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Title
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How to Compete in a Foil Competition
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Date
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March 1939
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volume
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4
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issue
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2
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page start
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4
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page end
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5
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content
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en
HOW TO COMPETE IN A FOIL COMPETITION
There is only one way to fence in competition and that is to fence one's best. This may sound like a banality, but the fact remains that most fencers handle a foil better during a fencing lesson than in a fencing bout, and fence better during friendly bouts in their own club than they do in actual competition. The exceptions to this condition soon become the leading fencers of their communities. (America's outstanding exception, Joseph Levis of Boston, who always seems able to summon extra speed, élan, and skill during actual competition, is consequently America's leading foilsman of international quality.)
We cannot all expect to acquire the technique of a Marzi, the mental sensitivity of a Gaudin or the experienced shrewdness of a Cattiau. We cannot all win all the time. Why, though, is it not possible that we all fence our best in competition? Good sportsmen could ask no more. Imagine the mutual satisfaction of a competition in which every man was conscious of doing his very best, win or lose, and closed the evening feeling that every place during the competition had been rightfully awarded on the actual individual relative skill of every competitor.
There are three reasons why such an Utopian state of affairs is not possible. Your physical, your nervous, and your mental condition during competition are the big three upon which your success or defeat will greatly depend. These are all within yourself but are played upon constantly by such outside influences as your work, your worries, your diet, your sleep, the climatic conditions, perhaps tobacco, perhaps alcohol. Some of these influences are working upon you all the time to create physical or nervous changes for better or for worse. If the medical profession cannot understand the intricacies of these variations, it is perhaps asking too much of us fencers to solve these problems for them.
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Your Physical Condition
The body is a marvelous and tough machine. The shocking treatment it receives from many of us would destroy any delicate mechanism in no time at all. Given even moderately decent care and consideration it functions well enough to service most fencers adequately for the average competition. Food is the body's gasoline. Prior to competition one should eat non-starchy food that is easily digestible and that has 'staying quality.' A highly nervous fencer should try scrambled yolks of eggs, buttered toast, and tea. After various experiments, however, my favorite meal before competition consists of rare beefsteak, buttered toast, tea or coffee with plenty of brown sugar, and hearts of lettuce with olive oil. Plenty of steak, the rarer the better, absolutely no potatoes or milk, and very little liquids until the competition is started, and then water or orange juice, not too cold, as often as desired. If a competition is approaching that you know will go on for hours and will call upon all your stamina, it is advisable to begin creating an alkaline condition artificially 48 hours ahead of time. A half or full teaspoonful of baking soda in a glass of water after each meal, before bed, and an hour before competition is good for this. This treatment will offset the fatigue acids resulting from the competition and defer the effects of fatigue hours beyond normal.
The use of artificial stimulants is dangerous and not advised. Coffee or caffeine tablets may be taken by those who are accustomed to coffee. Tea is harmless and may be taken if available. Dextrose tablets or lumps of sugar may be eaten between bouts for resupplying the energy just consumed. Chocolate bars are sometimes eaten for the same purpose but chocolate contains much slow-digesting protein and does not serve the purpose as well as pure sugar.
Fencing as a sport is helpful for any other sport. The opposite is not true. One should not wrestle, box, bowl, lift weights, ski, swim, or play tennis within a week of competition. Insofar as those fencers are concerned who take their sport seriously, boxing, wrestling, and weight lifting are always taboo. The arm and shoulder push needed in swimming and skiing make these sports confinable to off-season participation, for it takes weeks of fencing practice to recondition the shoulder muscles again for foil. The same holds true of tennis, although in this sport it is the swinging of the arms that throws the fencer off form. A foilsman should not use a sabre within the week of competition for a similar reason. In fact, the foil arm should be babied in preparation for competition. An extreme but helpful caution is even to carry your suitcase and weapon bag on the left side when going to the place of competition in order to save the right side entirely for the coming hard and delicate exercise. It is better for most fencers not to fence at all the day before competition. A complete layoff for 48 hours leaves the muscles refreshed and in the best condition for the contest.
When you arrive for the competition it is important to warm up properly and sufficiently. Choose a partner and practice some alternate exercises. If you find that certain parries are working well, change to other practice. If some parries are not functioning smoothly or your ripostes are not 'clicking,' nurse them back into condition as quickly as possible with some concentrated practice upon them. Do not keep at anything longer than necessary to prove to yourself that your reactions are correct. Save your strength for the competition itself. Above all, warm up slowly. Everyone knows better than to race a cold motor on a winter day and yet many a fencer has hurt himself by lunging too hard at an opponent during a preliminary warm-up.
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Your Nervous Condition
So little is known about this phase of conditioning that it hardly deserves a separate heading. Every fencer has to experiment with himself concerning his own nervous reactions. There is one rule that applies very generally, however. Do not take any unusual amount of sleep the night before competition. Plenty of sleep during the week before competition is excellent, but too much sleep immediately before competition leaves the nerves in a drugged condition with resulting slow reactions.
A mean average somewhere between well-rested nerves and tired nerves is the correct objective. How to obtain this is, of course, difficult to say. The author makes no change in his normal life to prepare for competition. Some fencers go to bed early the night before, others stay up later to be well keyed up for competition. Both of these systems impress us as wrong: the first leaving the nerves too well rested and the second depriving your muscles of their normal physical rest, thereby lessening your stamina.
Since your nervous condition is closely allied with your mental condition, these two should be studied in common.
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Your Mental Condition
The surest way to lose all your bouts is to enter a competition thinking that you will do just that. Your mental condition is really more important than your physical condition, since few competitions are so long that they call upon every ounce of energy you have to carry through. The "will to win" in your opponent is your strongest opposition, and if he lacks it and you have it, your bout is already half won. Your mental conditioning must therefore be directed toward "the will to win."
As a competition approaches, every fencer thinks about the approaching event. Sometimes you cannot get it off your mind, and you feel an incessant nervousness that destroys appetite and leaves you weak from apprehension. At other times these attacks will only be spasmodic, striking you off and on during the day and sending a thrill of anticipation or a shudder of fear through you at any unexpected moment. It is here that you must take yourself in hand. You must tackle every fear as it arises and not permit it to take hold of you. What have you to fear? A loss? So what? There is certainly nothing so stupid as being afraid to lose. If some particular opponent keeps coming to mind in your daymare (if there is such a word), force yourself to think the thing out. Plan what you will do to offset the thing you find yourself dreading. Plan your bout. You may find this particular planning of great value to you when you actually cross foils. Never in any case allow your thoughts to remain focused on a mental loss that is indefinite and fear-inspired. Who is this fencer that is causing you this torture? Have you never beaten him? If not, why fear another loss? In fact, you should look forward to meeting him, for you have everything to win and nothing to lose as compared with your present record with him. If you have beaten him, why worry? You know that his defeat has been possible in the past and you must work upon yourself to repeat your victory.
Sometimes your apprehensions are purely indefinite. That is an excellent sign that you are keyed up for the fray. Turn this to your advantage by visualizing a fast parry and riposte on your part straight for some imaginary chest. Feel the thrill of pushing a hard point home. Clap your right hand against your left and make the actual motion of a good straight riposte. Imagine the sound of your feet as you make a fast balestra attack, “tap-tap-tap,” and give yourself the thrill of landing your point direct. In other words, get some fun and satisfaction out of your preoccupation with coming events and turn your thoughts toward success. This can be worked to such a point that you can hardly wait to get into your fencing clothes. Some fencers lose heart as a competition approaches and search their minds for a valid reason for not being on hand that evening. Once you have decided to enter a competition, be sure to do so, unless sickness or a more important engagement elsewhere takes you away. Never permit yourself to hold the memory that you sidestepped a certain competition. Your competitive days are definitely limited once you do this. You will have thereby hurt more than your fencing career if you do so. If you permit the defeat psychology to enter your fencing it will surely appear in your work and other activities as well. Fencing may only be one phase in your life but the mental training it provides strikes deeply. Life, after all, is pretty much a series of fencing bouts of one kind or another and fencers should consider themselves fortunate for so many opportunities to practice for "life."
(Continued in the next issue)
(Editor’s note: Whereas this article had originally been planned for presentation in one issue, it grew too rapidly and will have to be carried over into next month. The remainder of the article deals with actual competition; how to save yourself during early rounds, how to study your opponents from the sidelines, how to study your opponents when fencing them, how to gain time, actual rules for self-improvement competitively, tricks that make points, etc.)
