Height to weight ratio of high level fencers

[rudd]

Was just looks at the stats of the French men's foil team at the FFR site. Never realised those guys were so light. 2 member were my height but weighed aboout 6kg's less that I do and I'm not carring any excess fat. Do you think being very slim is an advantage in foil and in general.

Ger

[JEC]

1) Less target area.
2) Less mass to carry quickly.

[broncofencer]

Generally speaking the really slim tend to be a little quicker and a bit more difficult to hit. especially in foil wiht its limited target area.

[pigeonmeister]

Generally speaking the really slim tend to be a little quicker and a bit more difficult to hit. especially in foil wiht its limited target area.

Especially little left handers with big masks!
I find that the new timings have reduced the effective target area, so being small means you only half half of what was already a small area to hit. With the back much much harder to flick, broad shoulders are now more inviting for the flick hit.

The timings have changed things. Before, if you were short, you could be more easily hit on the back. Now being short means you can close distance, or hit a bullet remese, with more impunity. The trade off is that tall people can hit you with a epee type stop hit. A good tactic for getting lights to come on in the new timings, I find anyway, is to keep the hand a bit lower than usual. I gues smaller fencers have a lower sense of gravity and can thus power home more easily in the low line. I have noticed that smaller fencers have done well in Britian since the new timings.

[dramamine]

The French are really light, yeah. Some fencers are and some fencers aren't, I don't think it's too too important as long as you are in shape for your body type. The whole US foil team is pretty heavy (like around 5'10 180-190, if I remember right).

[Grasshopper]

Cassara of Italy weighs well over 200 pounds...

[whtouche]

I heard that lance armstrong attributes alot of his success to reduction in body weight but not strength. IE lighter, more toned muscles.
Does anyone know how to go about this?

[JEC]

Cassara of Italy weighs well over 200 pounds...

yea, but he is 6'4" or so.

[Aestro]

I heard that lance armstrong attributes alot of his success to reduction in body weight but not strength. IE lighter, more toned muscles.
Does anyone know how to go about this?

from what I've seen, swimmers normally have the best all-around tone without excessive muscle mass so that would be my first guess

[JEC]

What happen to Lance is that with chemotherapy he lost weigth, but unlike most patients, he kept himself extremely active, so he lost more fat than muscle. So pound by pound, he is among the strongest guys around. He was good before cancer, but after his come back from cancer, he was so much better.

[fencingguy]

For Whtouche:

The goal would be to weight train for strength, not mass. I was going to say it's fairly easy to do, but I'm not sure thats an accurate statement. When most people lift something or use a muscle they are only recruiting about 30% of the muscle fiber to do the work. Through training you can increase that to around 70-80% resulting in a dramatic strength increase without commensurate mass.

The way to do this is through neurological training while lifting, which is a fancy way of saying dynamic lifts. You want to do excercises that require your body to recruit more muscles to the task: Off balance lifts, turkish getups, wood choppers etc... You won't be able to lift as much weight, and you'll get strange looks in the gym (trust me on this one), but it will definitely pay off within a few weeks. Talk to someone you know who is a certified trainer before you start a new program and they should be able to show you some good excercises and how to do them.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

Ugh.....metric system

[Zhi]

uhmmmm...... I think height does'nt matter...weight does!
As JEC have said.."Less mass to carry quickly"