The Cape Fear Fencing Association Forum

Warming up is about more than injury prevention.  It is also about getting your body and your mind ready for the practice or competition that is ahead.  That is why warming up needs to be performed every time you are getting ready to fence.  It puts your body and mind into a set pattern that will then allow you to perform at your highest level.

The first part of warming up is......warming up.  Getting your body temperature up makes your muscles more elastic and helps to lubricate your joints.  Teams often do this by performing a “box run.”  The team jogs around in a rectangle while a captain or coach calls out instructions. This is done at a moderate tempo, not a sprint.  The idea is to warm up, not tire out.  The captain will call out instructions that require the fencers to jump, bend down, run backwards, run side to side, change direction, and other variations on just running forward.  This helps the fencers get focused mentally.  If you are at an individual event, just jogging or some light calisthenics can accomplish the same goal.

Stretching is an issue that has undergone constant revision in the last few years.  Gone are the bouncy stretches of your high school gym class.  Stretches are now done with a static hold at the point of the greatest stretch.  The current controversy is whether stretches should be done immediately after warming up.  For years the theory was warm up and then stretch to prevent injuries during the more strenuous competition to follow.  Now some exercise physiologists claim that they have experimental data that disproves the common wisdom.  According to these studies, stretching causes the muscles to be weaker around a joint, thus making it more prone to injury.  They advocate stretching after the end of the more strenuous parts of practice.  There isn’t a definitive consensus, so stretch when you feel it best benefits you.

Next should come a few minutes of footwork.  This can be done by yourself, with a partner, or with a coach as part of a warm up lesson.  Start slowly and work up to bouting speed.  Keep it primarily advances, retreats, and lunges.  No need for fifty ballestra fleches.  Don’t just mindlessly perform your footwork.  Make certain your form is correct, change the timing, change the size of steps, and change combinations of steps.

Now start warming up your bladework.  For foil and sabre, attacks, feint disengages/cuts, parry-ripostes, and beat attacks.  For epeeists, primarily point control, beat attacks, and parry ripostes.  You can start at close distance, then open to lunges, and finally perform the actions while moving at close to bouting speed.  This is not the time to be adding or working on new moves.  It is the time to review and make certain that your basic moves are working.

If the warm up is for a practice, you are now ready to move on to drills, lessons, and free fencing.  If you are warming up at a competition, fencing one real, all out, five touch bout with a teammate or acquaintance should have you ready for the first bout in your pool.  Make certain you count touches.  First, it puts you in the real situation of being behind, closing out a bout, or needing the last touch at 4-4, so your mind is actively engaged in strategy as well as tactics.  Additionally, it curbs the impulse to just keep fencing and use too much energy.

As far as timing, 5-10 minutes to warm up, 5-10 minutes to stretch, 5-10 minutes of footwork, 5-10 minutes of bladework,  5 minutes to complete a bout, and a couple of minutes to cool down.  Thus you need to start your warm up at least 20 minutes before you want to do your first exercise in practice.  At a competition figure 30 –45 minutes before you think pools will be called.

Remember, the idea of warming up is to as much to develop a mental progression that readies you for practice or competition.  That is why it is important to warm up approximately the same way every time.