Yet often, it is still the case that in lessons for intermediate and high-level fencers, “they know how it’s going to end before it starts,” says Soren. “For me, that is the opposite of valuable. I think that it’s counterproductive because there is always the possibility for the action to be slightly different than you expect” in a real bout. Even at a high level, a lot of coaches train like this. The actions they have their students do might be more complicated and the execution might become faster and stronger, but the fencer still knows exactly what action they are going to perform (or, at most, which one of two or three actions they are going to perform).

“The easier thing to train for is the thing that you know, but often in a match you don’t know what you think you know,” says Soren. “People generally think along these lines: ‘Something happened in the past, and I’m going to risk more or less everything on it happening again in the future.’ But you don’t necessarily have an informational advantage over your opponent to make that decision. Your opponent knows what happened in the past too, and so for you to say that you are going to just pick the next logical tactical action doesn’t make sense. Your opponent is doing the same thing, and the better your opponent is, the less likely they are to do what you expect and the less likely your guess will be correct.”

Do you have some sort of intention?

Of course, Soren’s advice isn’t to go in with no forethought of any kind and just stand there and try to react. “Certainly there’s a starting point. It’s not necessarily a plan,” he says. “I would say it’s more like ‘do you have some sort of intention?’ So there's a theme in what I'm doing and a place where I might want the action to wind up, but the difference is that when I decide to do something, I don't assume that I know how the action is going to end before I start. Because when that is the case, I feel that the mind very much goes dark and you are stuck doing this initiated plan for as long as it takes to complete it, which can be a pretty long time. In the interim, the condition that you were planning for, that you were basing everything off of, may have changed. If it has changed, your great idea might have quickly turned into a terrible one. Whatever happens, I want the best chance to still be successful.”

At this point you might be thinking, “Duh, I’m obviously going to change my plan if the situation changes. That’s a no brainer.” But you must understand that because most of fencing happens so quickly that most of your decisions are completely unconscious. The sport is too fast to be able to read a situation, make a decision, and execute your plan consciously. You must be able to, for example, take a parry automatically, without having to think through what motions you need to go through like you did when you were a beginner. For this reason we must train specifically to build this skill of adaptability into our fencing, so that we are able to execute our decision making capabilities as flexibly and automatically as we can our physical and technical fencing skills.

If you’re going to the store, for example, you have to plan your route and start driving, but if halfway there you see a traffic jam ahead, you are going to need to figure out how to change routes. Even in actions that take a fraction of a second to execute, Soren trains specifically to give himself the maximum amount of time to find a better route.

Building Depth in Your Fencing Actions

You also might read this and argue that many great fencers succeed by using a more closed approach. And that’s true! There are times when it’s advantageous to have a pre-decided plan. Let’s look at the example of Daryl Homer’s last touch in the Olympic semifinal, which is one we have written about in a past article. At 14-14, he correctly anticipated his opponent, Mojtaba Abedini (Iran), attacking him to the head and committed to his action (parry five) in advance. Daryl solved and executed his action perfectly, scoring an epic touch that vaulted him into the Olympic Final.

Let’s quickly summarize again the difference between “closed skills” versus “open skills” as they pertain to fencing. Applying a closed skill approach is best described as performing a pre-planned action, whereas an open skill approach entails executing an action that evolves as the bout context changes. Soren points out that there isn’t strictly a right or wrong way to handle every scenario. Rather, there exists a continuum of possibilities between a closed skill approach (pre-deciding) to an open skill approach (having an intention that’s open to change). Daryl made a plan for that final touch (closed skill), but, if he had been wrong, he wouldn’t have been able to change his mind and would have lost the touch. He was, in essence, making an educated guess based on the context of that “do or die” moment that he felt would give him the best chance of success.

This ambiguity is part of fencing. And Soren, himself, even fences specific touches with a closed skill approach because he sees value in doing so. He just acknowledges that there are different trade offs of risk and reward. If both fencers are employing a closed approach, whichever athlete guesses right will look 100% smart and the other 100% stupid even though a high degree of luck is involved in determining the outcome! There is value in decisiveness and courage in key moments. Daryl had good reason to think he would be successful because he scored several times in the earlier stages of the bout on this exact action, suggesting it could work again.

However, the open skill approach is more nuanced and difficult to analyze after the fact, which is why, perhaps, it is under-taught (and sometimes downright ignored) in many lessons. Soren felt that he could accelerate his improvement, by spending more training time honing his ability to better deploy an open skill approach in more scenarios. He calls this “building depth” in his actions and believes that focusing at least some of your training time on open skill development is beneficial for every athlete.

Closed Skill Training is Still Important

While the concept of training to “build depth” might seem contrary to typical technique-oriented training, that is not necessarily the case. Why? Good technique, especially technique that has been trained with the goal of being able to adjust in the middle of actions, puts you in a position where you can more skillfully adapt when a situation changes.

So don’t just go in to your coach tomorrow and say, “I read an article on the internet—no more technique for me, thank you!” (although I’m sure many of us may want to). You still have to focus and train this important aspect of your fencing and spend some time drilling technical movements in a closed skill fashion. The reason for this is if your basic technical movements are not ingrained in your muscle memory, you have no chance of adapting to a changing environment. For example, if your parries are too wide and you realize that your opponent is finishing to another line, it will take you too long to bring your hand back to where it needs to be. If you fall off-balance when you lunge, it will take you longer to react and defend yourself properly if your opponent pulls you short. And we’ve written about footwork before, but if your steps are too big and you can’t change tempo smoothly enough, it will open up a window for your opponent to hit you before you’re able to react optimally.

The key point Soren makes is that as you become more advanced, you must shift a greater proportion of your training away from closed skills (doing premeditated actions) in favor of open skills by integrating your repertoire of actions rather than thinking of them as distinct from each other–for example, training your ability to sense when to hit with a feint-disengage or with a beat, and being able to move between those (and more) options intuitively.

Soren’s Approach and Your Fencing Practice

What does it mean for your fencing? How should you be practicing, then? “I would start with a moment that’s going to occur frequently. I started with hitting with a lunge. Then the coach can do slight variations on that starting action to provide additional openings,” Soren explains. “You start with only a couple things that can happen and then you can build up to more.”

The easiest place to start applying this new knowledge is to look at your fencing for a common situation where you often lose touches. Soren’s first scenario was hitting with a lunge, but it can be any action you choose. It can be as general as wanting to work on your attack, or as specific as waiting too long to riposte and getting hit with a lot of remises. If you’re not sure where to begin, you could even ask a clubmate, “Hey, what do you do to beat me?” (just like Daryl Homer would ask his opponents at tournaments!).

Once you’ve identified the scenario you’re going to work on, first try to think of two common things your opponent can do in that situation. When I think about attacking, for example, the first two things that come to my mind are that my opponent could counterattack or parry. Or, if I’m trying to riposte, my opponent could remise or take a counter-parry. There you go! That’s your first drill. Just grab your coach or a teammate, setup that situation, and tell them they can only do those two things (you can also return the favor for a teammate by asking them if there is anything they want to work on). And because most fencing actions are extremely fast, Soren recommends starting at half speed to train the mindset for openness before building up to full speed.

Over time you can make all drills harder in one of two ways: faster or more options. If you’re working on your attack, the next step might be that your opponent can beat your blade as well. Then, when you’re able to do that version of the drill successfully, they could add the ability to pull you short, to do fake actions, or to put out point in line. Whatever it is, you can always increase the difficulty until you’re essentially doing your practice in a real bouting situation--which, after all, is what you’re training for!