Month: May 2018

Standardize Your Weapon

On May 7, 2018

Standardize Your Weapons

I recently had a conversation with one of our fencers where she told me that her favorite epee broke and she does not have time to fix it before her next competition. All of the parts of all of her weapons were different: the guards, blades, tips, pistols. Nothing was the same.

I was surprised to hear that she had been using a Frankenstein-ed version of a weapon cobbled together with different pieces and different blades. While I understand that might have been the only way she could attain the right kind of weapon at the time, it made me realize that there are some very important considerations for you to take when purchasing and assembling your arsenal.

How to Prevent Burnout

By Irina Chirashnya

On May 4, 2018

In For Parents, Health

How to prevent burnout in fencing A few weeks ago, for the first time in four years of writing and operating this blog, we didn’t post a blog or send an email. This was both nerve wracking and also somewhat of a relief. While we always have many blogs that Igor and I are writing, we chose to take a much needed break for us, for our family, and actually for the first time in a very long time…go on a vacation.

Our fencing kids, all competitive youth fencers, train about four or five times a week, sometimes up to 3 hours, and in addition to their training and regular competitions, as every other child they have their homework and bunch of other extracurricular activities.

As a fencing family, we are particularly aware of the concept burnout as it applies to our fencing kids, and to ourselves as parents of fencers. For us, taking a vacation was an important step to preventing a scenario of burnout that could affect the whole family.