lunge+recovery

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

okay, my recovery from a long lunge is too slow. What muscle group controls the recovery phase of the lunge? What excercises can I do for these muscles to make my recovery faster?

[drippingwet]

Lunge and recover is one exercise . Then you really know that you're building the right muscles.

[Inquartata]

Sabre doesn't use the same deep lunges seen in foil, but it's essential to be able to recover from the ones we do and reverse directions immediately. Dig into the strip with the toes of your leading foot. This will engage more of the leg muscles and let you push off it more strongly; it will also help you arrest your remaining forward momentum. Physiologically I don't know why this works, but it does....

[jeff]

D+F+P=Hadouken! - next time you have a workout, note which muscles are flexing to do the recovery: the pull from the rear leg, the push from the front. That said, I think it's more an issue of practice than muscle development: See if you're leaning forward in the lunge or putting most of your weight on the front leg - that will make recovery harder. With short lunges you can muscle your weight out of that imbalance but it's much harder when you're in your longest lunge. Try shortening the lunge and gradually try lengthening it while still maintaining quick recovery. Hope this helps...

[SwordSoul]

yes using the back leg to recover certainly speeds up the lunge and helps keep you balanced, however if you haven't recovered this way before, start out slow, and practice recovering from shallow lunges this way. I know two fencers who blasted their knees because they were taught to recover this way and hadn't taken into account the muscles surrounding the knee weren't quite strong enough yet.

[Alain]

I guess more or less all of your leg muscles are involved in these two actions, plus your abs and back muscles but to a lesser extent.

Core strength work will help with this, as well as plyometrics (*shudder*). Although if you're attacking, and I know this sounds dumb, perhaps you should consider recovering forwards from your lunge.

Anyways, as jeff rightly says, it's more a question of technique than strength. Before the lunge, make sure that your knees are bent in order to get good power from your back leg. Keep your body upright when you lunge - this will not only help with point control, but also if you drop your shoulder then a more experienced fencer will skewer you. When recovering, you need to push off your front leg whilst pulling/bending your back leg - this is where the strength from your back and abs will help.

The only other thing I can think of that might be slowing you down, is the position of your front knee: if it is bent too much, you will need a lot more strength/effort/time to recover; if it is bent in the wrong way (it should be facing straight forwards), then your muscles will have more work to do on the recovery (lunging like this is bad for your knee, anyway). Keep your body upright when you lunge

I hope this helps, best of luck

[garyhayenga]

Originally Posted by D+F+P=Hadouken!

okay, my recovery from a long lunge is too slow. What muscle group controls the recovery phase of the lunge? What excercises can I do for these muscles to make my recovery faster?

The quadriceps and the calf.

First make sure that your lunge technique is correct. This is the main cause of not recovering well. Make sure your lunge lands the flat of the foot with the knee over the ankle, vertical shin, and the hamstring taking all the shock. When the foot lands the lunge ends, no sinking into it at all.

Then you are in best position for the recovery, the heel lifts slightly and the push with the toe (ball of foot) uses the calf and quadriceps in synch to probide a powerful recovery.

Jumping rope is very good, and also good for the initial part of the lunge. But I also recommend just lunging and recovering to practice/perfect your technique.

Lunge you fullest and recover a few times at medium speed to assess your technique, perhaps have someone good watching you to critique. Once you're sure you're doing it correctly then put a marker on a spot on the floor next to your back foot and do a full lunge with extended back leg and back foot still in place (no slide). Then put a marker at a spot about six inches in front of your front foot. Start with your back foot at the first marker you put down. From there lunge forward (no up, all forward) so your front foot lands at the forward marker (six inches longer than your normal lunge) making sure you land with the shin straight up and down and all the shock taken up by the hamstring. Then, without pausing, slightly lift you back foot and push backwards sharply with the toe and quadriceps so that your back foot lands back in its original place and you and up in your original guard position. When you can do this consistently do ten in a row without stopping. Once you get good at this you can move the front marker out to eight inches or a foot.

Since you're an epee fencer you won't be actually lunging like this in a bout very often, but your recovery will often be like this, deciding to recover further away than you started out to the great confusion of your opponent.

gary hayenga

[jBirch]

Great comments so far. As an additional idea, try pulling the back arm into the classical "scorpian position" as you recover. You'll find it helps with the balance.

As well, it depends on whether you're recovering forward or backward as to which muscles are engaged and whether you roll your back foot, crib your foot, lean forward, aim off-centre, drop/raise your arm or soften your front knee. If you keep your lunge technically correct, you'll find your recoveries faster and more balanced. Remember to practice recovering both forward and backward, with both returns to en garde and leaving the arm extended. As well, remember to work momentum drills into your lunge: step, lunge, recover forward, ballestra, retreat; retreat, lunge, recover backward, ballestra-lunge; lunge, recover backward, jump back.

As well, remember that a long lunge is usually a liability. The point of a lunge is to move your body from fencing distance to thrust distance while extending your arm through thrust distance to get the touch, not to go from step-lunge distance to thrust distance and then lean to get the extra inches for the touch. As such, your ideal lunge should be a natural stepping out and extension, without a slide, that lands in a comfortable lunge position, feet flat, back straight, chin up, back arm down, legs about 1.5m apart (for a six foot person).

Now granted that there are times when you want a huge lunge that slides along, sinks to the floor and gains every inch possible, but realise that this is more like a fleche action where you totally commit to the point, sacrificing recovery, rather then an ideal fencing action that leaves you a plan B if it doesn't work.

Hope this helps.

[Doighté]

I find it interesting that a number of you have suggested pushing off from the ball of your front foot. The way I've been taught is to lift the toes and push off from the heel while at the same time bending the back leg at the knee rapidly with the front foot landing in a controlled manner on the heel. One of the exercises we are given to do a lot is take up a lunge position, then straighten the front leg by lifting the toes and bending your back leg as far as you can then transfer back forward, do this a few times then change legs. It's a real pain of a stretch to do when you start out but it builds up strength and over time the speed of your lunge. Make sure your back foot remains flat. and don't let your backside stick up in the air.

[sabreur]

Originally Posted by D+F+P=Hadouken!

okay, my recovery from a long lunge is too slow. What muscle group controls the recovery phase of the lunge? What excercises can I do for these muscles to make my recovery faster?

If your recovery is too slow, your lunge is too long and you are "sinking" it (over-extending).

Try letting your back foot slide more, and staying more upright in your lunge. Sabre is way different from epee, but you still probably need to try to keep your feet under you a bit more.

A really good exercise:

Lunge and recover by jumping back out of the lunge. Both of your feet should hit the floor simultaneously on the recovery--absolutely simultaneously--one sound, not two. You will quickly discover that you can do this out of a relatively shallow lunge, but it is very hard to do out of a "sunk" lunge.

(Do 3 sets of five as fast as you can--lunge, jump back, lunge, jump back....)

[The Mormegil]

Originally Posted by jBirch

Great comments so far. As an additional idea, try pulling the back arm into the classical "scorpian position" as you recover. You'll find it helps with the balance.

i have to agree here. the trail arm helps significantly to recover from a lunge. i'm assuming that when you lunge your trail arm comes down along your rear leg. then when you recover, it's a quick jerk with your trail arm at the same time as you are pushing back up out of the lunge. high jumpers use their arms to help generate a stronger and higher leap, it's the same aplication here. also bringing you blade back up to six or four for the counter-parry helps bring you up out of the lunge. hope this helps

[Larrison]

Hmm.. I'd add a couple of observations.

First, practice your lunge at slow speed several times. If you can, do this in front of a mirror. Look for over lunging, and wasted motion, particularly in your recovery, if you think you're slow in doing that. Try to get to where you can do this 10 times with control and near-perfect form, holding in the lunge for a slow count of three before recovering. Using the back arm to "pull" you up from a lunge, when it is the scorpion position is in general good, form and promotes good movement. (IMHO, of course). The objective of this drill is to go back to the basics of movement and try to train in basic, good form. Don't concentrate on speed in this, but on form.

If you're recovering out of your lunge slowly, there are two obvious candidates -- form, in that you are overlunging or off balance which slows your recovery, and secondly strength/ flexibility/ power in recovery. Without the first, the second doesn't help as much.

If you think your lunge form is good, then you need to work on strength/ flexibility/ power to speed your recovery. For this, you'll want to work on leg strength and flexiblity, and power in recovery. The exercises other folks have suggested are good. I'd recommend a lot of lunging, keeping an eye on maintaining your form through them, and varying between legs (since you want to build up both legs). Set up a routine and do advance-lunge/ recover, double advance-lunge, recover, etc, then vary with lunge/ recover-fowards, check advance-lunge, check retreat-lunge, ballestra-lunge etc so mix things up. Deep knee bends, holding a foil/ saber/ epee at arms length in front of you, if another good one. For speed and quickness, things like ladder drills, jump roping, stair step sprints (back and forth up the first stair as fast as you can go for 1 minute), "bounding" (jumping vertically as fast as you can back and forth over a 15 cm/ 6=inch barrier), or the like should help. You'll need to do this for some weeks though. For strength and power, weight training is the best. Work in particular on your leg muscles, but don't neglect your shoulders and torso, since they provide the balance and control for your lunge recovery.

[Teme]

Good exercise for training your leg muscles and the control of your center of gravity movement is squatting in on-guard position, extending the front leg straight (so that only the heel touches ground), and then slowly moving your weigth from leg to leg (if your knees can take it, it's quite hard at the beginning! Then again, I'm about 230 lbs, with history of knee operations, and can do it without problems ). When your back leg pushes your pelvis forward, bend the forward leg and allow the toes to fall. When your back leg is straight, reverse the motion without a pause by bending the back leg again and pulling your pelvis back, straightening the front leg as soon as it becomes possible without raising your pelvis. Then, when you reach the back position, your front toes should be up again, and the movement changes back to forward again. And back, and forth, and back...
It will teach you to start the recovery by pulling with the back leg, so that your weight is already shifting backwards when you start to push with your front leg.
If possible, try to keep you torso and arms relaxed. One of the lunge exercises (a heigher version of aforementioned, with much more agressive push and pull) we used to do required both of our arms to swing loosely with the movement -- out coach wanted us not to rely on our arms for balance, since we would need them for manipulating the weapon.

[Cipher]

When I needed to speed up my footwork, my coach taught me to lower my body into a more sitting position when doing footwork drills. The farther you "sit" into the positions, the greater the intensity of the exercises. The muscle groups that are most needed for a good recovery are the quadriceps, the calves, and the inner thigh. Gym exercises to work on include squats, leg presses, leg extensions, inner thigh machine, calf raises, and any of the various calf machines.

Another thing that I have seen is poor flexibility ruining form and speed. Make sure you maintain good flexibility.

[scrapinpeg]

Depends on whether you're recovering backwards to the pre-lunge position, or recovering forward to press your attack.

Recovering backwards, you use the hamstring of your back leg to pull back, and the quads of your front leg to push off, at the same time.

Recovering forwards, you use the hamstring of your front leg to pull forwards, and the quads and toes of your back leg to push off.

[Epee_Pox]

I agree with that, but would add that pulling your rear arm into that silly classical position actually helps balance out the recovery. You don't have a tail, but this approximates one sorta kinda.

[rivers]

For stretching and strengthen the back of your legs try the stiff legged dead lift using light weight dumbbells. Stand on an elevated platform to get an extra stretch. Add more weight over time,
For strength, also do lunges with dumbbells. Work both legs.
As to whether you should push off with the balls of your front foot or the heel, the extra weight of the dumbbells will help to give the right answer for you.

old man rivers

[VELISARIOS]

First of all why you do to long lunge?
It is true that if someone do long lunge, then the recovery will be slow.