying in all three weapons (slight variations for each one, but the heart remains the same.) Hasn't taken up the entire lesson for any students yet, but it's made some large parts. Things like choice of target are left intentionally unsaid because this is meant to be taken as a framework, not just one specific lesson. Interestingly, this started out of frustration on my part with a young foilist who has problems letting go of the opponent's blade after a (too strong)

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I've been thinking a great deal about different types of on guards, or perhaps I should say differences in on guard positions. I don't want to fall into the habit of many eastern martial arts and have stance A, stance B, etc. Instead, I want my fencers to understand what different variations in their positions do to them. While I do have a general idea of what I want, I don't just tell them "stand like this." Instead, I focus on individual parts of the body, their state and position

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I was thinking the other day about a former student of mine in CA, a boy who was born with some issue in his arms and legs that made them very, very small compared to his torso. The rest of his body was fine, he just little stumpy limbs. However, the family had quite a bit of money and were able to pay for a lengthy procedure where they literally made his legs longer. I saw the result before moving away, and I know that they're going back to do the same thing with his arms. I was completely

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