#as a former fencer i especially like his epee

[xbuster]

This is not endearing me to the man who is currently carrying out a genocide

[historicalfightingguide]

"Damien Lehfeldt on How Team USA Is Using Analytics to Get an Edge"

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EPISODE SUMMARY

Our guest is Damien Lehfeldt, known on Instagram and elsewhere as "The Fencing Coach" but also the strategy and data lead for the Team USA national epee team. We chatted with him about the analytics behind Team USA's drive for gold.

EPISODE NOTES

In this episode of First to 15, we're joined by "The Fencing Coach" himself, Damien Lehfeldt. 

Damien has been writing The Fencing Coach blog since 2012. That’s the same year he helped coach Team USA’s Suzanne Stetinius to the London Olympics in Modern Pentathlon. He’s now a coach at Nova Fencing Club in Virginia.

Damien is a former epee fencer who had a successful career at Brandeis University, where he graduated in 2009, and he later won gold in the men’s epee team event at the 2012 North American Cup.

On top of all that, he’s the strategy and data lead for the Team USA national epee team. We’re going to talk about what that means and more in today’s episode.

The Fencing Coach website

The Fencing Coach on Instagram

Read a transcript for this episode"

"In each episode, we’ll talk to someone interesting within the fencing world, including young fencers just learning the sport, coaches, experts from outside of fencing, fencing parents, referees, Olympians and Paralympians, and many more. Ready? Set? Fence!"



So while this podcast is obviously geared directly towards olympic fencers there's still some elements that historical fencers may find useful. I do doubt a regular hema club, let alone a single person has the same resources as a national olympic fencing team, especially one like USA's national team, however looking into dartfish may still prove useful to hema folks in many places. If nothing else trying to follow how the knowledge gets used by olympians can provide us in lessons on certain seemingly irrelevant parts of our fencing to our general 'game plans' when fighting.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Some advice on how to start studying the sources generally can be found in these older posts

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Fear is the Mind Killer: How to Build a Training Culture that Fosters Strength and Resilience by   Kajetan Sadowski   may be relevant as well.

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“How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills”  by Rob Gray  as well as this post that goes over the basics of his constraints lead, ecological approach.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Trauma informed coaching and why it matters

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Look at the previous posts in relation to running and cardio to learn how that relates to historical fencing.

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Why having a systematic approach to training can be beneficial

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Why we may not want one attack 10 000 times, nor 10 000 attacks done once, but a third option.

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How consent and opting in function and why it matters.

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More on tactics in fencing

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Open vs closed skills

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The three primary factors to safety within historical fencing

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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And if you train any weapon based form of historical fencing check out the ‘HEMA game archive’ where you can find a plethora of different drills, focused sparring and game options to use for effective, useful and fun training.

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Check out the cool hemabookshelf facsimile project.

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For more on how to use youtube content for learning historical fencing I suggest checking out these older posts on the concept of video study of sparring and tournament footage.

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Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “Fence, Vol. 1″ by C. S. Pacat, illustrated by Johanna the Mad

17. A graphic novel: Fence, Vol. 1 by C. S. Pacat, illustrated by Johanna the Mad

List Progress: 3/30

School sports stories are a classic for a reason. They’re relatable to audiences who are in or have been in high school and feel like the things they are doing are the be-all and end-all of their lives. Competitions, tournaments and seasons give stakes and structure, while social life at the school balances it with levity. And audiences do not need to be keyed into the intense and often toxic worlds of professional sports, as the professional world exists largely as a distant goal. Many works have codified these tropes, especially in the world of sports anime and manga, and fans of Free! and Haikyuu! will find a lot to appreciate in the first volume of Fence, a Western comic written by C.S. Pacat and illustrated by Johanna the Mad. But aside from the choice of the less-popular sport of fencing, Fence doesn’t bring much new to the table, at least in this opening volume.

Fence follows Nicholas Cox, an aspiring epee fencer trying to make a name for himself. He is the illegitimate son of a former fencing Olympian, and while he has had no privileges or serious training in his life, he does have some innate talent. But in a very technical sport like fencing, that can only take you a very small way, and he is humiliated in his first tournament by the aloof and superior Seiji Katayama. Six months later, they cross paths again, when he has gotten a scholarship to the Kings Row Boys School and Seiji has surprisingly gone to Kings instead of the far more prestigious Exton. They are immediately thrust into one another’s lives as roommates, and tryouts for the school team only exacerbate their anger towards each other. The rest of the team is made up of colorful characters who mostly serve as background in the first volume, but you can see where they have room to grow.

Fence has a lot of queer characters right off the bat, which is a definite plus compared to many school sports stories that contain a lot of gay subtext without having any concretely queer characters. But it is almost so accepting that it seems to take place in a different world. One of the boys on the team, Bobby, has long hair and wears skirts, and it would be refreshing to see a casually gender-non-conforming boy in a comic…except that he is drawn exactly like a girl in a manga, all big eyes and pixie chin, just without breasts. It is a way to have GNC characters that seems oddly uncomfortable with actual gender-nonconforming people. The team lothario, Aiden, runs into a similar conundrum; he sleeps his way through the all-male team, but his love interests are written with a very feminine sort of twitterpation. The comic clearly has all the best intentions, but feels like it was trying so hard to be accepting of all genders and sexualities, that it circles back around to being off put.

For a teenage audience, Fence could be a lot of fun. But in a big world full of other school sports stories and comics, this doesn’t feel like an essential addition. If you read one Western sports comic about an outsider with physical capabilities but a lack of comfort with a core fundamental of the sport, featuring the son of a sports legend trying to live up to his father’s legacy and several queer characters, Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu is right there. But if you read two, give Fence a try.

Would I Recommend It: Soft yes. A good comic to grab from a library.