Every competitive HEMA fencer has attended events they really enjoyed, and events that left them feeling disappointed. Some events you feel like you learned and developed as a fencer, win or lose. Others you just feel like you were banging your head against a wall and you gained nothing from it.
What’s the difference between these outcomes?
I argue that one key area of difference is whether or not the competition is meaningful.
For our purposes, “meaningful” will today refer to whether or not the competition is one which challenges the fencer’s skills and abilities. Is this competition going to be worthwhile for the participant? Will it challenge them in a way which furthers their cultivation of fencing skill? Or does it not?
If it does, then why does it? What are the factors behind a meaningful competition? And if it doesn’t, then why not? What makes a competition fail to be meaningful? These are our topics for today.
In short, I want to examine how we can maximize the usefulness of our HEMA competition as a learning experience for all participant fencers. We will examine this question both from the perspective of organizers as well as the perspective of participants.
What I have to say here is derived in part from my own experiences and thinking. However, I also should acknowledge the work that has been done by organizations here in Canada such as Sport for Life and the NCCP, and in particular their work on the concept of meaningful competition, which I have drawn on for this article.1
I’d also like to acknowledge my father, Gordon Dalshaug, who in addition to his many positive qualities as a father has also freely shared his knowledge of many decades of experience as an equestrian coach. He has been an invaluable resource and mentor to myself as a fencing coach and organizer.
Part 1: Individuality and challenge
Fencing is an individual sport
First of all, it is important to acknowledge that competitive fencing, whether we are HEMAists or FIE fencers or anything else, is ultimately an individual sport.
Fencing is a confrontation between the skills and abilities of two individuals with the sword. Historically, the duel or single combat was often seen as the epitome of fencing skill. Today, we test skill via individual competitive matches.
This is true even in team-based competition formats. “Longsword relays” where fencers compete in teams of three are becoming more popular these days. But even in such a format, the actual ‘gameplay’ remains one fencer confronting another, one to one, even if another fencer immediately switches in when one or the other is defeated.
“Yeah, of course” you say. “What’s the big deal?”
This fact means that our main concern when designing a competition is on the individual experience. Many HEMA events now are adding things like team or club-based awards (‘Top Overall Club’ type stuff) to enhance team spirit and team competition. None of that is bad, but because fencing is so individualized the actual factors of meaningful competition must primarily occur at the level of individual fencers.
So when we’re thinking about how to make our competition meaningful, we have to look at things through the eyes of the individual participant. We want to think about how that individual will have the most meaningful competition possible.
Individual characteristics have a large impact on matches
Following up on that point is this one: The characteristics of individual fencers (skill, experience, physicality) has a very strong influence on the outcomes of matches.
Maybe this goes without saying, but it’s worth restating.
In my competition experience, I have had certain matches which are essentially “no contest”. Sometimes I have such a comprehensive superiority of ability and physicality that the opponent can’t lay a strike on me. Other times the opponent is simply so exceedingly nervous and psychologically defeated that they won’t let themselves succeed. As Johan Harmenberg once put it, you only need to keep hold of your sword to defeat such opponents.
Lest I sound too arrogant about my modest competitive record, let me emphasize that I have also been on the opposite side of this situation. I have been the fencer totally outclassed and unable to score on a comprehensively superior opponent. I have been the fencer too worried and nervous to make anything work.
Fencing is an individual-level sport, and the individual characteristics of the fencer have a large impact on matches.
Learning progress happens when you are appropriately challenged
“Easy wins” when you totally outclass your opponent are good for cheap dopamine, and little else. Unless your opponent throws something unexpected at you in desperation, you most often don’t learn anything or develop yourself at all when you can overrun an opponent with ease.
Getting comprehensively crushed, on the other hand, isn’t good for your learning either. When I have been in that position, the result generally is frustration.
Part of the reason for this is the difficulty of post-match analysis when facing a much superior opponent. You can’t identify any specific lessons or areas to work on when the reason you lost is “they’re much, much better than me at everything”. This matches figuring out actionable feedback and areas of improvement much harder.
In strength training, an easy lift won’t spur muscle or technique development. An overly heavy lift won’t either if the athlete can’t move it safely. Development most often happens on lifts which pose a challenge, but a challenge that can be overcome with effort. “Heavy but achievable” is the ideal in the strength sports. I think that fencing is not so different: We want opponents who challenge us, who will defeat us if we let them, but can be addressed with effort and performance of skill.
These three first points can be summarized as such:
Fencing is an individual endeavour. Individual characteristics matter in the experience and outcomes of matches. The individual fencer cannot learn effectively by overrunning easy opposition or by being crushed by far superior opposition.
Therefore, meaningful HEMA competition should strive to match fencers with opponents as close to their level of skill and performance as possible. Meaningful HEMA competition should strive to create as many appropriately challenging matches as possible for each individual fencer.
Given this, how do we achieve these goals? I have a few initial thoughts
Performance-based divisions
Rather than a “one size fits all” event, competitions should be divided by performance level in some way. Some events rank competitors according to HEMA Ratings score and divide them accordingly. Others allow self-selection into “beginners” or “advanced” events. Either way works, but I think some degree of performance sorting is necessary for meaningful competition.
Event intensity
Similar to skill divisions, you can also label your event based on the expected level of intensity at the event. Here in Alberta, we have been adopting an event intensity rating system based on ski slope ratings: Green Circle for low intensity events meant for beginners, Blue Square for intermediate intensity meant for fencers of all skill levels, and Black Diamond for high intensity events focused on advanced competitive fencers.
Event intensity helps fencers self-select into an appropriate competition more likely to be meaningful for them. However, even within an intensity rating system I still think a system of skill-based division is necessary. That is, even a black diamond event should still sort its fencers by performance to ensure a roughly even matching of skill levels.Focus on meaningful competition at pools
I think you have to prioritize what the experience of the competition will be for the average participant, not for the gold medal winner. The vast majority of your participants will not receive a medal, so it is of limited overall value to your HEMA club or region if the medalists have a meaningful competition but few others do. We should instead focus on making the competition as meaningful as possible for the average fencer. This means we ought to focus on meaningful competition at the pool stage.
If the competition is meaningful at the pools stage, then meaningful competition should follow in the elims and finals naturally. On the flip side, a meaningful gold medal match does not necessarily mean that the process to get there was equally meaningful.
If we succeed at creating meaningful pools, then more participants will have more meaningful matches, and everyone benefits.
This means, as far as is possible, we should be trying to place people into pools where they will have at least some competition close to their level. Putting the least skillful fencer in the event in a pool of “sharks” isn’t helpful for them, and putting the most skillful fencer in a pool of “baby seals” doesn’t challenge them. Pools should offer a cross-section of skill, so each person should get at least one match with a closely skilled opponent, and ideally multiple.Multiple rounds of pools, if possible
Following up on the importance of the pools stage, I think it is best to adopt multiple rounds of pools if possible. Obviously it’s not always possible given the time and logistical constraints of events. However, if you can, I think doing multiple rounds at the pool stage is a very good means of increasing meaningful competition.
Multiple rounds of pools does a couple of things. First of all, it simply increases the amount of matches that your average, non-medalist fencer is going to receive. In a five person pool, each fencer gets four matches. If you do two rounds, each fencer gets eight. Doubling the amount of matches increases the odds of meaningful matches in a straightforward numerical way.
Second of all, you can use the results of your first round of pools to reassess skill levels and seed your fencers within the competition for the second round. This again permits for more meaningful matches.
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that in a five person pool, each person can have meaningful matches with two other people. The top fencer in the pool is appropriately challenged by the number 2 and number 3 fencers in the pool, but wins easily over the number 4 and 5 persons. Out of four matches, two will be meaningful. We’ll assume the same holds for all members of the pool. The number 5 person in the pool can meaningfully challenge the number 4 and 3 fencers, but the number 1 and 2 fencers easily beat them.
If you re-seed the fencers based on their first round of pools and create new pools, then in the second round the top fencer will get at least two more meaningful matches, meaning four meaningful matches at the pool stage rather than merely two. As well, the second round of pools means different opponents with different skillsets, which creates different challenges and increases the learning opportunities for all.
Part 2: Judging and Scoring Considerations
What is judging anyways?
Judging and scoring are a feedback system. Judging and scoring at a competition tell the fencer whether or not their action or tactics were correct or incorrect. To win your point is the correct action, if your opponent scores on you instead then your action was incorrect.
If the objective of our competition is to create the most valuable learning experience possible for our fencers, then this feedback system is essential. It is how the fencer identifies the lessons of their experiences in the competition, whether win or lose.
There are countless ways to score a HEMA match. There are countless rulesets. We in HEMA have often debated vociferously about the exact merits of different ways of scoring afterblows, doubles, deep targets, shallow targets, and more besides.
Meaningful competition can occur under many possible judging conventions. However, you can also enhance the meaningfulness of competition with how you judge and score. On the flip side, you can also impair how meaningful your competition is through lacklustre judging or confusing scoring.
So, how then do we ensure our judging and scoring supports meaningful competition?
Scoring should align with development goals for fencers
In my references in the footnotes, this is what is called “judging criteria alignment”. Put more plainly: What you look for and reward in your scoring should line up with how athletes are intended to develop over time in a given sport.
What skillsets do you want a successful fencer at your competition to have? The scoring and judging needs to ensure that those skillsets are incentivized and rewarded.
Often we do this with direct incentives, such as bonus points for particular techniques or targets or point deductions for particular failures (e.g. Getting hit with an afterblow). This works, however I think fencers also respond positively to more indirect incentives created by judging conventions.
For example: If attacking in a certain way wins you priority under your rules, you will see more fencers attack in that way. If you want to see that attack, a priority incentive is one way to encourage more of it. On the other side, if you want to see more defensive techniques then a stronger priority for parry and riposte may be a good tool.
There are countless possible conventions around priority to apply to fencing, and I will not go exhaustively into them. I would however strongly recommend the article Do Rules Spoil Fencing? by Anton Kohutovic, who examines various historical and contemporary fencing conventions in depth and provides his own perspective and recommendations.
Another thing worth considering when looking at judging criteria alignment for making your competition meaningful is development stage specific judging criteria.
I rarely see competitions do this, but I think there could be real value to setting your scoring and judging criteria differently based on the intended skill level or intensity of the event. Different development levels of fencers have different needs in terms of learning and challenge, and so could benefit with variations in the scoring criteria intended to target those specific areas of development.
For example: Beginner fencers needing to develop basic parrying skills may need the incentives of a stronger priority system in order to push them towards those skills.
It may be argued in response that competition rules are a minor part of fencer development, and club fencing culture is a much bigger influence. This is true, but I would say in response that competitions and their rules help shape how club fencing and training is done. If you would like clubs in your region to be training for certain skills, creating a competition where those skills will be necessary for success is one means of creating that change.
I would also strongly recommend playtesting your rules, or new rule changes, prior to running your event. “Game design” is a whole art in itself, and it can be very easy to create unintended consequences or unintended incentives through rules. It’s important to take the time to be confident that the incentives of your competition are lining up with how you want to see fencers developing.
We want to see many exchanges and close scores
A meaningful fencing match ought to be a close contest between well matched opponents. One way to identify that we as organizers have created meaningful matches is by a close score. If the two fencers are closely matched and the match is well fought, we should see a score that is close to either fencer being in a position to win.
What that score specifically looks like will vary based on your exact scoring conventions. In something like epee rules for a final match, it might be a 15-14 final score. If we imagine a HEMA scoring system with 2 points per clean hit and 8 points to win, then an 8-6 final score would be an equivalently close match.
The key thing is that a close match should end with the losing fencer still positioned to win if the last exchange had gone their way.
Some events have achieved this effect by heavily weighting their scoring systems (i.e: Making it possible for one exchange to be worth a match-winning amount of points), so that in theory the losing fencer can achieve a come-from-behind victory in one exchange at any point.
Personally, I am not a fan of this method. While it does keep every match in play at every point of the bout, it has the decided downside of letting fencers take multiple hits, land only a single hit themselves, but still win. I have seen matches like this play out when the winning fencer takes 3 or 4 clean hits, lands only 1 hit themselves, and wins due to point weighting. This I think is inconsistent with sound fencing and the advice of HEMA sources, so I don’t recommend it.
As well, a stronger fencer can sometimes exploit this rule to defeat an opponent in a single exchange, without the losing fencer having a chance to even get on the scoreboard. This can be demoralizing and reduces the potential learning value of the match.
Generally, I find it better to have unweighted or lightly weighted scoring. How much to weight the points of a hit depends on what your scoring limit is set at. In a match to 5 points, being able to win 3 points in one hit is pretty significant. In a match to 15 points, a 3 point hit is much less significant. I personally as a fencer most appreciate matches to 10 points or more, with a score weighting of 1-3 points per hit. This amount of weighting allows for some room to do things like point deductions for afterblows, or weighting for different targets, while not being so heavily weighted that the match can end in one exchange.
I also think that you get more meaningful matches for the competitors when you have many exchanges. More exchanges means more exploration of tactics and skills between the combatants, which should increase the learning experience of each match. Lower point weighting and higher point caps allows for more exchanges per match.
So my general recommendation:
A higher point cap and a lower weighting of scoring points. If the event has been well sorted in skill terms, this should result in close matches. If you’re seeing lopsided scores consistently, this probably means your skill sorting needs work.
This all assumes that you’re organizing a “typical” HEMA event with multiple exchanges per bout. Some have instead organized events for single exchange matches. In that scenario, all matches should in theory be “close”. If it’s only 1 point to win, and only one exchange per bout, then every bout should end up being 1-0.
In this scenario, I think it’s quite important to organize your event to maximize your amount of matches. If every match is only a single exchange, then the best way to make the event meaningful is to ensure every fencer gets as many matches with as many opponents as possible. Multiple rounds of pools or double elimination formats in the elim stages may be good ways to ensure this.
Consistency is the most important factor of judging
In my experience, the most important thing about the judging at a HEMA competition is the consistency of the judging.
What do I mean by consistency? I mean that a certain action in the fencing results in a certain call from the judges, with as little randomness or chance as possible. That a hit is called as a hit and a parry is called as a parry, in other words.
Don’t get me wrong, it is also very important to be accurate. I don’t want judges who consistently make exactly the wrong call. But if primacy must be given to one, I would rank consistency somewhat higher.
Ideally, we want judges who see every part of the exchange and judge it accurately to the rules, every time. That’s the best case scenario. But our judges are human beings, and human errors occur. Fencing exchanges play out at lightning speed, and it can be easy to miss things or to not have the right angle to see what occurred. This makes accurate and consistent calls difficult in many circumstances, but it is often possible to be consistent even when complete accuracy is impossible.
For example: If the judges simply never score ambiguous slices in messy close range exchanges, well that may be frustrating but it can be dealt with. I as a fencer can either stop trying to use slices in that scenario and adopt different tactics (and therefore learn different things), or I can take steps to make my slices extra clear and extra visible (which teaches me different things about the slice as a tactic).
This is only possible if the judges are consistent on this matter. If they sometimes score slices in that situation and sometimes don’t, and the judging seems random and arbitrary, I as a fencer can’t adjust or learn.
If the judging isn’t consistent, it fails in its role as a feedback system. This undermines the learning experience for the fencer.
It’s generally easier for smaller numbers of judges to be consistent than larger numbers. Additionally, a smaller number of judges makes it easier to have more consistently skilled judging staff, which usually improves accuracy as well. For that reason, I strongly recommend the two judge system (Director and assistant) rather than the three or four or five judge systems sometimes used. In my competitive experience, two skilled judges are much more consistent as well as more accurate than the larger judging teams which more often have less reliable and less experienced judges.
Additionally, smaller judging teams are more logistically easier for events as well. If you only need two judges per bout, it’s much easier to organize than needing four or five.
Simple and clear rules makes for simple and clear feedback
The simpler and clearer the feedback the easier it is for the fencer to learn from it.
The simplest feedback of all is “Did I score, or not?”. This is how the electric scoring systems in FIE fencing works, more or less: Did the system score my hit, or not? Single light or double light? This is oversimplified for the sake of discussion, the priority conventions of foil and sabre do create more complexity than this, but the essence of electric scoring is clarity in feedback.
In HEMA competitions, we often want more complexity and more granularity in our scoring and judging than this. We often want to reflect our views on the quality of actions. As is often said, “We want competition to create the kind of fencing we want to see”. Sometimes that means valuing strikes to certain targets more than others. Sometimes that means valuing certain tactical outcomes more than others (i.e: Striking without receiving an afterblow). Sometimes that means wanting to value strikes with certain mechanical characteristics, such as “good cutting form”.
Complexity however does not come without its own costs and tradeoffs. It often makes for more difficult judging, which reduces the consistency and reliability of judging. Inconsistent judging is frustrating for the fencer to fence under, but it also confuses feedback: Sometimes you win with a certain action, and sometimes you don’t, and success or failure ends up feeling more like a coinflip than a result of your actual skill and performance.
Overly complex rules also poses a risk of obscuring or confusing the feedback provided by judging for the fencer. When the scoring is heavily weighted and very convoluted, it can be harder for the fencer to understand why they’re getting 3 points out of a potential 8 and what they would have needed to do differently to get more.
The conclusion from all of this is that your scoring rules need to strike a balance, but on the whole I would generally recommend erring on the side of simplicity and clarity, as far as is possible.
What does that mean? For example: If you want to have different scoring weights for different targets on the body, try to reduce these as far as possible. Some tournaments use separate scores for striking the head, the torso, the arms, or the legs; I think you should instead boil it down to fewer categories. I’m a big fan of deep targets (Head and torso) and shallow targets (arms and legs) myself, but I have also competed under systems which use upper opening, torso, and limbs and that works as well.
Simpler systems are easier for the judges, which improves the experience for the fencers, and makes for more clear and legible feedback.
The scoring should be explained to the fencer
Connected to this point about the importance of feedback, I strongly think it is important that the scoring be explained to the fencer during the match. I am very much in favour of the habit of verbally narrating the scoring to the fencers at each judging break during the bout.
This can be a simple verbal narrative in short form, for the sake of time. Simplicity also again works well with the clarity of feedback we desire. Something like:
“Blue fencer attacked, parry from red, red riposte, no parry for blue, red riposte hit, point to red”.
If I have won a point, I want to know what the judges saw so I can ensure I continue to do that. If I have lost a point and my opponent has scored, I want to know what the judges saw that resulted in that so I can correct my fencing.
A verbal explanation of the scoring enables the fencer to better learn from each exchange within the bout. It permits them the opportunity to improve on subsequent exchanges, or in subsequent bouts.
It also has the additional benefits of enhancing trust and transparency in the competition. When the scoring is explained, then the fencers receive an explanation of the judge’s thinking process and they can understand why matches are going one direction or another.
Again, I will summarize my main points from this section:
The objective of the competition is to support learning. Therefore, we want the judging criteria to align with how we want fencers to develop and grow over tme.
Meaningful competition requires matching fencers with challenging opponents close to their skill level. Therefore, we want to see matches with close scores in which either fencer could conceivably win by winning the last exchange.
More exchanges within a match create more fencing interactions, which means more learning opportunities. This can be achieved either by matches with lots of exchanges, or by single-exchange matches with the tourney organized for lots and lots of matches.
Judging and scoring is a feedback system to communicate to the fencer whether their actions are correct or not within the match. This feedback system should be as accurate as possible, as consistent as possible, and should prioritize simplicity and clarity.
The fencer should always understand why they won or lost a given match, and verbally explaining the scoring during the match is a good tactic for supporting that.
Part 3: The view from the fencer and the coach
I would now like to switch our point of view and consider meaningful competition from the perspective of the participant fencer and their coach.
If the organizers have done all that they can do to make this a meaningful competition, how can I as a fencer best ensure I get the most learning value from the experience? If I am a coach, how can I best support my fencers in learning from competitive experience?
Winning and losing are in themselves not important for this. We are focused on maximizing the learning aspects of meaningful competition today.
Every match offers a lesson
Every opponent is different, and almost all of them will offer some kind of lesson. This is especially the case for opponents who are close to your skill level, which is the ideal for meaningful compettion.
If you defeat your opponent, this gives you feedback and data on what you’re doing correctly, or at least more correctly than the opponent.
If your opponent defeats you, then you’re receiving feedback on where your vulnerabilities or mistakes are.
Often, as a fencer it is more useful to analyze your losses than your wins. From a loss, we can more directly identify areas for further improvement. As well, trying to analyze a win has the potential pitfall of ego and self-congratulation, which makes it harder to be objective and critical in a way that spurs further development. By the same token, sometimes we can be reluctant to analyze our losses because our ego wants to protect itself and doesn’t like to admit failures. But facing our failures is the only way we continue to learn.
So approach every match as a potential learning opportunity, win or lose. Strive to be humble and objective about your performance, and learn as much as you can from each encounter.
If you are coaching, it’s important to talk to your fencer and set the environment around the competition with a healthy and positive focus on learning and improvement.
Enter the competition with a performance goal in mind
Evaluating your success at a competition requires setting goals. Success or progress has to be measured relative to an objective.
Competitions implicitly offer competitive success as their goal. In theory, every fencer comes to the event wanting to finish on the podium with the first place medal.
In practice: There may be dozens and dozens of fencers entered into a given event, and only one person can finish with the gold medal. If you set “win the event” as your goal, you will more often than not be disappointed.
If our purpose is to learn however, and winning and losing are only significant in so far as they help us learn, then we should set goals that further our learning.
How do we do this?
First of all, recognize that the only matches you are guaranteed to have when you enter a competition are your pool matches. Therefore, you should set your goals with your pool matches in mind. Your objectives should things that can be achieved within pools.
Secondly, your performance goals have to exist in the context of your training and your developmental stage as a fencer. You need to set goals appropriate for you and your specific performance. As a coach I do not set goals for my fencers, I try to work with them to craft goals for themselves.
In my opinion, you should select a few (one to three is good, more than three is too much) discrete and specific performance goals. These goals should not be something vague or overly broad like “win”. Ideally they should be achievable regardless of whether you win or lose. However, these goals should also be consistent with competitive success. Success at your performance goals for the event should also bring greater odds of success in the competition.
An example might be a defensive goal like “Minimize handsnipes received”. If in your previous competition you identified that the opponent scored on you via handsnipes 20 times total, then you can set a goal to strive to reduce that number.
This goal is not reliant on winning. Your opponent may defeat you by other means, but you can still count this competition as a success in learning if you took 0 handsnipes along the way. Even 5 or 10 handsnipes received may be seen as a partial success, as you reduced that handsnipe number. As well, reducing your vulnerability to handsnipes improves your odds of overall success.
At the same time, one shouldn’t fixate so hard on specific goals to the point of hampering your ability to fence freely. Your goals should assist you, not hinder you. If I am coaching and my fencer feels that a given opponent requires a different approach to the one we discussed as the objective, I will never tell them they are wrong. Final tactical judgment always rests with the fencer in the ring.
Depending on the fencer’s needs, it may also be good to have more subjective goals like “remain calm in each match”. These are not so objectively measurable as something like “minimize handsnipes”, and they require more personal reflection in the debriefs with the fencer. They can however still be a worthwhile tool for fencers who have difficulties with the psychological game.
Record your matches
You will often see people at competition with a tripod for their phone, to film their matches. This is a good habit to be in, and one I support all fencers cultivating (I myself could do a better job of ensuring I record my matches).
Unfortunately, we humans are not so reliable with our memories and perceptions of events as we might wish to be. I mentioned above how sometimes we are reluctant to analyze a fencing loss, because our ego doesn’t like facing failure. Our memories can deceive us aslso. Sometimes we may convince ourselves a certain opponent was unbeatable, to protect ourselves from the accountability of having lost a winnable match. Or, we may convince ourselves that we were really close to beating someone when in fact the opponent defeated us handily.
A video record of the match won’t lie to you like your memories will. It’s a camera, it records what it sees. So long as you set your camera up with a reasonable field of view over the fencing ring, you should have an objective record of what occurred in the match.
This is important because objectivity is essential to post-competition analysis of our performance. In order to identify where we have areas for improvement to strengthen, or areas of strength to further refine, we need the most accurate and dispassionate assessment of our abilities possible.
If you are coaching, it is also important to make sure your fencer’s matches get recorded. Your fencer may be worried and mentally preoccupied with the competition itself, so take a load off their mind and make sure you set up some recording method yourself. It may be good to invest in a tripod yourself for using your phone, or maybe discussing with your club using group funds to get the necessary equipment.
Debriefing and Reflection
At the end of every class I teach in HEMA, I always end with a debrief where I discuss with the fencers what we have covered in the session, and in particular what each individual learned from the session. These debriefs help me confirm that the students have gotten something useful from the session, and they also give me a view into what the students are getting and how to craft subsequent sessions for furthering their development.
Similarly, debriefing is very useful after a competition. Debriefing is how we assess our performance, identify what we succeeded at and what we still need further work on. This feeds into our training cycle to drive further development and improvement.
Debriefing could be a discussion between fencer and coach. Alternatively, it could be a personal reflection from the fencer. I have done most of my competition fencing without a dedicated coach working on my performance, so I usually tend towards self-reflection. Both are good, but I think a fencer and coach discussion is probably more productive, if possible.
I also think there are two good time slots for having a debrief: Immediate, and with a time gap.
An immediate debrief is conducted as soon after a fencer is done competing as possible, while their competitive experiences are still fresh in their mind. If my fencer has passed their pools and will move to elims, I generally won’t do an in depth debrief at that time because I don’t want to distract them from focusing on their matches. As a coach, I will debrief after all their matches are done.
A debrief with a time gap can be conducted anytime after a competition. You should still strive to do it soon after the competition, with a gap of a few days or maybe weeks, not months. While immediate debriefs benefit from the immediacy of experience, a delayed debrief allows for more time for reflection on the part of both fencer and coach as well as analysis of recorded footage.
If you are going to do personal reflection instead as you lack a dedicated coach, I suggest writing your reflection in a journal format. For me, expressing my thoughts in writing helps me formulate and clarify them, which benefits my analysis.
Some suggestions for debriefing or reflection:
What was the fencer’s most successful match? What succeeded in this match?
What was the most difficult match? What about that opponent made them most difficult?
In what situation did you most often score on your opponent?
In what situation did your opponent most often score on you?
What were your emotional or mental feelings around the competition? Did anything make you especially nervous or help you keep your calm?
Based on how you or your fencer answer these questions, you can use the feedback of the competition for crafting your training plan. However, the design of training plans for fencers is outside of our purview for today.
Conclusions
Why do we compete in HEMA?
There are many possible answers to that. It will vary for each fencer.
For myself, competition creates a vitally important performance environment for fencing skills. I don’t believe that I can properly understand or embody Liechtenauer’s art of fencing without a combative environment. That requires unfamiliar and non-compliant opponents who are trying to strike me with a sword, and who I must try to strike without being struck in return.
The competition environment cannot truly replicate the environment of an earnest sword-fight. But the learning potential it offers is still vital and difficult to replicate by other training methods.
My hope is to use competition and training to create a virtuous cycle for myself and for my fencers. Competition helps us understand and train in the art of Liechtenauer, training feeds competitive performance.
Not all competitions are created equally however. They can be more or less useful, depending on how they organized and how we approach them.
As an organizer, I believe we should strive for every fencer to receive a challenging and meaningful competition experience which will help foster their development. As a fencer or a coach, I want to maximize the learning potential of each competitive event I attend.
If you would like to discuss meaningful competition or ask for my perspective on any particular points, shoot me a message or leave a comment! If you disagree with any of my points above, please tell me! I would genuinely love the discussion.
Meaningful Competition and the Role of the Coach for slides with a brief overview of some key concepts on this as applied to different sports.
Athlete Development Matrix and Judging Criteria Alignment also has useful information.
There’s also a lot of great resources for coaches found at https://coach.ca/