Practice and conditioning standards for competitive collegiate fencing clubs.

[epeefencerjohn]

I am attempting to acquire information regarding practice and conditioning (group and individual) habits/standards for clubs participating in the USACFC. Specifically, how often does your club practice? How long or consistent is a practice session? How many members commit to training and conditioning on their own? Hope it doesn't sound like I'm prying, just compiling data to compare to our own practice and training structure.

Thanks!

[mrbiggs]

Originally Posted by epeefencerjohn

I am attempting to acquire information regarding practice and conditioning (group and individual) habits/standards for clubs participating in the USACFC. Specifically, how often does your club practice?

Twice a week, plus Fridays with the girls. Sometimes we also practice with the girls on another day, pushing it to four times. One of those practice days is usually at a local club, and another is free fencing.

Originally Posted by epeefencerjohn

How long or consistent is a practice session?

Two hours, usually a bit less.

Originally Posted by epeefencerjohn

How many members commit to training and conditioning on their own?

Specifically for fencing? I'm not sure; not many. Conditioning in general just to stay in shape is a bit more common, I think. I don't really know.

[whtouche]

At UMass our* practices are 4 nights a week, m/t/th/fri, from 7-10. One of those nights is dedicated entire to free fencing (following warm up and stretching of course), the other 3 are very consistent practice schedules including warmup, stretching, some conditioning, footwork, split into squads for drills, then free fencing. I would say the ammount of conditioning we do during practice is not very high or intense, as we view using our practice time as more wisely spent focusing on directly fencing related activities and leaving individuals to do conditioning or whatever extra they want to do on their own.

What about you? Are you going to share the same information?

*Note I have no fenced at all this semester, and likely will not be competing in nationals, even tho this is my last semester with the team. The labrum in my right shoulder is torn and is goin to require surgery after the semester, and it's been difficult to find time for fencing anyways.

[AndrewH]

At Rutgers, we practice M/Th, 6-9. We run laps (some of us do stairs instead), stretch and do some sprinting & agility drills. Then we do a core workout, followed by footwork. Then we break into squads and spend some time on drills, then set up strips and free fence for the last hour or so.

[TooLoftheDeviL]

Clemson practices from 7 - 9 Monday through Thursday. Most days we follow a schedule similar to UMass, warmup/stretch, footwork + conditioning, squad drills, and bouting. With some quirky exceptions. Dramatic lack of funding or equipment yields us 1 electric strip, so on a rotating schedule, after warmup/stretching and footwork + conditioning one of the weapons will focus on electric bouting all nite.

As far as conditioning time goes, it's relatively easy to see that the more conditioning we try to get members to do outside of practice, the less conditioning gets done. Our minimum in practice time spent on conditioning is fairly high for most university clubs (i think) but relatively tame in comparison with most sports. -->

Monday/Thursday nites we run sprint cycles. We've been running a sprint training program since the start of the semester, and are currently running 8 60meter sprints on Monday nites, and the same 8 sprints + 4 100 meter sprints on Thursdays. Tuesday/Wednesday nites are upper body and core focused, with numerous ab exercises and pushups. I've recently taken a note back from my JROTC days and have the team performing as many pushups as they can in a 2 minute period and as many crunches as they can perform in a 2 minute period, keeping count and tracking improvement.

[Tydive]

I am not current, but back in the day we did the 4 nights a week 2-3 hour practices. (I was at CSULB Div 1).

We would run lines, jump rope etc... stretch, do footwork drills and blade drills until it's time for fencing.

My Sr year we started doing circut training a couple nights a week instead of running.

[jjefferies]

Cal Berkeley,
This is the current schedule:
Monday: 8:30 PM - 12:00 AM Beginners / Advanced
Tuesday: 9:30 PM - 11:00 PM Open Bouting
Wednesday: 10:30 PM - 12:00 AM Advanced Only
Thursday: 9:30 PM - 11:00 PM Beginners / Advanced

When the coach is present, monday, wednesday, thursday, the practice and conditioning is high level. Starting with a half hour of fairly rigorous physical exercise followed by 15-30 minutes of footwork then bouting. Small group lessons (advanced fencers) with the coach are often done in preparation for tournaments. One on One lessons with the coach can be had but are up to the student to arrange and pay for. Usually the general sessions go until they close the building.

Caveats and issues are:
1. All three weapons are worked each meeting and that means you wait for a turn on the strip. Beginners are working with dry weapons on 1 or 2 strips.
2. fencing as a sport is marginalized to some degree at UC as you can tell by the late starting times. Course late starting times actually benefit some. But Hip Hop and other dance classes lust after the space because of the mirrors and open area and there is continuing pressure from the Uni over the amount of time fencing takes.
3. Number of fencers varies. At the beginning of the season we may see 100+ . But once it settles down 30-35 is pretty common and fairly evenly spread across: beginner foil, advanced foil, epee, saber (the smallest squad). Again dependent on the time in the season.