There’s an old saying that goes “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.” It’s simple wisdom that applies to nearly every aspect of life, and it’s definitely relevant to competitive fencing. The moment you step onto a competition strip, your fate is essentially sealed — not by destiny, luck, or result, but by the months of preparation that came before.

You can’t build fitness during the bout when your legs are burning in the third period. You can’t develop tactical awareness between “Fence!” and the first touch. You can’t create mental resilience while standing at 14-14 with everything on the line. All of that work — the digging of your metaphorical well — must happen long before you feel the competitive thirst.

Let’s be honest about what happens when fencers try to take shortcuts or rely on last-minute preparation. We’ve all seen it: the talented athlete who coasts through training all season and then wonders why they can’t execute under pressure. The technically sound fencer who avoids challenging competitions and then crumbles when facing unfamiliar opponents. The promising competitor who neglects conditioning because “fencing is about technique, not fitness” and then fades in crucial moments.

The irony is that these fencers often possess the raw ability to succeed. Their technique might be beautiful in lessons. Their tactical understanding might be sophisticated in theory. But when the competitive pressure mounts, when the stakes are highest, when they need their preparation most — the well runs dry.

The Competition Mirage

Competition day creates a powerful illusion. Standing in the competition venue, surrounded by the energy and excitement, it feels like everything is happening in real time. The touches scored, the tactical adjustments, the mental battles — they all seem immediate and present. But this is a mirage.

What you’re actually witnessing is the culmination of months or even years of preparation. That perfectly timed attack wasn’t conceived in the moment — it was practiced thousands of times in training. That tactical adjustment wasn’t brilliant improvisation — it was one option from a repertoire built through countless bouts. That mental resilience wasn’t summoned from thin air — it was forged through deliberate practice managing pressure situations.

The fencer who appears to be “born for competition” is usually the one whose well is deepest, whose preparation has been most thorough, whose months of unglamorous work are finally paying dividends when it matters most.

This misconception about timing leads to one of the most common mistakes in competitive preparation: trying to squeeze everything at the last moment. Fencers frantically increase training intensity the week before a major competition. Parents suddenly emphasize technique corrections days before leaving for nationals. Fencers attempt to absorb months of tactical approaches during the final stretch only.

All of this misses the fundamental truth: the competition you’re attending right now was determined months ago by the choices you made then, not by what you did this week if all the previous time was, let’s say, sub-optimal.

The Physical Foundation

Let’s start with the most obvious aspect — physical preparation. That burning sensation in your legs during the final period of your DE bout? That’s not just fatigue — it’s the difference between a fencer who dug their fitness well months in advance and one who hoped technique alone would carry them through.

Elite fencers understand that conditioning isn’t something you do alongside fencing training — it’s the foundation that makes everything else possible. The explosive footwork that creates distance advantages, both in offence and defence. The stability that allows precise point control under fatigue. The endurance that keeps your tactical awareness sharp when others start to fade. None of these appear magically on competition day.

But physical preparation in fencing goes beyond just cardiovascular fitness or leg strength. It includes the countless hours of footwork drills that automate movement patterns. The balance exercises that make your stance rock-solid under pressure. The specific conditioning that prepares your weapon arm for the repetitive stress of a full day of competition. The stamina that allows you to maintain high level fencing through six, seven or even eight rounds of DE. The flexibility work that prevents injury and maintains technique consistency through fatigue.

Most importantly, it’s about training your body to perform at its best when your mind is occupied with tactical decisions. In practice, you can focus entirely on footwork or point control. In competition, these physical skills must be so deeply ingrained that they function perfectly while your conscious mind is processing opponent patterns, managing score situations, and adapting to referee interpretations.

Technical Mastery: Beyond the Perfect Lesson

Technical preparation presents its own timing challenges. There’s a profound difference between technique that works in lessons and technique that holds up under competitive pressure. The beautiful attack that flows perfectly in a controlled drill might completely fall apart when your opponent doesn’t cooperate with the expected response.

This is why the digging must include not just the development of technique, but the pressure-testing of that technique under increasingly challenging conditions. It means practicing your primary actions when you’re tired, when you’re frustrated, when the timing feels off, when your opponent is actively trying to disrupt your rhythm.

It also means developing multiple pathways to the same tactical goal. The fencer who has only one way to attack will struggle when that approach is neutralized. The one who has developed several variations, who has practiced adapting when the primary plan fails, who has trained alternative approaches to completion — that fencer has options when the competition pressure mounts.

Technical preparation must also include the unglamorous work of maintaining skills under fatigue. Your parry might be perfect when you’re fresh, but what happens after five straight 15-touch bouts? Your point control might be precise at the start of the day, but can you maintain it when you are super tired and your concentration is wavering?

This is why serious fencers spend months drilling basics even after they’ve “mastered” them. It’s not about learning the technique — it’s about making the technique bulletproof under any conditions they might face in competition.

Tactical Intelligence: The Thinking Fencer’s Edge

Perhaps nowhere is the “dig your well” principle more crucial than in tactical preparation. Tactical awareness — the ability to read opponents, adapt to their patterns, and make split-second strategic decisions — cannot be developed during competition. It’s the result of months of conscious practice analyzing, adjusting, and expanding your tactical vocabulary.

This preparation involves studying not just your own fencing, but understanding the common patterns and preferences of different types of opponents. The aggressive attacker who relies on overwhelming speed. The defensive counter-fighter who camps and waits for your mistakes. The tactical manipulator who sets elaborate traps. Each type requires different approaches, different timing, different mental models.

But tactical preparation goes deeper than just recognizing opponent types. It includes developing your ability to make mid-bout adjustments. Understanding when to abandon a game plan that isn’t working. Recognizing the difference between a temporary setback and a fundamental strategic error. Learning to read the flow of a bout and adjust your risk tolerance accordingly.

Most importantly, it means practicing tactical decision-making under pressure. In training, you have time to think, to analyze, to discuss options with your coach. In competition, you have seconds between touches to process what happened and decide what to try next. This kind of rapid tactical processing is a skill that must be developed through deliberate practice, not hoped for in the moment.

Mental Resilience: The Ultimate Separator

The deepest well you can dig is mental — the psychological preparation that determines how you respond when everything is on the line. This might be the most misunderstood aspect of competitive preparation because it’s often the most invisible.

Mental preparation isn’t just about staying calm or maintaining confidence — though those are important. It’s about developing systems for managing the inevitable challenges that competition brings. What do you do when you’re down 8-2 in a bout you expected to dominate? How do you respond when a referee makes a call that changes the momentum? How do you shake off two touches that your opponent scored against you and later you figured out your weapon lost its tip? How do you ignore the fact that you were the last one to make it out of pools and now need to face a much stronger opponent in your first bout? What’s your process for handling the pressure when you’re one touch away from your biggest result ever?

These responses can’t be improvised in the moment. They must be practiced, refined, and made automatic through months of deliberate mental training. This includes visualization work, where you mentally rehearse handling challenging situations. It includes developing pre-performance routines that help you access your optimal competitive state regardless of external circumstances. It includes building the kind of process-focused mindset that keeps you grounded when results-oriented thinking would create paralyzing pressure.And of course it is developed through many hours of practice and competitions.

Mental preparation also means developing realistic expectations about the competitive experience. Understanding that you will face adversity, that not everything will go according to plan, that some days your best effort won’t be enough for the result you want. The fencer who has mentally prepared for these realities responds to them as part of the normal competitive process rather than as devastating surprises.

The Integration Challenge

The real art of preparation isn’t just developing these individual components — physical, technical, tactical, and mental — it’s learning to integrate them under competitive conditions. This is where many well-prepared fencers still struggle. They might be fit, technically sound, tactically aware, and mentally tough in isolation, but struggle to access all these resources simultaneously under pressure.

This integration must be practiced through increasingly challenging training scenarios. It means structuring practice sessions that demand physical, technical, tactical, and mental excellence simultaneously. It means creating training situations that replicate the specific pressures of competition — the fatigue, the time pressure, the emotional stakes, the need to perform while others are watching and evaluating.

Most importantly, it means understanding that this integration process takes time. You can’t develop it in the final weeks before a major competition. It must be built gradually, through months of consistent work that slowly raises the bar on what you can handle effectively and the camps before these nationals is like a final intensive rehearsal.

The Timing Truth

Here’s what many fencers and parents struggle to accept: by the time you arrive at the competition venue, your performance ceiling is already established. You might not reach that ceiling — nerves, bad luck, or tactical mistakes can certainly undermine even excellent preparation. But you cannot exceed it through effort or will alone on competition day (Here, I discount luck, which certainly has a place and you can win a major competition because of it. But this is not sustainable strategy, of course)

This doesn’t mean competition day preparation is meaningless. Your warm-up routine, your tactical reminders, your mental preparation between bouts — all of these matter enormously for accessing the preparation you’ve already done. But they cannot substitute for preparation that wasn’t done months earlier.

Understanding this timing truth is actually liberating. It removes the frantic energy that comes from trying to fix months of inadequate preparation in the final days before competition. It redirects focus to what actually matters: the consistent, unglamorous work of building your competitive foundation one training session at a time.

It also highlights why the most successful fencers tend to be those who embrace the process rather than just chase results. They understand that today’s training session is an investment in competitions that are still months away, that yesterday’s bad competition is another building stone in their long term foundation. They dig their well not because they’re thirsty today, but because they know competitive thirst is inevitable, and when it comes, they want to be ready.

The Commitment Required

This approach to preparation requires a fundamental shift in how you think about fencing development. It means making choices today based on what you’ll need months from now. It means prioritizing consistent preparation over convenient shortcuts. It means trusting the process even when immediate results aren’t visible.

It also means accepting that true competitive preparation is expensive — not just financially, but in terms of time, energy, and sacrifice. The well-digging work often happens when you’re tired, when you’d rather be doing something else, when the connection between today’s effort and future competition seems distant and theoretical.

But this is exactly what separates fencers who consistently perform to their potential from those who remain forever frustrated by their competitive results. The former understand that competition is simply the final expression of months of preparation. The latter keep hoping that somehow, this time, the competitive moment will transcend their preparation.

Digging Starts Now

So where does this leave you if you’re reading this with an important competition approaching? The hard truth is that for this competition, your well is largely already dug. Your job now is to trust your preparation, access what you’ve built, and perform to the level you’ve earned through your previous work. Do your maximum to prepare yourself now but understand that this is just a first step.

For every competition after this one, for every future season, for every long-term goal you have in this sport — the digging can begin immediately. Today’s training session is an investment in next season’s competitive performance. This month’s conditioning work is preparation for next year’s nationals, if it continues throughout the whole next season. The tactical skills you develop over the coming months will determine your ceiling at competitions that haven’t even been scheduled yet.

The beautiful thing about this timing reality is that it puts you in complete control of your competitive destiny. Not the immediate destiny — that’s already been largely determined by previous choices. But your future competitive potential is entirely in your hands, waiting to be built through the choices you make in training sessions, conditioning workouts, mental preparation, and tactical study.

The question isn’t whether you have time to dig your well before you’re thirsty. The question is whether you’re willing to start digging now for the thirst that’s coming.

Photo by Rosaura_Sandoval