Develop a strategy

Now that you have identified a specific problem, you need a plan to tackle this issue so that you can improve. This is where your coach can help significantly. The key is to be open and proactive in sharing your observations from the tournament so your coach can provide feedback on your rationale and help to craft a strategy for improvement.

Involving your coach here is really beneficial. It always helps to have an extra set of eyes. Together, you should be able to lay the foundation for drills and exercises to help you improve.

Understand your coaches’ limitations

However, don’t expect your coach to solve all of your problems. It’s also upon you to think creatively about how you can raise your game. Fencing is a mental sport. Being able to come up with your own solutions is imperative in your journey to becoming a better fencer. Be prepared to come up with your own drills and practice them by yourself or with clubmates.

With that said, the most obvious solution often isn’t the only solution.

Fencing is unique in that there are always several ways to accomplish the same thing. Take the above example, “there were three similar incidences when I let my opponent attack, even though they are very strong in that area.” To counter this, you could work on applying more pressure on your opponent, so they can attack less frequently, or you can work on a defensive action so you aren’t on the ropes when they do attack.

Another example is “I didn’t change when the referee stopped calling my attack in preparation.” You can work around this problem by training different actions, so you can fence without using attack in preparation, or you can work to make your attack in preparation action cleaner, so calling it is a no-brainer.

Keeping this flexibility in mind when you’re training will help you improve at a much faster rate. As an added bonus, it will also help you problem-solve during bouts, as you’ve been working on your flexibility and proactively thinking about how to improve yourself.

Also, if your issues have more to do with your mental game (e.g. dealing with tournament stress), coaches are not always the best people to consult. Instead, you could also consult with a sports psychologist or ask more experienced fencers for tactics or books they recommend for dealing with the same issue.

Get into the nitty gritty

Once you have an idea of what you need to improve, you must develop a concrete plan of how you implement it into practice. Just like the reason why you lost, your strategy has to be internal and specific. It’s better not to just say "I'll work on XYZ." Say instead "every practice I'll work on this technique for 15 minutes before I start practice" or "I'll fence two bouts a night working only from this disadvantaged position." Having this concrete plan will make it easier to follow through on your training goals.

Continue the plan over the months and monitor your improvement in that area. The goal is to practice smarter and to not have the same reason cause you grief at a tournament more than once. You should see improvement in the area you’ve chosen if you continue to work on it consistently.

Write it down and show it to someone else

Once you have a good idea of what happened, you should record your thoughts in some way because putting something down on paper makes it real. Keeping a fencing journal in a notebook is great for this, but some people prefer to keep their thoughts digitally in programs like Evernote. Find a way that works for you where you can access the information easily in the future.

Also, you need to find a way to make yourself accountable so that you follow through on the plan that you have made. You might consider showing your list to your teammates or coach, or even posting a sheet of paper on your locker so that others around can help you avoid dropping or compromising that commitment you have made to improve.

Don’t overthink it

If you’re fencing with a mindset to improve, chances are you’ll be at another tournament soon after you’ve implemented your changes. The best advice I can give here is stop overthinking it. You’ve done your training, and you’ve done as much as possible to make sure that what cost you the last tournament won’t cost you during this one. I’ve seen too many bouts lost because a fencer was fixated on a certain mistake or avoiding a certain action. Just do everything you’d normally do in a tournament and trust in your training.

Rinse and repeat, sort of

When the tournament is over, you will want to go through all the same steps as above. However, because fencers are often their own worst critics, you might fall into the trap of focusing on fixing only mistakes that you noticed at the most recent tournament. When you discover new insights, it’s important that you reference them against your already existing training plan so that you can prioritize what to spend your time on. Fixing mistakes takes a long time, and if you are constantly moving from one thing to the next, you are much less likely to see the progress you want to achieve. My rule of thumb is to never be working on more things than I can count on one hand.