What to do when you hit “The Wall” in fencing.

A fencer hitting a wall with her weapon. She can't break through the wall.

What do you do when you hit “The Wall” in Fencing?

Have your fencing skills stalled, or are you getting worse? Are you feeling like all of your classmates have passed you by? Has it been weeks since your last decent win in practice? Today, we will discuss what’s going on when you hit “The Wall” in fencing, and also (good news for you) why this is a totally normal, healthy, and even an important part of your fencing.

“The Wall” is something every fencer will experience multiple times in their careers. It’s a point where they need help to win a few, if any, bouts in practice, and many people with whom they used to be better than or at least on an equal level have started to beat them consistently. It can lead to frustration and sadness, and for some fencers who are newer or less experienced in what is happening here, it can lead them to quit the sport. So what is going on here?

To discuss this phenomenon, we need to break it down into two parts: the first one, what I like to call “The Beginner Dip,” which affects community education and new fencers when they join a club, and the second, the standard series of bouncing between what are called “Level Up Moments” and the plateaus that every fencer experiences. Let’s talk about the Beginner Dip first.

The Beginner Dip

This most strongly affects fencers who start at a community education or less formal class, where the coaching and practices are less consistent and the coaches’ knowledge isn’t as robust or most full-time fencing club coaches. Within this group, the people who will be hit the hardest by the Dip will actually be the best fencers in these beginner classes.

You see, at this level, it is more about getting people introduced to the sport. The classes generally need to cover the same material over and over for new fencers who have just joined the class; students who spend long periods of time in this class will develop a style themselves WITHOUT the guidance of a coach.

It won’t be much of a style, just one or two unrefined actions that they have gotten to work for themselves that do very well against the other beginner fencers in the class. Because the coaches in this class can only work one-on-one with students for a short period of time to help refine and perfect these actions, this style is usually very messy and slapped together based on straight-bouting effectiveness against the other fencers in the class.

Let’s break this down like it’s a video game. Let’s pretend all the different actions and styles are areas or skill trees we can advance through. Let’s make up a new beginner fencer too. Let’s call him Fred. What’s going on, Fred?

As you can see from the above graph, Fred does not have much going on in his fencing toolbox yet. This is totally normal for someone of his level, so we aren’t going to judge the poor guy; he just has some work to do. He thinks he has plenty of skills, though. He has won two in-class tournaments in his class of 12, after all. How much better can anyone really be?!!

The problem for Fred is that he doesn’t know it yet, but his own style has hit the end of its potential growth. His current skills are maxed out—the end of his skill tree for you nerds out there. Now, level 5 weirdness is good enough for people in community ed or parks and recreation fencing classes to think they are amazing. And they are when you compare them to other beginner fencers. Without the combo of a coach who has the knowledge and the time to work with Fred one-on-one and more skilled fencers for him to hone his skills against, he can’t develop his own skill set beyond this level.

The problems will start for our boy Fred once he joins a club and gets more invested in the sport. Let’s quickly put together a graph of your average newer club fencer.

As you can see right away, this fencer has a much more well-rounded, if still fairly low-level, series of skills. Now, they only have a few things beyond Level 5, but the problem for Fred is that they have many more tools in their fencing toolbox than he does. They will be able to draw from this and give themselves options to beat the one or two weird things he can do.

Now, sure, Fred will get touches. He’s got a level 5 weird style. It’s weird! He may even win some of his first five touch bouts at the club. There will be things in there that don’t make sense to club fencers, so when he does them, they will miss him out of surprise at the sheer dumb weirdness of the action. Fred is also used to doing these actions and is very comfortable with them, so he will execute what he wants to do confidently. But he won’t win another bout once people adjust to the weirdness.

This is a frustrating time for any new fencer, but especially for one who has had a lot of beginner success, like Fred. They are used to being the top dogs in their class, and they usually (whether intentionally or not) have a fairly high opinion of their fencing skills because they are the best fencer “they” they know.

Fencers who don’t do that well in community ed class or at least aren’t at the top are used to the idea of needing to grow and improve their style more, so this isn’t as big of a deal for them. They usually start to advance much quicker because, for them, it’s the same groove but way better information.

Welcome to the FIRST Sort-Of-Related-But-Not-Totally tangent box!

If you want to see how different types of starting fencers are affected in the Beginner Dip, please read what is contained in this box. If you would like to continue reading the main article and follow Fred’s journey, just skip to the bottom of the box!

We are going to start this section with a look at a new fencer. We will call him Jimmy.

Jimmy was not a beginner champion like Fred, but he WAS a hard worker. This gave him a better ability to learn a more comprehensive set of skills because unlike Fred, Jimmy wasn’t worrying about trying to win constantly, so he just focused on absorbing as much fencing knowledge as he could.

Now Jimmy is competitive too, and he developed his style, which was a little weird, but not super crazy weird like Fred’s. When Jimmy goes to join a fencing club, he is going to dip as well, but because Jimmy has a broader base of knowledge and has spent more time learning the actions instead of just trying to win bouts, this will be easier. He will be able to pick up on the better, more upgraded information at a club quickly, and if he puts in the work, he will be able to start getting more of his actions working in bouts quicker than Fred will.

Jimmy and Fred are the main types of kids who will continue in the sport of fencing from starting in a Community Education or Parks and Recreation class. Fred’s primary motivation is that he feels like he is good at the sport and, therefore, would like to continue to improve and get better. Jimmy’s primary motivation is that he likes the sport in general, enjoys learning about all he can, and is excited to learn more of the higher-level stuff that a club will be able to teach him. Kids don’t just start in beginner classes, though.

Some clubs will offer (or even sometimes require) the option to start learning fencing from private lessons with a coach. This method has its advantages and drawbacks, so let’s look at how this might affect a new fencer.

The most significant advantage for these fencers is they won’t have to deal with the “unlearning” that Jimmy and Fred will because their style was developed right alongside their coach, who won’t have let them get away with weird, wiggly nonsense actions that are almost impossible to prevent in a classroom setting. This means that they won’t really have a beginner dip. Everything they work on will be good and a firm base on which to grow their style. Let’s throw together a graph of one of these fencers. Let’s call her Anne:

Now you might be thinking, wow! Look at those skill levels! No dip? No need to backtrack on their weird style??! Everyone should do it this way!!

Well, here is the deal. Anne’s graph is a little deceptive. See, she can do all this stuff, but only in a lesson. She might KNOW how to do all this stuff at a much higher level, but she is used to doing it against a coach, not in a bout.

Our first indicator is when we look at her graph and we see her lowest skill, distance control. Distance control is the skill that facilitates all of the rest of your actions, and if you can’t control distance well, you won’t be able to use a lot of your actions that you know how to do.

The second thing to consider is that the coach isn’t actively trying to make her actions fail so that they can score. The real big drawback of starting with lessons is the lack of experience she has actually fencing. Those graphs that we have shown so far don’t include EVERY single thing in fencing that there is to work on; the sport is far too deep for that. One of the things that need to be added is a category we will call bouting experience, though sometimes you will also hear it called fight-craft.

Bouting experience is a skill that actually never really diminishes even when you start off in a community ed class and have to unlearn a lot of your previous skills. It’s a broad term that describes someone’s ability to:

Use their own body to its limits and get the most out of it in a match
Watch the distance
Make decisions and actions based on distance
Figure out what your opponent is doing
Make a plan based on what you can do skill-wise to beat said opponent
See when your opponent changes strategies
QUICKLY adjust to your opponent’s new strategies

To sum it up, it’s basically how to get what you want to do to actually work. The only way to improve on this skill is to just fence. Straight up bouting time, whether that’s practice or tournaments (though tournaments are more effective at improving the skill).

One of the most beautiful parts of the sport is that no two fencers have the same style. I can look across a room full of fencers who all have their masks on and identify my fencers just based on how they are moving, doing actions, and sitting in their en garde. This great variety is what will cause people like Anne to struggle, though.

Because everyone is different, fencers need to tailor what actions they are going to do to their opponent. They might have the greatest 4-6 disengage in the world, but if they can’t ever get their opponent to do a parry four, it won’t matter. They might have a gorgeous long lunging attack, but if they start at the wrong distance, it won’t matter. They might have a pristine parry four riposte, but if their opponent hits them in 8 every time, it won’t matter!!

It isn’t just enough to know the actions, that is just the start in fencing. The application of your actions is what will win you the bouts and that takes years and years to develop a set of multiple actions that you can apply effectively.

As you can see from the above graph, Jimmy and Fred are better at getting what they can do to WORK in a bout even if what they can do is a lot less than Anne. They are all still beginners, they aren’t GREAT at it, but Anne is going to have a rough time.

Eventually, of course, she will bring this level up once she starts doing the club classes herself, but her problems are going to be that for a good amount of time at the start, she is going to get beat by people who are used to the actual intensity of real fencing not just doing actions with a coach.

Once Anne figures out how to start getting her actions to work, she is going to JUMP ahead of Jimmy and Fred until, of course, they figure out how to begin working on their own action levels overall, and then they will all even. More on that in the second article, though!

For Fred though, it’s time for his “Beginner Dip” and for him, it will be a little harder. Fred needs to start over. He is going to need to start learning all of those other actions that he has yet to hear of or get the opportunity (or see a reason) to improve on. He must do more than just keep refining the weird mish-mash of what worked and what he thought was fun that made up his old style.

Now, this can be hard enough, and the shock of it makes a lot of fencers like Fred quit the sport because they can’t handle the feeling of needing to start over or the realization that they were not as good as they thought. But here is what is even more unfair for them, when fencers finally commit to start working on these new concepts and actions they are initially going to get worse in terms of their results and who they can and can’t beat.

Go back up and look at Fred’s graph for a minute. Now imagine that graph without the level 5 weird style. He’s got nothing left! And until he puts in the time to start improving all those other actions, he is going to see the scores of his matches drop off a CLIFF. Those occasional touches and wins that occurred just from being confident and skilled at SOMETHING are gone. He is just a much worse version of the average club fencer now.

The good news for Fred though is that he is on the right track and now when he makes an improvement it is one he will be able to draw on forever because it will be correct and it will help improve a skill tree that goes up forever and doesn’t just end at 5.

Getting to the point where he is using these new better, more refined moves and winning will take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months depending on how much practice Fred goes to and how focused he is at those practices, but we will get into that later. For now, that covers our first group of Wall Hitters. Let’s check back in with Fred in a few years and see how he is doing to explore the second group.

Level Up Moments and Plateaus

It has been three years, and Fred has grown into a fairly decent fencer! Yay, Fred!! This is what his graph looks like now:

Let’s note a couple of things about Fred’s new skills before we move on. One, while his weird style skill has gone down a lot, it hasn’t disappeared. It takes a very, VERY long time for the poor habits and weird styles developed when you first start the sport to disappear entirely from a fencer. Usually, it lurks around for a long time, buried deep in your fencing subconscious, and occasionally jump-scaring you in high-pressure matches in tournaments where it makes you do something really stupid—speaking from personal experience? Yes, I am.

Secondly, Fred has specialized in attacking actions. His parries are decent, and he has good distance control that he probably uses to keep himself safe, but he has clearly put his focus, or, for you video game lovers, his skill points, into developing his attacks.

Fred’s skills have grown fairly consistently in the last couple of years, nothing too crazy, but in the past year, he has started to attend some more tournaments, and his skills rapidly started to improve. He is one of the more decent new fencers at his club and he can beat a lot of his peers pretty regularly.

Fred has noticed over the past few years, though, that there will be weeks where he can’t win, and he struggles to win any bouts, even against people he usually does pretty well against. This most recent slump has been going on for what feels like a month and a half. Fred feels like everyone is starting to pass him up, and he can’t figure out what is happening! Maybe he is getting worse. He is starting to want to avoid coming to practice as much because every time he does, he gets absolutely smoked by what feels like everyone. So what is going on?

Well, let’s look at another graph of Fred’s Overall Fencing Growth to start to get an idea:

As you can see, his development (and the development of all normal fencers, by the way) works in periods of rapid growth (usually very quickly), which we call Level Up Moments, and relatively long periods of plateauing.

LEVEL UP MOMENTS

We will start by talking about the fun side of this coin first, what we like to call “Level Up Moments.” As a coach this is what all the lessons and advice and coaching we put in our fencers is for and as fencers it is what putting in all the hard work is all about. A “Level Up Moment” will usually occur in either a tournament or a series of back-to-back classes like a camp where something “clicks” for a fencer.

All of a sudden, what they have been working on with their coach or what they are trying to do in a bout suddenly starts to work and to make sense, and as it works, they gain confidence in the match and do it again, and it works again, and they gain more confidence to try to apply it differently, and it works again and all of a sudden they have taken a huge skill level leap in literally a moment, usually in a day. It can be mind-boggling for people unfamiliar with the sport just how fast someone can improve not just their skills but their understanding of how it all fits together and almost looks like a totally different fencer.

The best part of this is that when they are done with the event, this new skill will appear in practice, too, and they will dominate against pretty much everyone who is close to their skill level or even a little above it.

In Fred’s case, his first big click moment came in a low-level local tournament when he won a very close match in which he was losing 6-12 by finding the right timing on his parry ripostes. When he got back to the club, he was able to obliterate his peers with his newfound timing and confidence in his parries. On the graph, that is when he jumped from 0 to 5. Within around three weeks, though, everyone started to adjust to his new parries and compensate for them when they fenced him, and he slowly went back to being even with everyone.

Now, his next big jump came when he disengaged, and straight attacks (a core part of his attacking strategy now) clicked for him. This also happened in a tournament, this time a more competitive local one in a match against an older fencer who had a swift hand but only moved a little. Fred was able to find the timing to execute his disengages and straight finishes, beat his opponent’s strong blade work, and squeak out a win against someone whom he did not think he could beat.

This type of action has stuck with him ever since, and he has developed the rest of his style around attacking. Once again, when he went back to the club, he was able to really dominate with these new actions for a long time, and he was even able to beat some of the club’s more competitive fencers a few times! However, once again, within about a month or so, his teammates adjusted, and he went back to being even.

So what is going on here? Let’s talk about…

PLATEAUS

These suck. They can feel like they go on forever, and for people who do not know what is happening, it can feel like they are actually getting worse. These are the most difficult times of a fencer’s career, and they can go on for very long periods of time.

It reminds me of once, as a kid, I was sitting in my mom’s car while she was inside getting something from the grocery store. All of a sudden, it seemed like the car was rolling backward out into the driving area of the parking lot. I FREAKED out and started scrambling to find the emergency brake, only to realize that what had happened was that both cars on either side of me had pulled out at the same time and created the illusion that I was the one moving backward.

The same thing is happening here. At the moment, Fred might feel like he is getting worse, but he’s not; his teammates are just getting better.

Look at the above graph. At any given point, sometimes Fred is on top, Jimmy takes the lead, or Anne starts to be the best, and then it changes. It ALWAYS changes. Sometimes, that change might take a while, but it always does. It is just a matter of the other fencers figuring out what the new top fencer is doing and then learning how to beat it.

What’s happening to Fred is that he has his own “Level Up Moments” and then proceeds to dominate at the club for a while until the others figure out a way to deal with whatever new skill he has come up with; this leads very often to their own “Level Up Moment” and their turn to be the best until the cycle repeats and someone figures out how to deal with THEIR new skill. The more fencers who are similar in level you have at a club, the more this cycle repeats.

That “plateauing” feeling isn’t Fred getting worse; it’s just him starting to work toward his next Level Up Moment. Let’s drop Fred’s skill chart back in here really quickly.

If we take a look at the data, we can see that Fred’s worst skill is his counterattacks. If one day Fred goes to his coach and asks to start improving this, it is going to take a long while to bring it up to the level of his other actions. If he is fencing other people who have decent attacking skills themselves, it’s going to be even more complex because they will punish his attempts to learn counters by being able to beat him even more easily when he is trying to do them in their practice matches.

For example, let’s say he is fencing his teammate Jimmy, and Jimmy’s attacks are at around level 6. Normally, when Fred fences Jimmy, he uses his parry ripostes to defend himself, and they go back and forth on who scores because his parries are the same level as Jimmy’s attacks. When Fred starts to work on counters, though, all of a sudden, Jimmy’s Level 6 attack is DOUBLE the skill of Fred’s action. This is going to make Fred feel like he is much worse at the moment, but he isn’t; he is just building towards his next Level-Up.

There is no “solution” to this problem. It’s a very healthy and important part of our sport, and unfortunately, fencers need to grind through it. As teammates, everyone pushes each other and helps to evolve each other’s fencing styles, even though it can be a real downer to be the fencer whose turn is on the bottom. There are ways to get through this period quicker, though.

Come to practice as much as possible. What you need to do is put the work into your own “Level Up Moment” and that very often just requires a lot of time spent practicing the action and fencing, win or lose. I know it stinks, but if you want to be a better fencer you need to get over it and get back to work.
Make sure that when you are at practice, you are very focused on what you need to improve in your actions to bring them to the next level.

This might seem obvious, but trust me; there is an absolutely GIGANTIC gulf between just showing up to practice and actually being focused while you are at practice. Anyone can show up and fence; just go through the movements and go home. If you want to really get through this period quickly, it requires you to be focused on what is happening for each and every attempt you make to succeed in your action.

Was that parry riposte too early or too late? Was the distance too close or too far? Did you not commit enough energy to that action, and that’s why it failed, or was it just the wrong choice for that moment? On and on, you make adjustments every time you do something, mentally noting what worked and what didn’t.

That level of focus is hard to maintain at the best of times, let alone when you are feeling down because you have gotten crushed by everyone for 3 straight weeks but it’s essential to improving yourself.

The most important thing to remember when you are in this slump is that, firstly, good times and success are around the corner; you need to work through them. Secondly, your friends are getting better, too, which, in the long run, will help you be a better fencer as well.

In our above example about Jimmy and Fred, Fred is going to have a rough time working on those counters attacks, but when it clicks and he is FINALLY able to get it all to work, it will feel amazing, AND it will, in turn, force Jimmy to upgrade his attacks in order to beat Freds counters. This makes both of them, not to mention their other teammates, better because it pushes everyones skill levels higher and higher.

Plateaus are hard, sometimes even brutal. EVERY good fencer will tell you that they have had practices where they have gotten wrecked so hard they thought about quitting. The rewards for your hard work, losses, and frustration are waiting for you. Always remember, it’s all a part of working towards that next “click” where everything comes together, and you take your turn at the top of your teammates. All you need to do is show up to practice and get to work!

Author

Paddy Murphy

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