A Fencer's Wake Up Call!

[Phoenix]

I have a wake up question. My Classes start at 10 in the morning on Saturdays and I am always a lil sleepy, so I really don't concentrate enough and I usually beat my self in the head but it doesn't work. I've tried coffee and apples (said it was better than coffee..) but I still am not fully awake and I mess up more and it really pisses me off. Does anyone know how to really wake up before fencing? Any suggestions? Plz! I need your help!

[damianip]

At the risk of sounding like your mother:

Go to bed early the night before.
Avoid any caffeine intake the night before.
Get up well before your lesson.
Give yourself plenty of time to stretch.
Try doing at least 15 minutes of footwork before your lesson starts.

I have had this problem with early tournament starts. The above routine has helped "clear the cobwebs" before fencing.

Paolo

[PisteOff]

First I would suggest going to bed by midnight at the latest. =) (I always stay up too late, also.) When you get up eat a LIGHT, non-greasy breakfast, some fruit or something, to keep your blood in your head instead of it all going to your intestines. Take a cold(?) shower, then go do some light stretching and jogging for about 30 min before class. Play some of your favorite fast tunes on the way to class. I'd also avoid sunglasses on the way to class, since research shows that exposure to bright light helps your circadian body rhythms wake you up. When you arrive, try some quick parry-riposte drills to get your 'fencing brain' in gear.

my 2 cents... =)

[KBayDog]

Very good question. However, it is one that is not easily answered...

Only YOU know your body. You need to find the optimal sleep pattern for you, which (unfortunately) comes from trial-and-error. Some guidelines which may help you out (again, just generalities):

* Most people seem to do well with 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night
* Alcohol does not help provide quality sleep. Take it easy Friday night. Drink plenty of water.
* Piste is right - let the sun be your guide. Humans are not nocturnal by nature (although this is usually lost on the 18-22 year old crowd!)
* Do not rely on "aids" to help keep you alert - such as caffeine, tobacco, etc. (If you rely on them, you will feel it when you DO NOT have them!)

Another thing that will help is a process called "Reverse Planning." You start with the final event - in this case, fencing at 1000 on Saturday - and work back from there. For example:

I know fencing starts at 1000 on Saturday (NOTE: I plan on being "en garde" at 1000, not showing up at 1000). I know it takes me 30 minutes to warm up, so I should start warming up at 0930. I know it takes me 10 minutes to get dressed, so I should start suiting up at 0920. I know it takes me 5 minutes to walk to the salle from my car, so I need to be parked NLT 0915. It takes me 20 minutes (with traffic) to get to the salle, so I have to be out of my door NLT 0855. Since it takes me an hour to shower, shave, get dressed, and get a bit to eat, I need to wake up by 0755. I do my best on 7 hours of sleep, so I should be ASLEEP by 0055....

As you can see, the process is simple, but can become very detailed. Again, you will have to figure out what works for YOU. You may even have to write it down the first few times, but it will become second nature before you know it. This will help you become more alert, as you will not be waking up at 0959 for 1000 fencing. You will have ample time to warm up (which includes mental preparation), so you will be ready to send rounds down range at the appropriate time.

I hope some of this helps.

[3ngu4rd]

Eat some carbs and a little bit of protein in the morning. It'll do wonders for you're preformance! Or at least that works for me... I always make sure my breakfasts consist of carbs and protein now because I feel so much better and awake for training! (and I train at 5:30am more that enough times a week to know!)

[corinna2u]

the advice already given is good...

on the subject of food and drink...be aware what you are consuming and know how it affects you...try different foods at night and the morning of and see how you do...different people do well with different food...look at all the different diets there are!

but besides all that great advice already given...here is our cure for those morning foggies...juice one lemon, add this juice to enough water that you can drink it, chug your lemon-water...(the water varies from a little to a lot depending on personal preference; my son does not even use water, I use a full glass)

it works and its cheap...

[pkt]

I concur with most of the answers esp. KBayGog's best point is this:
Of all of us, you know your body best. Let's hope that's the case.

Many serious competitors in any sport prefer to have a pasta dinner the night before.
NO alcohol the night before. Swedish police research have shown that alcohol's effect is lengthier than it is obvious.
Have adequate sleep.

Most important, take it easy the night before.

Then there's one thing no one has mentioned thus far: sex the night before, yes or no. To me the result is inconclusive: too many other factors. For quite s few years, the Rams would quarantine their players the week before Super Bowl. The Steelers didn't. You draw the conclusion from the results.

Another thing no one mentioned or asked: Do you fence often in the morning? It seems to me you don't. So the obvious answer is for you to fence at 10 a.m. more often. It's like going to compete in a diff't time zone, esp if you have to go to a more esterly time zone, it is better to get there a couple of days earlier or start living that time zone's time so your biological clock can adjust itself.

Obviously the above suggestion is allthe more appropriate if you have to travel to a place where the time difference is more than
8 hours. Like most of us going to fence in Europ or Asia...

PK

[Aoife]

If it's just a case of getting your a$$ out of bed and not falling alseep again, then I have a few hints (nothing so scientific or atheletically based as the others, just what gets me to school on time).

Try to go to bed early (I'm dreadful at this, I rarely get to bed before 12). This will naturally mak you wake up earlier. If you can't do that....

1) Make sure you actually get up. Do you have an alarm? Is it effective? I find my radio at full volume suddenly turning itself on tends to wake me up.... because I make sure my remote is no where near my bed so I actually have to leap up, run across the room, and turn it off to stop the room pounding with the volume. Once I've done that, I tend to be fully awake. If you don't have an alarm you can always drinmk a lot of water before going to bed. If you know you're own body you'll get good at knowing how much to drink to wake you up at a certain time.

2) Don't have a hot bath... you might just fall asleep again, and when you wake up you'll be cold wet, and late (not that, ahem, I ever do this ) You don't have to have a freezing cold bath either, just not so warm you get all cosy and sleepy again.

3) Eat something. Just because breakfast is important. I can't recommend anyhting in particular, I just find it makes me feel more human if I have something linning my stomach.

4) Never, at any point, think "I'll just crawl back into bed for a few minutes to get warm." Never! (this one has made me late for school on a few cold winter mornings )

What else?

Washing your face with cold water might help. And do wake up in good time so you're not rushing- you'll feel more awake at fencing if you've been awake for a while as suppose to having just stumbled out of bed.

[veeco]

Yes, it is usually good to wake up at least a couple of hours before fencing, because your biological wake up is not the same time as the time you physically rise out of bed. You will need those couple of hours to be fully awake and ready to fence.

[NinjaFerret]

If I have to get up early for fencing...

1. Go to sleep v. early the night before.

2. Eat breakfast. My favorite pre-bout breakfast is a bagel and butter, water, gatorade, and the calcium fortified orange juice. Granola bars are good too.

a. Note on the calcium OJ: Your body needs calcium for muscle function. Milk is bad b/c it sits in your stomach (or at least in mine) for a while. If you want a scientific reason why the Ca is important, it exposes active sites on the... um... actin filaments in muscle. Myosin heads binds to these active sites, and essentially pull the actin string along, which is what a muscle contraction is. Look this up using Google for a better explanation.

3. Blast really loud music.

4. Run a mile to get your blood going. That should take 15 minutes at the absolute max. A leisurely pace is about 9-10 minutes.

Hope this helps.

[LKS_Blade]

The best option (IMO) is to get into a regular pattern. Try to go to bed and get up the same time every day and after about a month your body will do it naturally (trust me, i got up at 6am every day for 4 years without an alarm clock just to get to schooo on time). I know this is hard (esp if your at uni) but it really works.

FACT: not getting at least 7hrs sleep every night for 2 weeks has the same debilitating effect as not sleeping for 2 days straight. Even though you dont 'feel' tired you just dont perform at your best.

AVOID CAFFINE
caffine only gives you a temporary boost and will let you down. I find it good to eat small portions beween bouts, just a few bites of a sandwich or a banana or something light.

FLUIDS
Drink about 2 liters of water a few hours before a comp, trust me, you will lose it, and then have something to drink between bouts as well. I used to get really run down because i couldnt replace my fluid loss fast enough (not sure if this applies to the colder climes, but my last comp was in a hall with an air temp of 39C not the time to be wearing a sabre lame). This way even if i cant keep up i dont lose out.

WARMUP
Make sure you warm up. It gets the blood moving, warms you up, improves flexibility, reduces chance of pulling muscles and so forth... all good things. (also make sure to warm down or lactic acid will crystalize and that is a pain in the a$$)

[nahouw]

Originally posted by pkt

Then there's one thing no one has mentioned thus far: sex the night before, yes or no. To me the result is inconclusive: too many other factors. For quite s few years, the Rams would quarantine their players the week before Super Bowl. The Steelers didn't. You draw the conclusion from the results.
PK

I've seen studies about this -- what the results showed about having sex the night before competition, is that it gives a benefit for the nervous system, but it is a adverse for the legs (the physicality aspect).

Since fencing involves both high leg usage and the nervous constitution, this is an individual fencer's choice -- if you are a high-strung person in great physical shape, sex would be good, because it would calm your nerves for the competition; if you are not a nervous person, it would be bad, and cause you to be tired the next day.

The same about sex the night before can be said about alcohol, since it is also a relaxant. Aldo Nadi would have a glass of wine before competition to calm his nerves.

[Peach]

I've had the best results since I gave up caffeine in the latter half of the day. The cut-off used to be 6:30 p.m., but now I quit even earlier if I have an early start the next day, sometimes as early as noon. This from a person who could cheerfully drink a pot of coffee and five or six diet colas a day.

[Aoife]

Oh, and when you set you're alarm, make sure you've not just set the time, but actually turned it on, so you don't wake up 1 and a half hours late first thing on a Monday morning!!!! (silly me, I managed to get to school on time, but I hate rushing)

[Zelda]

Personally I fence better not thinking about things, and being half asleep helps. My coach used to reckon that if I got there early without having had OJ/brioche whatever that generally constitued breakfast, I had a better lesson. So I used to have a lesson then go buy coffee for him and b/fast for me before everyone else arrived.
But if you need to wake up, nothing beats a cold shower. Even just cold water on the face.....

[LKS_Blade]

Just not too tired. I fenced the states championships having only slept 1 hr in the past 2 days... i was moving so slowly it wasnt funny.
Tired = Bad
Relaxed = Good

[D'Artagnan1673]

Interesting thread with a lot of good information. This information is especially interesting ot me since I think I've finally got my interest back in fencing. Since September, I've done very little in the way of physical activity. My fiance has noticed that the big knot around my knee is gone. However, I think I enjoyed myself enough last Saturday that I may jump back in.

Here are my biggest problems.

1. I am out of shape. My body is weak and tired all the time because I never do anything but sit at a desk or sit at home at my computer or couch.

2. I am as nocturnal as a vampire. I would rather stay up all hours of the night than to be awake early. I think thats because when everyone else is asleep I can fully devote myself to a good computer game or book.

3. Due to # 2, I never get a full 8 hours of sleep except for maybe the weekend. Because I stay up late Friday and Saturday night, I find it hard to go to bed early on Sunday and therefore I start Monday bad and immediately hit the coffee. If I could find a really good decaf, I'd switch. This may be my imagination, but I thnk the only reason I love coffee is for the taste.

4. I am a junk food type of guy. Greasy and fatty food are my favorite.

Due to all of this, I am constantly aware of how tired I am. How am I trying to counter this? I went to the store and bought pleny of apples, oranges, and other fruits and veggies. I also bought a bag of those great jalepeno chips. I ate an apple, had some carrots and yogurt, but I also ate the whole bag of chips!!!!!!

[Mergs]

D'art: Marriage will help fix all those problems. Now you have to convince your intended that fencing like a madman once you start all these healthy lifestyle changes in addition to regular sex (something more regular than once a quarter as my ex thought of as regular) is a key component to a long and happy marriage!

[remise]

It took 6 months for me to convince my husband that fencing would be a GOOD thing for me to do. (He was dead set against it, though he never said why). He quickly saw the benefits......after getting the crap smacked out of me (epee fencers are merciless to their beginners) I'd come through the front door quite mellow and with the 'whatever' attitude. Now my husband worries if I DON'T get the fencing time in. I still come in the door with the 'whatever' attitude, only this now my two kids critique everything I do wrong.

[a517dogg]

At this years world cup (soccer) the us coach, sampson i think? allowed his players to have sex the night before. same with the italian coach. worked well for the US, not so much for the italians, although perhaps if the referee in the italy-korea game had had sex the night before, his nervous system wouldn't have fooled him into thinking totti dived...