Foil Fencing is a Mental Game

Video Transcript

"I do want to make one last point, and that's that as, as athletic as it can be, as much of a workout as it is, and as much fun as it can be, fencing is really a mental game, and the best thing you can do to really improve your game, to bring it to the next level, is to watch. Watch the fencers in your own club, watch fencers at tournaments, watch bouts that are judged well are great to watch because you actually have that added edification of listening to the judges calls as they identify each of the actions. So the more you watch, in general, of course the smarter you get, the more strategies you pick up. But also the more you watch your opponents, as you realize what this opponent tends to do under this pressure, if that's a strategy that you could use in your own game, or what you could use to counter that when you're facing that opponent on the strip yourself. So, watch, watch fencers, watch good fencers, watch bad fencers, watch, and then of course, practice. The more fencers you can fence against, the better you'll be. The more chances you get to fence a left-handed fencer, the more ideas and strategies you'll come up with on your own, on how to, how to defeat that. And of course if, even if you're a left-handed fencer because there are fewer of them, there are some extra added intricacies of that game, and they're things that you will pick up as, as you go. If you're, if by the time you leave the strip, you're thinking about what you should have done, or feeling silly for having fallen for an obvious feint, then that's exactly, you're on the right track. Because once you start to identify those moves and make tweaks in your own strategies and invent strategies of your own, you're well on your way to getting everything there really is to get out of the Foil Fencing game."