Advancing

One of the major parts of my life was when I picked up my first competitive sport in my freshman year of high school, saber fencing. I finally got to join a world I had always been curious about. My peers commitment to their practice and improvement was inspiring, but having joined so late, all I could feel was the weight of competition. I didn’t get to grow up and learn, I jumped up to the advanced class against national gold medalists with less than four months under my belt. We didn’t play teams, so there was no need to make friends. It was all one versus the other. I didn’t even get the familiarity of people I grew up competing against. Everything was new both ways. It was an extremely difficult experience for me often, and the anticipation to entering such a nervous environment was sometimes paralyzing. But after two years, I’ve gone back. It’s a new place, and there are different challenges, but I’ve gained this flourishing feeling of excitement whenever we’re told to go get our gear. I think it’s what I was missing those years ago.

One of the best lessons I learned from fencing was a concept called the “right of way”. This dictate who gets the point at any given time, otherwise the matches would be full of two fencers reacting and just hitting each other at the same time, and these rules affect how we should act in certain situations.

For example, the person who, off the line, starts advancing sooner gets the right of way. The opposing fencer has two options: retreat, and start playing defensively, or, if they can time it right, attack BEFORE the other can, while their opponent is in the middle of their preparation. The general gist of the rules is this: always be ready and take initiative; respect the rules, and advance as soon as you can.

After two years, I’ve found a new love for fencing. It’s passed admiration for the sport now. I’m advancing and retreating but I don’t recognize a single opponent anymore. Everything has become patterns of action and circumstance that I can react to. It’s pushed out into my life as well.

I find patterns of disagreement and of challenges where I have to recall my practice and think about what I do before I do it. I find sudden unexpected moments that I’ve built instincts to take advantage of. Other times, I can set myself up for more control by starting myself off better straight off the line.