Training Fencing

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 TRAINING -
THE PATH TO SUCCESS

Claudia Bokel has given you some suggestions about the path to success. Maybe you have other role models as well - from your fencing club, from your national team, or from another country.

From Practice Sessions to Training Sessions

While you were practicing your fencing techniques, no doubt you often found that others could also fence well, maybe even better than you, and they would win the bout. But that's not so bad, because what others can do, you can do too.

We can anticipate your first question: "How should I train to become a good fencer, and maybe even a successful fencer?" We have written this book to help you answer that question.

The Path to the Summit of Fencing

This book is not intended to substitute for good coaching. But it will explain to you why your coach works with you to practice techniques and tactics, and why she says that you must improve your endurance, your strength, and your speed.

You will learn why it is necessary to practice not only the fencing exercises, but other exercises as well, exercises that seem to have nothing at all to do with fencing.

You will learn how important it is to warm up before your training sessions and to prepare yourself for competitions. You will find out why your muscles feel stiff sometimes and why you don't perform equally well every day.

Moreover, you will get suggestions on what you can do on your own, while practicing or outside of your regular practice sessions, to improve your performance and to independently monitor and evaluate your progress.

The top fencers are able to do this. After many years of training and competition, they know exactly whether or not they are at their best, or what they need to work on to get even better.

They rely on the coach to be a good friend and advisor, but also a strict taskmaster when they are inclined to say, "That's hard for me to do. I'm calling it quits for today."

What Is Training for Fencing

Training for fencing includes everything that you must actively and consciously do in order to become a better fencer.

An athlete's conscious training is the opposite of the sort of unconscious training that produces fast racehorses or greyhounds. They just do what their trainer tells them to do, without thinking about it - because they aren't capable of thinking in that way.

Just as you can achieve in school only through active and conscious learning, so you'll do well in sports only through active and conscious training. You don't just do as you're told; you also understand why you are doing it. That's the key to success.

And because a fencer must train for many years to achieve excellence, it makes sense to learn right from the start what proper training means and how to train effectively. If you master these essential lessons, you will make greater progress than others in the same amount of training time, and in the end, you will be the winner.

Train Properly - But How?

The prerequisite for conscious training is that you can answer these three questions:

What do I want to achieve?

What is the goal of training?

You must know what you want to achieve. Active and conscious training requires clear goals. If you don't have a goal, your pleasure in training will soon flag, because you don't know why you're making the effort. Naturally, the most important goal of a fencer is to enjoy fencing. But you will only really enjoy fencing in the long run if you can win bouts against other fencers. You wouldn't enjoy losing all the time, would you?

It's only natural to start by setting a very grand goal: On television, you watch as a fencer who has won the Olympics stands atop the victory podium while the gold medal is placed around her neck. Everyone takes pictures of her and congratulates her. "I would like to achieve that too," you think to yourself.

And that's a good thing. But you should remember that your dream of victory is not yet a reality. A lot of sweat will flow before that, and you will have to swallow a lot of defeats along the way.

Even now, you often set goals for yourself. For example, you work to stand up from a lunge, feint, and score a valid touch. Maybe in the next match you want to finally score two points against Thomas, or to win a bout against Anna.

Doesn't the trainer have to set the goals?

Your coach will do that, of course. He also sets goals for training with his fencers and prepares training schedules that he follows when coaching you. In addition, coaching manuals offer training programs and other good ideas.

But you know your strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else. This puts you in the best position to set short-term goals for your progress as a fencer. Finally, when you set goals for yourself, you own them. As a result, you are much more likely to go all out to reach them.

Use the following table to write down the goals you have set for yourself and the date. When you achieve a goal, put a check mark in the last column, with the date. You could also pencil in a target date for each goal.

When the table is full, draw up a new one and tuck it between the pages here, or glue it into the book. As another option, purchase a blank notebook that can serve as your "goal book" for months or even years to come.

If you can tell your coach exactly what isn't working yet for you and what you want to practice more intensively in the near future, then he can get involved and help you in your training.

Naturally, coaches and athletes sometimes have differences of opinion. The goals you set for yourself may be at odds with those your coach has in mind for you. Try to understand the coach's point of view, and work with him. If he sets goals that you think are too high, take it as a sign that he has confidence in you. If you think his goals for you are too low, show by your actions that you are capable of more.

Goals are the driving force of the competitive athlete!

It's fun to achieve the goals you have set, and a goal that is just out of reach can spur you on to greater effort. But you shouldn't set impossible goals; a useful goal is realistic and achievable in the near future.

Overall goals and partial goals

Tom didn't do well in the last competition. But he knows the reason - his poor technique! He has set a training goal to improve his technique before the next competition, no matter what happens.

That is his overall goal. Now, of course, he can't improve all his technique right away in the next training session. Therefore, he has set partial goals that will bring him to his overall goal.

You can see what this means:

Similarly, you can't improve a miserable lunge all at once. However, these partial goals can help you work toward a better lunge:

You can set partial goals for all the techniques that are described in this book, and then you can celebrate when you reach them, even if everything might not yet go your way in a competition.

For conditioning, it's best to measure partial goals by using sprint times, endurance performance, or the number of repetitions of individual exercises. You can also set goals for mental abilities. But we will explain that in more detail later on.

Why do I want to train?

This question addresses the reason for training. The reasons or motives for training are the "mental motor" that sets training in gear. They determine whether you go to practice or not, whether you fight for a win or let yourself give up at the slightest setback. When it's raining outside and you're bored, going to practice is easy. You'll meet your training buddies there and maybe have a good time playing around. But what happens when it's sunny and the swimming pool beckons, or your favorite show is on TV? Do you pack your gear bag just as quickly?

On the other hand, when you are absolutely determined to achieve an intermediate goal before the upcoming competition, and you know that the next training session is particularly important, then it's not quite so hard to make your decision.

Motivation - The drive for training

The coach says to Max: "Run 60 meters as fast as you can!"...