Practice Mentality

[mrbiggs]

I take all the bouts somewhat seriously. If it's someone who isn't as good as me (They'd only get 5 or less points on me in a competitive DE bout, approximately), I always work on new things. If they're about as good as I am, I'm very competitive. If it's someone better, I mix it up.

This actually isn't true. There are people I fence who I can use nearly any move against, and get a point. Trying very hard would just lead to a short bout. In these cases, I work on flicking, distance, or footwork, because it's easy for me to concentrate on the small parts of my game when parries and disengages and stuff are very easy for me to perform.

[Ordway]

My club does all its practice fencing in the form of bouts, no free fencing, so the default tendency is for everyone to fence to win, I think. At first I wasn't too thrilled about that, but I've come to realize that for *me* at least, one of the skills I need to practice is... winning! Seriously - it's one of those "practice makes permanent" things, and I find that if I do too much "work on technique in a bout", then I lose the ability to push enough against a good opponent.

Another plus of my club is that most people there are serious fencers - a decent number are better than me, and the ones who are at or below my level work hard and fence well. So in order to win, and keep winning, in practice, I *have* to try new things, since if I keep doing the same things, then my teammates will pick up on it and beat me. It's a nice motivation.

Still, there's the issue of how to fence well in bouts against weaker opponents. I typically will start out focusing on keeping perfect form, or on trying to apply something from my lesson. If I end up several points down, say 0-3, then I switch it around and turn it into a "let's practice winning from behind" scenario (since that's something I need mental practice with).