Women and stance

[coolguymccan]

I have been working with beginner fencers and it seems that all the women tend to have the upper part of their front leg bend in but other than that their stance is fine. Is this a problem that most women have? Any hints on how to make it better, or is it okay? I'm worried about knee injuries.

[wflaschka]

As far as I know, this isn't specific to women.

To correct an inward-turning front knee, you can ask them to "roll their butt under." They are taking the guard position with the butt sticking out (and, ergo, the lower spine curved). When the butt is tucked under, it's easier to keep the front knee facing forward, and also the lower spine is straighter.

Since you can't be hands-on with this correction, you'll have to demonstrate a pelvic thrust. And for that, I am sorry.

Hope this helps!

[Peach]

Tell them to "sit down and get your back hip under you." Also make sure their front toes are pointing forward. You might get them to do footwork with their front toe raised slightly.

[Fechter1]

Originally posted by wflaschka

Since you can't be hands-on with this correction, you'll have to demonstrate a pelvic thrust. And for that, I am sorry.

That just defies any comment. But he's right. Also helps to point their toes. My coach used to slash at the inside of our knees to keep them straight out. A bit painful, but it worked. Remember, a small poke with a weapon can correct a lot.

[wpotere]

I have seen this with most in my class. You can usually pick out people that have some martial arts training as the stance is similar to a back stance. My wife has a slight habit of doing that as well as turing her back foot out. The biggest issue with any of these is that your balance is compromised and you are not centered. This can make it hard to advance or retreat when necessary as your body weight is typically over one leg. For students that have this issue, you might suggest that they work on foot work only at a slow pace and continually check their foot position and stance. Lots of practice and in time it will all fall into place. My wife and I do footwork at home jsut for practice and she has improved her stance over just a few days of practice. Anyway, just my .02

[morael]

I've seen this in both men and women. Also the tendency to have the elbow out of line with the wrist.

This is what I always seem to say, but... have people practice en garde, and slow advance/retreat in front of a mirror at home. I use a narrow hallway with a full-length mirror leaning on the wall at one end, and refer to Rudy Volkmann's book.

You can refine every detail of the stance that way (and it's something to do on off-nights without wrecking your walls or furniture!). When advancing/retreating on my own, I look down at my legs and feet now and then to check progress. If space permits, practicing with weapon in hand makes the body memory more real.

My experience has been like wpotere's wife's (but with Volkmann as my fencing mate), with just a few days of focus away from the hurly-burly of a salle making a big difference.

[OCTAVIA]

Originally posted by Peach
Tell them to "sit down and get your back hip under you." Also make sure their front toes are pointing forward. You might get them to do footwork with their front toe raised slightly.

This is the terminology I've heard, to Sit Down, is more descriptive; and also, if the student needs more explanation; all ballet schools and all martial arts schools enforce keeping the knees in alignment with the toes, by turning out the thighs, like you should be able to see your toe when you look over your knee when you're en garde.

Some schools simply ignore the whole thing because they just give up on enforcing anything, hence the birth of modern fencing, a school of thought which says in general, the heck with it, because the kids are doing great and they do other stuff to compensate for lack of form. It seems to be an ongoing thing; but I also hate fencing with someone who doesn't turn their knee out. It always appears as though they're going to fall down and then I'd feel guilty if I fenced them too strongly. Which then causes me to pay more attention to my knee in the event someone fences me and hates looking at my knee. I think that's the basis of the thing.

[MyraTrue]

I was actually one of those fencers, truth told. It took them 6 months to realize my knee turned in (TERRIBLY, and I could lunge this way.) As its been said, this results in terrible balance, and being that I'd damaged my knees playing rugby first, it IS hard on knees.

All I can tell you is what was done with me to try to correct it. I know simply having it brought to my attention helped greatly. I was always hearing "Myra, knee! " yelled across the room at me. But I slowly learned to bring it back. Point out that where the knee goes (and often the foot) the lunge follows. You have terrible point control, because you lunge off sideways.

Honestly, the "sitting down" didn't fix it for me. Only an effort toward fixing it, actually looking down and the knee and learning to keep it where it should be. On the other hand... I still have a chronic case of "fencer's arse" so maybe I Should have learned to "sit down" better.

That said, I don't know that its specific to one gender. I know mine was in part because I am very flexible in the joints. I've seen and tried to correct the same thing in a number of beginners, male and female alike.

But all the same... be encouraging, bring it to their attention... often, if need be, and give it time.

[FencerMom]

It is very important to have the foot lined up with the knee. Girls (and women) do this more naturally than guys due to their build. This has been noted in other sports like soccer and basketball. If it is not corrected, and the foot is not straight, you can get knee injuries, including ACL tears, especially in girls. Girls have more give in ligaments, and their bodies don't notice it as quickly as boys. So they are at more risk for ACL tears. They are now training girls in other sports to: 1) make sure you jump right. ie, stay in your squat, and land on your toes with a give, in proper form. 2) Make sure your hamstrings are as developed as your quads. 3) Keep both legs equal strength (Yes, you do need to do that footwork with the opposite leg leading). 4) Make your inside and outside muscles (medial and lateral for you technophiles) strong as well. Doing exercises like these in warmups have cut ACL tears in soccer by 70%. I haven't heard of many ACL tears in fencing, probably because of the strictness of the maestros in form, and making the fencers stay in the squat. So, keep up the exercises!

[Kodiak Kid]

As far as the sitting down and pelvic thrust stuff goes, I'm sure they are effective corrections. I tell my beginners to imagine they have a 10 pound bag of sugar tied to their butt with a short rope and to imagine that weight pulling them into the squat, knees bent, back straight position that we'd like them to think of as en guarde. It makes them laugh "but" also makes them think about it in a different way than just telling them "tuck your butt in".

My $.02

-K.K.

[Dar Tanyon]

I have found that doing squats keeping the feet in the salute position and then doing squats in the en garde position useful in training to keep the knee in line with the foot. It is almost impossible to do a squat in those positions without keeping the knee inline. Aids in leg muscle development and balance, too.

[jusplainfencing]

My coach used to slash at the inside of our knees to keep them straight out.

Mine too.....he used to hit the inside of our knees.... hard. it only takes a couple thwaps to get them to correct it......but after he would smack me he would say "turn your hips"(forward)and it always eliminated the problem for me.

[wflaschka]

See... I always advocated hitting students, because it works so quickly. But everybody online always said, "That's a big no-no! Hitting things is evil." But I was never sure. Surely the story changes if you're not in kindergarten. What if the coaches and students are mature enough to know that hitting isn't really evil? Pain/surprise is so valuable; and wouldn't a student prefer to improve quickly? Save money on lessons? It's still an open question in my mind (and no, I'm not talking about crippling blows, I'm talking about taps and thwacks to extremeties).

[jeff]

Hey, wflaschka - that theory always worked well for Csaba!

[Peach]

Depends on the student. If my coach hit me, he'd lose me--not because it's annoying but because I'd focus on being hit instead of on my own form. I whack the knees and rear ends of some of my students to improve their stance, but with others I wouldn't dream of it.

At any rate, a tap or a whack works better than a Csaba-style slash. Pain isn't a very effective teaching tool in most cases. People get into it because it feeds some odd human needs, I think--it seems to make some guys incredibly devoted to their coaches.

[OCTAVIA]

Good for you Peach, and sometimes the other way around. We go through great lengths to explain that corporal punishment in the classroom is not acceptable. Then, why should we complain if the kids grow up all violent and so forth. I am getting ready for the salle, this wednesday, I hope, or I may hold out until January 2004 and start the year off.

Re-gards,

[Cerian]

I had the same problem with my knee. Once it was pointed out it just took some concentration and practice to fix my form.

[wflaschka]

At any rate, a tap or a whack works better than a Csaba-style slash. Pain isn't a very effective teaching tool in most cases. People get into it because it feeds some odd human needs, I think--it seems to make some guys incredibly devoted to their coaches.

LOL. I see where Peach is coming from, about the pain -- a tap always worked on me, but pain is so distracting. In college, I built a paper around a reputed Csaba quote, "I hit my students so they associate errors with pain." A friend of mine, coming down from a Csaba lesson, pointed out the welts on his front leg, and said (with some pride), "I think those are his initials!"

As Octavia mentioned, we're too enlightened to accept corporal punishment in the classroom. Corporal punishment being, ideally, controlled and measured violence. While clearly this hasn't reduced world violence, or even violence in schools, it does seem to have made violence more mysterious and therefore romantic to many. So violence stops being measured and meted and every-day, and becomes an all-or-nothing affair, settled with shotguns in hallways. Today, you can be a jerk for a long time and then get shot; once upon a time, you were a jerk for a short time and got a punch in the nose: constructive feedback about being a jerk. I long for those days, if they ever existed.

But that's all theory. The truth is that everybody learns almost everything important through pain. Check the pan before you take it off the stove. Keep your eye on the soccer ball so it doesn't bop your nose. Don't spit on Hells Angels bikers. By and large, we don't use pain to teach fencing, but the pain is still there if you fleche mindlessly into a table. The pain is there if you lunge incorrectly and destroy your knee. In all, I think that pain is a very effective tool, it's just that we've decided not to use it. I think we don't use it anymore because of the "measured and meted" thing -- it's highly susceptible to abuse.

[Peach]

When people ask, "Why does God allow pain?" I answer, "Because otherwise we wouldn't know when we were being damaged." Pain is not a good teaching tool for acquiring a new skill because it is a message of imminent damage, not an innocuous alert. What many people learn from pain is to avoid not the error that brought the pain but the activity itself, because pain teaches avoidance and caution, or else it teaches (as with the student who reveres his teacher who beats him) acceptance of or even affection for pain.

Also, using pain as a teaching tool affects the teacher. It makes the teacher a bully rather than a leader. Corporal punishment was a tool for a teacher who had 50 kids and no teacher training, because they didn't know how to get the kids to do what they wanted otherwise.

Animal trainers, for the most part, have stopped using pain. I know part of this is pressure from humane societies and animal rights activists, but part is simply because it is more effective to use reward-based behavioral conditioning if you want to build a series of skills.

[jusplainfencing]

Animal trainers, for the most part, have stopped using pain. I know part of this is pressure from humane societies

animals and humans have such a different thoght proccess that i think it is cruel and inhumane to use pain as a training method for animals. but for humans it's way different I know that when I used to have problems with sticking my elbow out if it got whacked I didnt do it again and if I did I didn't do it much more.and I't does depend on the student. my coach lost a kid because his mother was horrified to see a welt left on her child's knee. I't seems like the really dedicated kids seem not to care,but the ones that run around the salle with their gloves on their heads flopping their arms around immitating a chicken,..don't seem to take to kindly to whacking.....The moral of this story is I think a little whacking does good.....