Choosing Best Coach for Very Good Teen Fencer

[Karima]

Help!
We are parents of a boy who's been fencing for going on five years. His first coach was a sweetheart but without experience with elite fencers. So as our son increased from once to three times a week, the coaching didn't keep pace with him. After 3 and a half years, we regretfully switched (and only then did those in our local fencing community tell us we should have switched long ago) to a coach with world class fencers. The private lessons were fabulous, regular bouting was great, but we soon discovered the drawbacks: constantly gone at international meets, more concerned with his star fencers than kids on the way up, no strip coaching at local meets. Several of his fencers stalled out in their progress and left. Our son had an initial pop from the more sophisticated coaching (now nationally ranked in his age group, and qualified for summer Nationals in older age groups but only performed in the middle of the pack), and then stalled out, too.

We don't want to be the kind of people who are constantly switching coaches. We WANT to be very loyal, but it's hard to tell how much of our son's stalling out again is due to the lack of coaching support. Our coach does no coaching at all at local meets, and even at bigger meets, where there is (usually) strip coaching, no one has ever sat down with our son at a meet and said, "Fencer X, whom you're fencing next, has these strengths and weak spots. Here's what you do." The coach says kids need to learn not to be dependent on him.

But what is the ideal ratio of strategizing with our son to telling him he's on his own? If strip coaching really didn't matter, then the coach wouldn't be doing so much international travel. We understand that he can't be in two places at once, so what do we do?

Also, what do you do about the problem that if the coach has no "stars", he's probably not as good a coach, but if your child isn't one of the stars, he can't get to be a star because he doesn't get as much attention?

Sorry this is so long, but our son now fences almost every day, so it's a huge part of our life, and a very thorny set of problems.

Please advise! Thanks.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

Fencers should not be reliant on the coach. A coach is a crutch, to make up for a fencers short comings. If you rely on a coach, then you are encouraging these deficits. If you're choosing a coach for private lessons or training, then choose one who is well versed in sports science. Some coaches are stupid and have their fencers do running, or insane numbers of pushups, or have them train without water, or have them eat steaks before tournaments.... all bad ideas.

Your sons stalling out probaby isnt related to coaching. How much does he work on his own? Does he condition? Eat a sport specific diet? How much does he want to win? As someone on the board said, you can't trade a coaches sweat for your own, because it wont be enough. If your son is stalling, its probably because you're busting your own ***, when it should be his *** that does the busting.

[qatet]

DFP has very good points. I would add two things. First, and perhaps most importantly, fencers hit plateaus. They suck, they're hard to get through, but they happen. A book that I read on how jazz musicians learn to improvise (perhaps the best odd cross-training I've ever read) talks about how musicians, too, hit plateaus, and that you just have to keep practicing, because you want to be there, with your instrument, when you're finally in the right mind to get past the sticky point. The same holds true for fencing - you just have to keep slogging through until you pass the sticky point.

Second, I coach at a club with two main, international level coaches and five or six assistant coaches of various degrees of experience. Yes, the two head coaches are often traveling to major meets. They rarely go to local meets. They serve two purposes - to make the fencers good through group drill and individual lessons so that they won't be needed much at meets, and to be there for the important bouts at meets. For our experienced fencers, that means that they won't really watch their pools or their first few DEs - the fencer should be able to get through those on their own. During those times, the coach will watch the weaker fencers, helping to develop them into fencers who won't need supervision at the early stages of the event. Our club often has several dozen fencers at Nationals, and a dozen or two at various NACs, with only three or four coaches in attendance – there has to be a system to decide what coach goes where and when. Admittedly, I'm biased, but it seems to me that this is a decent set-up.

Try to really look at what the coaches are doing. Does it strike you that they are trying to be as fair as possible? On the other hand, do you think that it would be better at any other clubs in your area? Sometimes, you take what you have to work with.

And, one last note – a coach with no stars may simply be a new coach, or a coach who hasn’t yet found the right students for them. If you think that you might be better off with a no-name coach, talk with them. Ask about their training (as a coach), their students, what they think would make their students better. A good relationship with a coach may be more important than having a ready-made phenom.

[Inquartata]

It sounds as though you've got a good coach, but one who has to serve many masters.

Although I myself see little real utility in strip coaching---and I am with DFP also on the point that self-reliance is what your son should be building in that regard---some people claim that it does indeed help them. If this is the case with your son, and there are no assistant coaches or even more experienced clubmates at the meets which he is attending, you might suggest that he ask someone at the tournament to help him with opponent analysis and troubleshooting. As a veteran fencer I have been asked to do this at times, and I am always glad to oblige if I can ( despite my dubiety about usefulness ). Prepare him for refusals if the person is, say, fencing the same event or is watching a child of his own or a spouse, etc. It's not a personal rejection, just go on to ask someone else...

[esskreemr]

The no coaching at the local level is easy to understand. It's most likely that at any one time, he/she will have several students on the strip. Who do you coach? The one losing? The one winning? Either way, someone is going to end up feeling left out...

[Allen Evans]

When you switched to this club and coach, did you discuss your expectations with the new coach before moving? Often these kinds of problems crop up because the fencer does not communicate with the new coach at the very start. If the discussion never occurred, both sides can reach a point where their frustration level is very high: the parent and fencer because their needs aren’t being met, and the coach because suddenly they have these unexpected demands on their time and resources, without a chance to plan or anticipate them.

As a coach, I like to watch my fencers at tournaments. However, I make it very clear to all of the fencers that a tournament is the place where the coach has the LEAST amount of control over the outcome. Tournaments are won by the effort and planning in the months before the fencing actually starts. My actual help in the bout is usually incidental, at best. I do try to help the weaker fencers early in the day, expecting that the stronger ones will get through the first pool on their own. But right now, my club is very small, and I often only have two or three people fencing at a time. I have the time to do this. As the club grows bigger, I and the other coach at Dominion have made it clear that it’s the teammates job to help each other out, including the reconnaissance of potential opponents. In every big club I’ve fenced at, my teammates were the best source of information at the tactical level.

Along with the development of the fencer, it is also the coaches job to develop him or herself. That means going to tournaments - especially international ones - and seeing trends in refereeing and tactics. I wish I had more time to do that myself. I never learn about new trends until I run into them at a NAC, which means that other clubs have been working on them for months before me. Also, travel to international tournaments with strong fencers is practically an obligation of coaches, whether it is helpful or not to the fencer.

You’ve trusted your child to this coach to develop them as a fencer. If the coaches are being as fair as possible with the resources at club, you’ve probably made a good choice. If you don’t think that things are being done fairly, there is probably a reason, and a talk with the coach might illuminate that.

[keith]

It sounds like your son is going through a 'normal' course of fencing development - the problem with stalling is not unusual and is unrelated to a fencers (or coaches) ability.

There is a great deal of difference between being a well trained fencer and a good (or very good) fencer. It is often much easier to master a sequence of actions and reactions during a lesson than to apply these actions during a bout. Often fencers will improve suddenly as one set of actions and tactics gets bedded down in their head before suddenly stalling as the coach begins working on the next set of technical and tactical issues. As you then start thinking about using these tools you end up stalling until they have been mastered in a bouting situation. Some fencers never master this process and get stuck, they do just stall out. Whether this is due to a lack of ability or simply frustration with the process...........?

As a general point remember that succesful sports training programs (in whatever sport) are often meat grinders. They depend on an influx of talented/motivated individuals to produce a small/tiny number of champions. This doesn't mean that the coaches are not sensitive individuals but that the ongoing succes of their program depends on a certain ruthlessness.

Allen's point about speaking to the coach about how they see their programme working and how they develop fencers is a good one - understand the coaches philopsophy first then decide how to progress.

The other group of people to speak to is the parents of the coaches current 'star' fencers - they will have been where you are and will likely offer a different perspective on how the system works.

Good luck.

[qatet]

For those who asked, the book on jazz improvisation is Thinking in Jazz : The Infinite Art of Improvisation by Paul F. Berliner. It's much, much longer than it needs to be, but quite good. None of the rest of my grad school cohort was able to finish it (did I mention that it's long?), but I - somebody who is actively learning and teaching a physical and mental activity - ate the darned thing up over one long NAC weekend.

Enjoy.

[remise]

My kids trained with very high ranking fencers as well as their coaches....but it wasn't until THEY decided to put their OWN noses to the grind (rather than have someone else tell them what to do, when to do it, how often to do it) that they improved. Sure, they hit a plateau like you described, but when they decided that they were going to WORK, WORK, WORK, in ADDITION to what the coaches and other fencers had them doing, that's what got them ahead.