Translating lessons to bouts

[Verbify]

My private foil lessons are going really well. According to my coach, my technique is improving, I'm getting faster and more accurate. I see and feel all of those things as well. In the group class, the things we work on make sense and in the class drills, I'm able to perform the actions (most of them) fairly well. Yet, translating everything to an actual bout leaves me frustrated and sometimes it feels as if there's been no progress at all. Gauging my successes against a few other fencers regularly should give me some sense of whether or not I'm actually improving and more often than not, it doesn't seem like I am.

Is this a normal growing pain? Any tips on taking what my lessons are giving me and translating that to the strip when it counts? It has crossed my mind that maybe it's just a lack of confidence in what I'm learning. I'm open to ideas.

[oldguy31]

Your experience is a commom one. Lessons develop a set of skills:

1. Mechanics of actions, proper coordination
2. Choice reaction in a given situation ( for example, you make a certain perparation, following actions depends on coach's response)
3. Reaction to a surprise situation

Steo 1 is very necessary but you might not see an improvement until your lessons progress to step 2 and 3. Would have to know more before making further comment

[milstdfarm]

"Gauging my successes against a few other fencers regularly should give me some sense of whether or not I'm actually improving and more often than not, it doesn't seem like I am."

Also consider that the people you are comparing yourself to, are themselves improving.

If you only fence the same few people in your club, you won't get an accurate estimate of your abilities.

Patience Grasshopper. Success will come from practice.

[Fiat Slug]

During your bouts, are you able to apply the lessons you learned? For me, if I'm able to successfully apply lessons learned, then I consider that an improvement even if the scores indicate otherwise.
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[CMiner]

Practice. It's a bland, "obvious" answer, but it really is the truth.

When you are doing a drill, there is no pressure. Makes it a lot easier to do things right. When you are in a bout, with the adrenaline going, it gets much harder. Happens to everyone. Practice bouts fix this.

Have a goal each bout. For example: "I will only score using a feint-4, disengage to 6." or "I will retreat with every parry." Pick something to work on, and focus on that. You may find yourself having to give up points, but that's fine. The goal isn't to win the bout, but to improve your fencing.

Ask a clubmate to ref your practice bouts, and to give you a penalty of some sort when you do something you are trying to avoid (leaning forward too much in a lunge, defending with a parry you aren't trying to improve, missing an attack, etc), or to annul any touch from you that isn't made with a technique you are trying to improve.

[TBean]

This is a common growing pain. Often putting a lesson into practice is initially about failure rather than success. You have to decide to practice what you have learned in lessons and drills on the strip, and accept the outcome of that decision. Recognize that it can take awhile to successfully integrate anything you learn in lessons into your fencing. I don't know what your process is, but are you writing down your lessons? If not, consider that. It becomes a reference for you go back to so you can remind yourself what you have learned, and what you are supposed to be working on. I do this, and then I will choose several fencers work my task on - I chart my progress in my log along with the recap of my lesson. When I begin to have success with my group of fencers, I try the action on a different set - eventually it becomes a part of my fencing.

The important thing is that I am actively deciding to work specific actions with different fencers - my ultimate goal is to hit my opponent but I do know that in the beginning I might not hit people as I figure out how to do what I am being taught in my lessons in real-world fencing.

[DangerMouse]

One of the things implied by everyone else here is the VERY important step of being able to recognize if you did the lesson action properly, but at the wrong time, or did the lesson action improperly. If you focus on this distinction, you'll be much less frustrated.

[prototoast]

Make sure you are actually making a deliberate effort to actually incorporate the things you are learning/doing in practice/lessons in your bouts. It may seem obvious, but it can be easy to fall into the trap that when you're in a bout you have to somehow do "more" than just what you've been practicing. Now, instead of using all the skills you've been developing, you're doing a bunch of **** you don't know what you're doing. So make sure that you're not just taking lessons and then hoping to fence well, you're actually taking the lesson and then using it to fence well.

[eac]

It's worth pointing out that your coach may be teaching you the wrong things. This isn't the first conclusion you should jump to.

If you spend a significantly long time (several months to a year) making a truly honest, concerted effort to do what you do in lessons in bouts, and you've been fencing overall for more than a year or a year and a half, and it just isn't happening even slightly, first go talk to your coach and see if he has anything helpful to say after watching your bouts and seeing what goes wrong.

If s/he says something helpful, and you see some improvement, great, problem solved.

If s/he doesn't and you don't, it pretty much comes down to either fencing isn't your sport, or your coach is telling you the wrong things. If your coach has other people within who are highly ranked in the country in your weapon, the latter is much less likely.

Still, if you have had prolonged lack of success with this coach, and there are other reasonably successful coaches available, try them, preferably in decreasing order of their previous success.

Too many people assume their suckage is all their fault. Unless you're a soon-to-be-legendary outlier, fencing isn't really something you can get right by yourself, or with a suboptimal coach. You need someone to feed you truth.

As a side note, elsewhere I have argued strenuously that bladework drills are a total waste of time in foil. As always, I was a bit of a jack@ss while arguing the point, but I still believe that. Since that thread, the drill-free club has a still-running streak of winning every Div I and Junior national men's foil event since January 08, with the exception of 08 and 09 JO's, since nobody went to those.

[DangerMouse]

You have established a corelation between your club being drill free and a couple members getting good results; you have not established that the lack of drills causes these results. How about the clubs that do drills and get good results? Blade work drills don't have to be static. They can incorporate distance, timing, and decision making while focusing on the blade work.

[Fiat Slug]

I would like to caution against blaming the coach for a student's failings. Certainly not all coaches are created equal, then again, neither are all students. If you don't think you're improving, talk to your coach. Articulate your expectations and listen to his. You can then decide if you are a good match for each other. For example, I sometimes work with a coach that I can defeat on a regular basis in bouts. However, that doesn't mean that he can't teach me a thing or two.

Originally Posted by eac

As a side note, elsewhere I have argued strenuously that bladework drills are a total waste of time in foil. As always, I was a bit of a jack@ss while arguing the point, but I still believe that. Since that thread, the drill-free club has a still-running streak of winning every Div I and Junior national men's foil event since January 08, with the exception of 08 and 09 JO's, since nobody went to those.

I'm curious about this. If the curriculum does not include bladework drills, then how do you program your muscles to remember the movements? Do you just practice in front of a mirror?

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[eac]

I suspect this is going to be a pretty thorough rehash of the referenced thread, but I'll bite anyway.

Basically the strong claim I'm making is that there is definitely not a strong positive correlation between bladework drills and winning. I personally anecdotally believe that bladework drills actually make you worse, but this is very difficult to prove, because they don't ruin you enough that you can't fix it by being otherwise good, so I'm not really going to try.

My rationale for saying that the correlation is not positive is that there are two cases for bladework drills, both of which fail spectacularly.

The first is some kind of semi-competitive format, where only one of the two participants can succeed, and both are trying to succeed. If the format isn't fencing itself, it necessarily has screwed-up incentives, which any naturally competitive person will consciously or subconsciously exploit.

The second is a fencer-dummy format, where one person is practicing an action, and the other is a 'dummy' who's instructed to allow them to succeed. Now, there is a non-degenerate form of this, which is when the dummy is a coach. When that's true, the coach understands the point of the drill, and more importantly knows what the right answer for the fencer looks like, and can punish the fencer for incorrect execution either by making the action fail in a realistic way, or by making him do pushups, or both.

However, in the mutual partnered drill form, the dummy doesn't have the authority or expertise to notice and correct failure, and the average result of the drill is to ingrain habits that on average are not any better than the habits you already have. Occasionally the coach may step in, in which case there may be minor improvement if the coach is right, but that's intended to be rare. Instead, the usual dynamic is that the dummy becomes unintentionally lethargic and useless as a result of being forced to allow the action to succeed, and allows many incorrect actions through. Also, this lethargy often causes terrible problems with static footwork, since the dummy has no reason to move his feet beyond the instructed footwork. He's going to get hit anway, and, not being a coach, he doesn't see that his lethargy directly contributes to his partner's suckage.

The upshot is that you see people practicing these drills all day, their footwork and bladework deteriorate together, and their actions are stiff and unsuited to the chaos of a real bout. I can't imagine you haven't seen something like this happen if you have been places that have heavy bladework drilling. We should establish some kind of commonality of experience, especially if we want to stop thrashing the dead horse.

Note, incidentally, that neither of the two failure modes particularly depend on whether there are choices of actions, or really anything else about the drill other than that neither participant is a coach, and it's not a footwork drill.

[prototoast]

Getting a lesson is just a series of drills with a coach. Don't blame drills if what you mean to say is "not working with a coach won't help you."

[rcmatthews]

Indeed, it would seem then, from your summary of your argument, that two fencers who are able to recognize correct and incorrect actions, understand the necessity to 'play for real', etc. would be able to benefit from drilling. I think that it can be useful when you want to isolate and emphasize a very specific action, in a similar manner to constrained free fencing.

[parrythis]

Lessons will teach you "how" to do things - i.e. "technique".

Bouting, whether in a competition or for practice, will teach you "when" to apply the things that you know how to do. Not every technique is appropriate in every situation.

Applying the wrong technique, no matter how correctly you do it, for a situation will prove to be frustrating. Learning to recognize valid opportunities and knowing what to do with them takes time and practice.

I have learned a lot, and I have a LOT yet to learn, but that is part of the fun of this sport.

[eac]

Yes, getting a lesson is doing a series of drills with a coach, but my point is that doing drills with anyone other than a good coach is at best a waste of time.

Originally Posted by rcmatthews

Indeed, it would seem then, from your summary of your argument, that two fencers who are able to recognize correct and incorrect actions, understand the necessity to 'play for real', etc. would be able to benefit from drilling. I think that it can be useful when you want to isolate and emphasize a very specific action, in a similar manner to constrained free fencing.

Maybe, but non-coaches are not generally in the habit of paying attention to other people's actions and evaluating them and trying to correct them. In fact, most non-coaches are really bad at this. This makes them really bad drill partners.

Similarly, I don't believe in constrained free fencing. I've yet to find a constraint on fencing that actually helps. If you want to work on an action, you can work on it in a lesson, where it can be constructively corrected, or in a bout, where it can be realistically practiced. It's *really* hard to find anything else productive. There's informal lesson-style bouting, where the superior fencer makes suggestions and biases his actions to make the new thing work, but that's definitely in the direction of coaching and lessons, and not in the direction of drilling.

I still insist that there must be someone other than me who has seen something related to the emblematic phenomenon I'm talking about, where you have a big set of pairs of ****ty fencers doing lethargic, ****ty things, with slow, bad footwork and stiff, stilted blade actions. I know it happens all the time.

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by eac

I still insist that there must be someone other than me who has seen something related to the emblematic phenomenon I'm talking about, where you have a big set of pairs of ****ty fencers doing lethargic, ****ty things, with slow, bad footwork and stiff, stilted blade actions. I know it happens all the time.

Sure I've seen it. I agree that bad fencers doing bad drills poorly will not make them better. I do believe that good fencers doing good drills correctly will. Even if you think lessons are superior, if you could believe that there are logistical reasons preventing fencers from getting as much one-on-one time with a coach as would be ideal, then I don't see why supplementing those lessons with peer drilling would have to be a bad thing?

[Fiat Slug]

eac, I would submit that 2 beginning fencers doing bladework in isolation is just as bad as those same 2 fencers bouting. In the former case, they are not able to correct each other's technique and in the latter case they are not able to appropriately apply rules. Practices, whether it be footwork, bladework, or conditioning, need to be supervised by a competent coach. This same competent coach should correct fencer's mistakes and minimize the lethargy that affects all of us at one time or another. If the coach in your club does not supervise bladework, then I would actually agree with you that your club is better off not doing any bladework. For the rest of us, however, bladework has a legitimate place in our drills.

Separately, I don't believe you've established the correlation between the successes of your fencers and your club's abstinence from bladework. Recall the expression post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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[DavidX]

Try practicing with the blast shield down
and I know - you will probably say to me.

"But David, with the blast shield down I can't see anything."

That's ok - just use the force - let if flow through you - let it guide your pimp hand - make it strong.

[Morale Officer]

Verbify, I have slightly similar issue as I just picked up a foil again after quite a number of months of only doing sabre and then having not fenced at all before and after my neck surgery. I know that part of my problem is that I can actually feel my hand again, which after having little to no feeling in my hand and fencing had me with a death grip on my weapon and unable to truly control or feel my actions. I'm taking things very very slowly to the point that my only goal during one tournament was to "make the damn box light up." I didn't care if it was my point, my opponents point, or even an off target. I only wanted to be able to make the tip depress enough to get any light at all. Last night I started out with the same goal, then actually progressed to add "make a clean parry" and then "make a clean parry-riposte." Once again, even if it was off target. I've gotten laughed at quite a bit because of this goal for foil (as well as my definition of "winning" being that I met any given goal even once during a tournament or during practice). Just take it one step at a time and try not to let your frustration get the best of you. Eventually things will improve and "click." Just my opinion though.