How to win?!

[The Fish]

I've been fencing for about two years now and I've had a coach for a few months and although I learn little sequences (guard opens this way, attack to open line etc.) I'm finding it difficult to incorporate these snippets into my general strategy. If I'm very aggressive (with random appels, balestras and stuff) I can psych my enemy out and win but I'd rather have some long tactical thing. What sort of overall tactics should I use?

[seven6ty]

It'll take a while of practicing these things until you can do them naturally. Best advice is to simply spend as much time as possible going over these actions on your own. For every 20 minutes of instruction you recieve, you should spend at least 40-60 minutes practicing these things on your own. That way, the next time your lesson comes around, you don't have to spend so much time going over things you were taught in the previous lesson. Just a bit of a help in committing these actions to your unconscious memory. From there, compound actions will become much easier for you once you have a solid foundation.

[Ordway]

I'm assuming you have the opportunity to fence bouts in practice, as well as take lessons?

Keep in mind that practice is for practicing, not for winning. Tournaments are for winning. At practice, decide ahead of time what specific thing(s) you want to work on (keep the list short) and focus on doing those things to the best of your ability, in the bouts. This will cause you to lose a lot of touches and bouts that you otherwise might have won - in the short term. In the long term, it will allow you to get better at the things you're working on in your lessons.

Since one of the things you need to do at practice is "practice winning," too, you should devote some of your bouts to doing your best to win, with whatever technique or tactics seem most effective. This will give you practice on the things that you do well (keeping them honed) and it will help you practice winning. (Psychologically, that is a learned skill, too - at least in some ways, for some of us.)

BTW, I would say, at this point, that "a few months" of having a coach is just the beginning - it takes time to keep going through the cycle of learning, testing, and returning to the lesson for refinement. Good for you, that you are thinking already about how to make the most of it.

[slowgraffiti515]

being awesome at everything ever = winning.
also, im sure youre familiar with it but the tactical wheel is quite nifty.

[slowgraffiti515]

Since one of the things you need to do at practice is "practice winning," too, you should devote some of your bouts to doing your best to win, with whatever technique or tactics seem most effective.

i agree...kinda. it really depends on the situation. if you fence the same people every day you practice...you wont really benefit from just fencing to win if you do it too often. if you fence with the same person for awhile you pretty much know their strengths/weaknesses etc.

i would re-word this as: fence to win in practice against people you normally dont fence. also, dont be afraid to try new things in practice. even if its crazy (just dont kill anyone...)

hope this helps a little more

[c3l2vantes]

i like to read old manuscripts for overall approaches and spiffy lil moves. most of it is garbage when it pertains to "sport-fencing" but i think there might something to be learned from them.
http://www.musketeer.org/online.html
has some good reading (if you can bear the old english)

[Phaeton]

i like to read old manuscripts for overall approaches and spiffy lil moves. most of it is garbage when it pertains to "sport-fencing" but i think there might something to be learned from them.
http://www.musketeer.org/online.html
has some good reading (if you can bear the old english)

If you change most to all you're a little bit closer to the truth.

In all actuality your training methodology needs to be worked on with you and your coach. You need to learn how to translate lessons into actions that can be done on strip. It isn't easy, but actions should have a way they get into your tournament repertoire:

Lesson->Practice Bout->Practice Tournament-> Actual tournament

Something along those lines. It may be difficult but it is pretty important. Your ability to blitz and be aggressive may only get you so far, it's important to remain calm when you fence and maintain some rhyme and reason to your footwork. Balestra only when you need to, there is no right way to fence but everything has a time and place.

Pretty soon crazy preparations and random flailing will get you bitterly punished by someone who isn't taken back by such stratagem.

How do you determine what's an important tournament and what's not?

That's entirely personal but I recommend sitting down with a calendar, you're coach and/or parents (I'll make the assumption you live with them) and decide how you want to structure your season and how you want things to work.

[rory]

I like to win by convincing my opponents that getting ideas from ancient manuscripts is a good idea.
Then thrashing them.

[Ordway]

Your ability to blitz and be aggressive may only get you so far, it's important to remain calm when you fence and maintain some rhyme and reason to your footwork..

Believe it.

Being aggressive got me up to about a strong D. And there it stopped.

Taking apart my whole game, simplifying it radically, and working to put it back together correctly from the bottom up, has gotten me up to a strong C. The difference is that it is not stopping there.

One of the hardest things to do, is to give up a technique or habit that is superficially successful, and replace it with something that doesn't work as well *right now*... because you know that once you know how to use the new thing correctly, it will be a lot more successful than your earlier approach. It requires two things: 1. confidence and trust in your coach, and 2. a willingness to work for long-term results.

[c3l2vantes]

the style you use today was based off something. to say looking at the root is worthless seems a little harsh. the wards are the same as they were then, they just did different things with them

[Phaeton]

I don't understand why people don't register that modern fencing isn't like anything you would deal with that needed some understanding of middle english (most likely jacobian) to read, and definately nothing you'd need to know old english for, and if you do know old english I'm impressed, you've learned a much less useful version of german.

[rory]

the style you use today was based off something. to say looking at the root is worthless seems a little harsh. the wards are the same as they were then, they just did different things with them

If yoiu think it's a little harsh, turn up to a decent sport fencing competition and see if you can place outside the bottom 10%.

Please post your result.

[RebelFencer]

I like to win by convincing my opponents that getting ideas from ancient manuscripts is a good idea.
Then thrashing them.

Ahh, thank you. This made my day. Classical bashing, ahoy!