Training

[gotcris]

Hey all!

Semi-new to the forum. I've lurked long enough...

I've a question about strengthening areas with weights or other exercises. I'm already working on lunges and doing footwork drills to help improve speed and agility. But what I'm curious about is, does anyone have suggestions on what things I can do besides typical fencing drills to gain better lunging speed and wrist strength.

Thanks!!

[Inquartata]

This is a question apt to produce a...lively debate.

There are two camps: One believes that exercise ought to mimic the activities for which evolution designed the body: running long distances on soft surfaces, short distance dashes, climbing trees and carrying heavy objects back to one's cave. As modified for fencing, they believe the best exercise to be fencing, or exercises which mimic fencing actions, and that weightlifting, calisthenics, and so on are ultimately either useless or actively counterproductive. The other camp believes that weights can be useful up to a point ( generally those that result in augmented overall fitness, or help rehabilitate an injury ).

For lunging speed some recommend plyometrics. For wrist strength try wrist curls, reverse wrist curls, and wrist rollers ( tie a length of rope to the middle of a dowel or dumbell bar, the other end to a weight, and wind the rope onto the bar by rotating your wrists ).

If you can find a copy of Szabo's "Fencing and the Master", there are more exercises and drills than you can shake a foil at in it...

[Manjusri]

Plyometrics are definitely the ticket if you are young enough, and careful to avoid injury. Hillclimbing on a mountain-bike, and legpresses at the gym are good too. The wrist-roller is the best forearm exercise I've seen, and I like powerputty and the little round rings you can buy in the rockclimbing section of sport chalet for hand strength. Rockclimbing will do wonders for your grip as well.

[JEC]

Beerlifting might also be helpful!

[Inquartata]

Beerlifting, however, has also been known to increase the size of your target and shrink the girth of your wallet, so beware...

[Tim P. Miceli]

Ah yes but once you start beerlifting, you automaticly know that you are better, you also think that the current strip is very out dated, All fencing strips should involve a stairway with a madin at the top and a chandalier with a window which you can jump out of after swinging on the chandalier.

but for weight lifting I would sugest "lunges" hold a dumbell in each hand and take a lunge step forward

*note: this is more like walking only with large steps, do not make your feet perpindicular!

start both feet facing the same way: take one big step forward and then either bring the back foot up to where the front foot is or bring your front foot back to the starting position.
Repeat with opposing feet as needed

[Tomas N]

I've found that working on my legs in the weight room has gone a long way towards reducing the aches and pains that I was feeling in my knees from too much fencing.

[JEC]

One common reason is that strengthening "relatively" weak quads (front muscle in the leg) diminishes the work on some of the knee ligaments. This is often used as an explanation to explain the 3:1 ratio in torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligaments) between women and men.

[neevel]

JEC's point is very significant, especially once you reach the "not getting any younger"-adult stage of life. Having adequate muscular strength, in combination with proper warm up and stretching, will go a long way to reducing the risk of injury to joints.

Something for gotcris to consider when it comes to lunging speed:
The effectiveness of the finishing motion of an attack depends, if anything, even more on the acceleration relative to the preceeding action than on the absolute speed with which you can lunge. An advance-lunge that initiates slow and then finishes with moderately fast lunge (i.e., a not so fast fast finish, but a large tempo change) will frequently be more effective than an advance-lunge that starts out near your top speed from the start (i.e., a fast finishing speed but not much of a tempo change). Now, having a fast lunge gives you a much greater range of tempo changes that you can generate, so it is something useful to develop, but you should also spend time practicing making footwork tempo changes of varying degrees.

-Dave

[BugabooX]

A few quick notes to think about...

Strength combined with speed produces power, and plyometrics can help train your muscles to produce explosive power -- very useful in any footwork and lunges. With that in mind, weight training *is* beneficial, but it's important to build opposing muscle groups so that you can safely accelerate and deccelerate (it's often the sudden stopping action that tears the body apart; getting your body mass to a certain speed starting from zero is much easier on ligaments/muscles/etc. than it is to get that mass to stop moving or reverse direction).

Also, plyometrics (when performed correctly) are very strenuous. It only takes a few reps in any particular muscle group during a session to serve your purposes safely. Be sure to give yourself a day between those focused workouts to recover.

An often-overlooked area of strength training involves the trunk: Imagine a speedy advance down the strip, a sudden stop, and quick retreat. Or a lunge and recovery. Without solid trunk strength (your tummy, waist, lower back and butt), it's likely that the top part of the body is going to whip forward, at the very least throwing the fencer out of balance, reducing his overall mobility, and potentially putting him in a position that could provoke an injury.

Finally, a little further afield, it never hurts to try to balance some of the asymetrical development of a body that fencing naturally produces. This might seem like a minor point, but when your *not* fencing, everyday activities require balance, too. Reaching, bending, walking, anything. General fitness helps reduce the potential minor bumps and bruises that aren't necessarily life-threatening, but might cause enough discomfort to reduce an athlete's performance later.

[jspierre]

All these posts are right on. Core strength combined with balanced leg strength, front and back, are key to mobility, and abililty to change tempo, and deliver actions with power. Wrist roller's are excellent to tone forearm strength, which is key to hand strength.

I'd only add two other areas, (a) calfs, which should not be negelected, since you power fleches off our feet, and your calf muscles must be toned and powerful to complete the action in tempo, and (b) shoulders, which need both stamina and strength to sustain form, and provide hand tempo.

When you're young, muscle development comes faster, and stays around longer; when you're older, you have to actively work at it in a gym.

My philosophy has been, don't get on the strip unless you're physically fit, don't waste your time and your coaches.

[nahouw]

As bugaboox and jspierre pointed out, core strength is very important, and mostly underlooked in fencing circles.

The best thing that we do in skiing to develop core strength is to do it in conjunction with our arms workout -- we do this by lifting dumbells while seated on a balance ball -- very efficient, because as you are working your arms, you are also getting the benefit of a core workout.

In skiing it is extremely important to have your pole plants and body balance coordinated with your feet, and the coordination between feet and hands is facilitated via the core; the application is similar for fencing, in that when you change direction, you need to have both your feet and your body moving in the same direction at the same time, with no lag, or else you will be hit.

Of course, it is more critical in skiing, because if you are not coordinated when you are confronted with a situation, it might mean that you kiss a tree, and those mishaps can be very serious or even deadly; in fencing, it just means that you get hit, and in the rare occurence, you may sustain a minor injury.

Also as they both pointed out is the need for balanced development of opposing muscle groups. The best way to balance your muscles is to get a Body Bar and do squats and deadlifts (both regular and straight leg -- straight leg are especially helpful for fencing, because the act of fencing without any sort of stretching tends to shorten hamstrings).

[Fenris]

Hi

I'm pretty New to Fencing Myself...... But my teacher says that I have a very good Lunge.... it is quick and pretty Low (gets a bit of extra distance)...
I actually believe that the combination of Strength/flexibility I have gained by doing Yoga has actually helped me... (there are Quite a few positions in yoga excercises which are very similar to lunge positions)....It also helps with the muscular endurance to (so I can keep doing them).........

I can't wait to learn the Fleche.......