Practice = Success?

[d0gz|song]

I've been practicing fencing a lot for the past year, yet I haven't seen much improvement. On the other hand, I've noticed that some people in my club who don't practice as much as I do have actually improved more than I have. Bouts I've always won in the past have become bouts I'm always losing. Errr... I'm interested in your opinions...does more practice always equal more success?

[Craig]

It all depends on the type of practice that you are doing.

One thing that is hard for lots of people to think about is that practice scores don't count. Many competitors feel that they have to win every practice bout, so they don't try new things or work on their weaknesses - they would rather win their practice bouts. Then these same fencers go to tournaments and get creamed, often by the fencers that they were beating in practice.

Once I figured this out and started working at practice on strengthening my game rather than stroking my ego I saw my performance get better a lot more quickly than it had in the past.


That said, every athlete goes through plateus where they don't improve for a while and then hit a spike where they improve markedly over a short period of time. That's a pretty common thing as well.

I remember reading several articles on this type of topic in the past; I'll see if I can dig up any references.

Craig

[Ramrod]

It also depends on your practice including lessons with an instructor.

You could make improvements solely through practice but having a professional to aid in identifying weaknesses and teaching you what to do to improve should dramatically improve your progress.

If you're practicing the same mistakes or poor techinques with someone to correct you then you can't expect to improve.

[wflaschka]

Darn... just saw that Craig said everything already.



A fencer's native physical ability is a sizeable factor in improvement. Some people have great balance, some are naturally energetic. It's very tough to explain to students how a 6-month fencer can be stronger than a 1.5-year fencer. Luckily, fencing is also about brains, and everybody has those. After, say, 3 years, native physicality doesn't seem to be as important, because you have seasoning.

If you have no sense of improvement, even after working hard, then [1] you might be being unfair to yourself, or [2] you're about to end a plateau, or [3] you need a sharp change in your regimen.

[1] Personally, I didn't know when I was improving until I saw a videotape of my fencing. Suddenly I was no longer a little kid in my head, but one of those cool good fencers. Orwell says: Every life, when looked at from within, can only be seen as a series of defeats. He was talking about autobiographies, but in sport terms, you are never going to have the world's best perspective on your improvement; only outsiders.

[2] Also, frustration comes from an imbalance of understanding and talent. You understand a lot, but your 'talent' doesn't let you do what you want. This indicates that possibly your talent is about to improve (breakthrough). That is, you may be ending a plateau -- you're no longer as satisfied as you were before.

[3] After an honest and balanced look at improvement... if things aren't look so good, you might decide to make a radical change. In training method, in time devotion, in mindset. Anything to jog you out of the rut.

[Wizardly]

I guess the only wisdom I can contribute is the saying "practice makes permanent." This is really true only over short periods of time. This quite possibly isn't the problem you're having, but practicing the same thing over and over again will tend to mean that's the thing that you'll do every time. For example, if parry 4 is all you practice, then parry 4 is what you'll do when attacked in the high line and you wont, for example, counter parry. Also, if you practice wrong, that wrong will become relatively permanent. This is another one of the reasons instruction is important.

I like to think of skills as tools in a toolbox (be it engineering, fencing, or whatever). If you're stagnating on the same thing every time, put down the hammer and handsaw then pick up and get good with some of the other tools in the box. If you don't have many, go shopping. You can get really good at using a hammer and handsaw, but if a hammer and handsaw is all you use, you'll miss out on the joys of a nail gun and circular saw.

[picojeff]

You should also not think that just "more" practice is better. You need to plan your training in cycles. If you practice 2 or 3 days a week, you have a week-long cycle, but you may not be varying the intensity from day to day. Make one day mid-late in the week your "killer" day, where you do twice as much footwork and twice as much bouting. The other days should be less physically demanding and focus on technical skills, either learning new ones or perfecting old ones. That's the basic idea.

And you need a month long cycle, or a 6 week cycle, starting easy and ramping up for two or three weeks, backing off the next week, and ramping up through the end of the cycle. The killer day in the toughest week should leave you completely destroyed. But the good thing is that you only work that hard, at 100% of your capacity, one time every 6 weeks. So you recover from it, and come back to the next practice knowing you only have to do a fraction of the work. Overall you increase your physical capacity faster. And on the "easy" days, when you want to be out there busting yourself physically, but sticking to your schedule holds you back, you start thinking a lot more creatively about how to get the most out of practice. You try new things and learn new things.

You should also plan your 6 week cycles in a year long cycle, so you are ready for the most important tournament(s). And when you have that level of planning working for you, you can put together a quadrennial cycle, so you are ready for Olympic qualification every 4 years! (I suspect you might also put together a career-long cycle, but I don't want to think about it.)

Aladar Kogler wrote a little book about this (you can see it at amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...l/-/1883616018, I don't know if you can get it through CounterParry or not). It guides you through the process of recording the details of your workout and helps you get started figuring out what you're doing now and how you should vary it day to day, week to week, etc. None of the concepts are unique to the book, but having them all in one place and focused on fencing makes it very handy.

[Dragonfly]

I like that cycle idea. Here's something to go with that Picojeff, if this makes sence: if you have next years' schedule for the Nationals, at least within a week or two, you can work backwards from that point to plan out your cycle; for example, you get a wall calendar with all the months on one page, then you have the month of July, 3rd week for nationals 2004; so you plan 6 week cycles so that your "killer" week falls on the same week as the Nationals, so that you bio-clock ticks right in the same rhythm.


It works for runners in planning a marathon, I was able to go from running just 1/4 mile to 5-6 daily following a running guidebook for mathathoners; and one day did a killer 10 miles, running from the top of Manoa to the Aloha Towers - stopping only once for ice-cream.

[The0ne]

Practice equals Success. Period.

[JEC]

Originally posted by picojeff
Aladar Kogler wrote a little book about this (you can see it at amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...l/-/1883616018, I don't know if you can get it through CounterParry or not).

American Fencers Supply has been selling Kogler's books for some time. At Summer Nationals, on Sunday they had this training booklet (along with two books) on display.

[Sildar]

Originally posted by The0ne
Practice equals Success. Period.

That's not quite true. _Correct_ practice equals success. If you do 100 lunges a day, and the first fifty are correct, and then you do another fifty bad lunges because you're tired, you haven't gained anything through that training. In fact, if you have trained an incorrect reflex, it takes about five times longer to correct yourself than to learn a completely new reflex. Often it's better to practice less and do things right than keep fencing when you're exhausted and train sloppy habits. When you're too tired to fence correctly, stop. The right way to train endurance is to learn to fence correctly even when you're tired, not to stay on the strip when you can barely stand no matter how much your form has deteriorated.

Related to that, I've seen countless fencers plateau because they're doing nothing but free fencing and not doing any drills to improve specific skills. Take lessons and do drills to hone your bladework, footwork, distance, and so on. Fencing with other people is an important part of training, but if that's all you do you'll hit a wall very quickly.

Also, I have often found that when I feel like I'm not getting any better, it's because I'm not trying anything new. You can't improve if you always do things the same way. Work on attacks you don't normally use, or try a different defensive tactic. Look for things you don't use much and try to improve those things.

And above all, don't quit. Sticking with it counts far more than talent in this game.

[d0gz|song]

So...basically, I should test new stuff during practice, make a drastic change to what I do when I practice, accept that I'm about to end a plateau, work in cycles, do more drills, try something new, and practice correctly. Wow, that's a lot more suggestions than I expected, lol! I think I'm going to give my current practice regimen some serious thought and start making some radical changes to my fencing. I'm beginning to believe it's the only way to go. Anyways, thanks sooo much for all the help! :P

[picojeff]

Originally posted by Dragonfly
I like that cycle idea. Here's something to go with that Picojeff, if this makes sence: if you have next years' schedule for the Nationals, at least within a week or two, you can work backwards from that point to plan out your cycle; for example, you get a wall calendar with all the months on one page, then you have the month of July, 3rd week for nationals 2004; so you plan 6 week cycles so that your "killer" week falls on the same week as the Nationals, so that you bio-clock ticks right in the same rhythm.

That's essentially right. Because we're all earthlings (I assume), we have a 24 hour cycle, a 29.5 day cycle, and a 365 day cycle. But I don't know if your body "learns" about your 6 week training cycle, so I'm not sure if you should plan your competition week to replace the killer week of the cycle. As long as you have few "easy" days leading up to the competition you should be ok. Be sure to carefully monitor your reaction to each training regimen you try, since everyone responds best to something different. And the older you get the longer it takes to recover, so youngsters might only need 1 day off, but the 60+ crowd might take more than a week after a hard workout to be fully ready for a competition.

Marathon runners generally schedule their longest training run three weeks before the competition, because it takes a long time to fully recover in a serious endurance sport like that. For fencers it's not so much about endurance, but you still don't want to train too hard during the last week before the comp.

When I sat down to plan my cycles for 2002, I picked the most important competition (Nationals), and two other key competitions to try and "peak" for. I was using 4 week cycles, and in terms of effort they went more or less like this: 60%, 70% 85%, 100%. I planned the cycles so the key competitions would be at the end of the first week of a cycle, so I had enough recovery time from the killer week of the previous cycle.

One mistake I made was trying to increase my training load too much. Even if you only increase it 2% per week on average, you're still doing WAY more at the end of the season than you were at the beginning. My conclusion is that it's better to have more ups and downs in the macro-cycle, and less up-up-up. And be flexible in letting yourself do less work than you hoped you would be able to, 8 months ago when you had the pen in your hand writing your schedule!

It works for runners in planning a marathon, I was able to go from running just 1/4 mile to 5-6 daily following a running guidebook for mathathoners; and one day did a killer 10 miles, running from the top of Manoa to the Aloha Towers - stopping only once for ice-cream.

That sounds like a beautiful run! I never knew ice-cream was a sports beverage. It's a shame there aren't any ice-cream stands near where I could go running.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

If you are doing a lot of practicing and notice that you aren't improving, I would suggest working on drills that improve the areas where you are having problems. Or, get a coach who uses verbal abuse as a teaching tool.

[Sabresque]

I know this is beating a dead horse at this point in the posting, but I have to re hash an old saying from my soccer playing days... "Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." Listen to everyone who's posted here! They know what they're talkign about!