It happened again last weekend during the March NAC. One of our fencers — talented, hard-working, technically sound — froze on the strip during a crucial DE. Not because their opponent was doing anything particularly brilliant. Not because they didn’t know what to do. But because somewhere between the “Fence!” command and their first step, a voice in their head whispered: “You’re going to mess this up. You always do against this fencer.” Just a tiny, seemingly insignificant whisper of a negative self-talk.
And just like that, their body tensed, their movements became hesitant, and that prophecy fulfilled itself with remarkable efficiency.
When I asked them afterward what happened, they looked at me with that familiar mix of frustration and embarrassment. “I don’t know. I just… I couldn’t stop thinking about how I would probably lose.”
If you’ve ever fenced competitively, this scenario probably sounds painfully familiar. And even if you are a parent reading this blog and never fenced, you can still recognize this feeling, since I can bet this happened to you too in other aspects of your life. We call it negative self-talk: that persistent inner critic that seems to have an unlimited supply of reasons why you aren’t good enough, aren’t improving fast enough, aren’t working hard enough, aren’t reaching desirable results. That voice that counts every mistake you’ve ever made and keeps them ready for immediate replay at the worst possible moments.
This destructive inner monologue isn’t just an occasional annoyance. For many fencers, it’s a constant companion, a shadow that follows them from practice to competition, from victory to defeat, from one season to the next. And its impact goes far beyond just making us feel bad. It actively sabotages our performance, makes us doubt even the skills we’ve already mastered, and prevents us from attempting the new ones we need to break through to the next level.
The Omnipresent Critic
What makes negative self-talk so insidious is its ability to find you anywhere in your fencing journey. It can appear weeks before a competition, whispering that you’re not preparing enough. It can ambush you the night before, when you should be resting but instead lie awake thinking about all of your technical weaknesses. It shows up during warm-up, between pool bouts, right before that critical DE. It’s there to greet you after a disappointing result, and it hangs around to remind you of that failure as you prepare for your next event.
And the most annoying thing — it often strikes hardest at the moments when you need your confidence most. Right when you’re attempting something new, right when you’re facing a challenging opponent, right when you’ve worked your way to a big competition, or passed the pools for the first times, or fighting to get to the medal round at the nationals. The higher the stakes, the louder the voice. The more you care about the outcome, the more persistent its doubts become.
I’ve seen it manifest in so many ways among our fencers:
- The talented youth fencer who dominates in practice but “mysteriously” underperforms in competition
- The cadet fencer who can execute complex actions perfectly in drills but reverts to the same basic (and predictable) movements under pressure
- The promising competitor who builds a lead and then begins to fence defensively, practically inviting their opponent to mount a comeback
- The athlete who beats high-ranked or A and B-rated opponents one day, then loses to much lower-ranked or unrated fencers the next.
What’s fascinating — and frankly, a little comforting — is that this isn’t just a fencing problem. It’s not even just a sports problem. It’s a human problem, one that’s likely been with us since our species first developed self-awareness.
The Evolutionary Legacy
There’s something darkly fascinating about the origins of negative self-talk. That critical inner voice wasn’t always your enemy. In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, it was trying to protect you.
Think about our distant ancestors, navigating a world full of immediate physical dangers in the face of sabre-toothed tigers and dinosaurs and other predators. In that context, caution was adaptive. Pessimism was protective. The early human who constantly scanned for threats, who anticipated the worst-case scenarios, who remembered past dangers vividly — that human had a survival advantage.
When your brain tells you “you can’t do this” or “remember how badly this went last time,” it’s drawing on ancient circuitry designed to keep you safe from these saber-toothed tigers, not to help you score touches in epee. It’s trying to prevent you from taking risks, from potentially embarrassing yourself, from experiencing failure — all things that, in our evolutionary past, could have had serious social or even survival consequences.
The problem is that while our brains haven’t changed much in the last few thousand years, our environments and challenges have transformed dramatically. The hypervigilant, risk-averse programming that once protected us now often holds us back, especially in contexts like competitive fencing where calculated risk-taking and confidence are crucial for success.
Understanding this doesn’t immediately silence that critical voice, but it does give us some perspective. That voice isn’t the truth about who you are or what you’re capable of — it’s an outdated protection mechanism that needs recalibration.
The Fencing-Specific Triggers
While negative self-talk is universal, it has some particular manifestations in fencing that are worth examining.
First, there’s the isolating nature of our sport. When you step onto that strip, it’s just you. No teammates to pick up the slack if you’re having an off day, at least in the individual events, which are the absolute majority of all events you’d ever fence. There is nowhere to hide. Every error is yours alone, every defeat is personal. This intense individual spotlight can amplify self-doubt in ways team sports sometimes buffer against.
Then there’s the rapid-fire decision making required. In fencing, especially at higher levels, you’re making tactical choices in fractions of seconds. There’s no time-out to consult with a coach during an active period, no pause to gather your thoughts. There is a minute in between the periods, but you need to survive the previous period and do it in such a way there will still be a reasonable chance to make up for a deficit. This creates fertile ground for that inner critic, who loves to jump in during momentary hesitations with helpful comments like “you’re overthinking again” or “you’re too slow to see the openings.”
The scoring system itself can feed negative thinking. In fencing, especially in a close bout, a single touch can be the difference between advancing and elimination. This heightens the perceived cost of each error and can make fencers catastrophize small mistakes.
And let’s not forget the visibility factor. Few things are more public than a fencing defeat. Everyone can see the score. Your coach, your clubmates, your parents, your rivals — they’re all watching as that final touch is scored against you. For many fencers, especially younger ones, the fear of this public “failure” can trigger waves of negative self-talk.
These sport-specific factors don’t make negative self-talk inevitable, but they do make developing mental resilience particularly important for fencers who want to reach their potential.
Recognizing Your Patterns of Negative Self-Talk
The first step in dealing with negative self-talk is becoming aware of your particular patterns. This voice is remarkably predictable, cycling through the same criticisms, the same catastrophic predictions, the same unhelpful comparisons.
Try to keep a mental journal of when this voice appears and record what it says. I bet you will see some common patterns, most of which would fall into one of these six categories:
- The Perfectionist: “That wasn’t good enough. Your parry was too wide. Your recovery was too slow. Your steps were too big. Your sense of timing sucked. You should have seen that coming.”
- The Fortune Teller: “You’re going to lose this bout. You always lose to lefties. You never fence well in the morning.”
- The Historian: “Remember when you choked in the DE last tournament? This feels just like that. It’s happening again.”
- The Impostor: “You don’t belong at this level. Everyone else has been fencing longer. Your qualification was just luck.”
- The Generalizer: “You missed that attack three times. You’re terrible at attacking. You should just defend and hope they make mistakes.”
- The Complainer: “You are again assigned to the same referee who screwed up your last bout. Your pool is unreasonably tough compared to anyone else in the competition. Your strip is the loudest spot and it’s impossible to focus.”
Do any of these sound familiar? Most fencers have one or two dominant patterns, voices that show up reliably in particular situations.
The power in recognizing these patterns is that a voice identified is already partly disarmed. When you can say to yourself, “Ah, there’s my perfectionist voice again,” you create a crucial bit of distance. You’re no longer completely identified with that voice — you’re observing it. And observation is the beginning of change.
Practical Strategies to Fight This Negative Self-Talk
So how do we fight back against this inner saboteur? Here are some practical approaches I’ve seen work with fencers at all levels:
1. Develop a Pre-Performance Routine
One of the most effective ways to counter negative self-talk is to give your mind something constructive to focus on instead. A consistent pre-bout routine accomplishes this while also preparing you physically and mentally for performance.
This might include physical elements (specific warm-up movements), technical reminders (reviewing your primary tactics against this opponent), and mental components (visualization or breathing exercises). The key is consistency — the same sequence, every time, regardless of the opponent or stakes.
When negative thoughts intrude, the routine gives you somewhere specific to redirect your attention. Instead of “I always lose to this fencer,” you focus on “I’m going to execute my routine and prepare exactly as I always do.” or “This fencer’s technique is exactly what I practiced the whole last month. I’m going to run through all the elements of it in my head.”
2. Create a Personal Redirect
For those moments when negative thoughts break through during a bout, have a prepared mental redirect ready. This should be something simple and immediate that disrupts the negative pattern.
Some fencers use a physical trigger, like tapping their weapon guard twice or adjusting their mask. Others use a verbal cue — a specific word or phrase that signals a mental reset. The content matters less than the consistent application.
One of my epeeists, after missing an attack, used to immediately spiral into self-criticism. We developed a simple cue — she would mentally say “Next touch” and physically adjust her grip. This small ritual helped break the cycle of negativity and refocus on the present moment.
3. Reframe, Don’t Suppress
Trying to simply silence negative thoughts rarely works. Instead, work on actively reframing them. This isn’t about false positivity — it’s about accuracy and perspective.
When your inner voice says “You always lose to this fencer,” the reframe might be “I’ve had challenging bouts with them before, but each bout is a new opportunity.” When it says “Your attacking is terrible today,” the reframe could be “That specific attack didn’t work; I need to set it up differently.”
The goal isn’t to pretend everything is perfect, but to replace distorted, unhelpful thoughts with more balanced, constructive ones.
4. Develop a Growth Identity
Perhaps the most powerful long-term strategy is to gradually shift how you define yourself as a fencer. If your identity is tied to results (“I’m a successful fencer if I win”), you’ll be extremely vulnerable to negative self-talk whenever those results are threatened.
Instead, work on building what psychologists call a “growth identity” — defining yourself by your commitment to improvement rather than by outcomes. “I’m a fencer who works hard to develop new skills and responds constructively to challenges” is an identity that can withstand losses and setbacks because they become part of your development story rather than threats to your self-worth.
5. Use Deliberate Practice to Build Confidence
Nothing silences negative self-talk like earned confidence, and nothing builds earned confidence like deliberate, successful practice.
Work with your coach to identify specific skills you’re insecure about, and develop focused drills to address them. Start with manageable challenges and gradually increase difficulty, creating a consistent experience of mastery. The voice that says “You can’t do this” has much less power when you have concrete evidence that you can, in fact, do it — repeatedly and under varying conditions.
The Ongoing Battle
Let’s be honest — negative self-talk isn’t something you eliminate once and for all. Even elite fencers, even Olympic champions, still hear that voice sometimes. The difference is that they’ve learned to recognize it, to question it, and to prevent it from dictating their performance.
One of the most powerful moments in coaching is when a fencer who has struggled with self-doubt comes off the strip after a tough bout and says something like, “The voice was there, telling me I couldn’t do it. But I didn’t listen. I stuck to my game plan.” That’s victory, regardless of the score.
Because ultimately, this inner battle matters far beyond fencing. The mental resilience you develop on the strip — the ability to face down fear, to persist through doubt, to maintain focus under pressure — these are skills that serve you everywhere in life.
So the next time that voice pipes up, telling you all the reasons you can’t or won’t or shouldn’t, remember: it’s just an outdated protection mechanism, trying to keep you safe in a world that no longer exists. Thank it for its concern, and then do the brave thing anyway.
The real victory in fencing isn’t just defeating your opponent — it’s defeating that inner critic that tries to convince you not to try. And unlike tournament results, that’s a victory entirely within your control.
Now go fence like you know you can.
Image: by Smilie027 published under Creative Common License
“referee who screwed up your last bout”
Own your failure. Fencers should watch their pool’s first bout intently to learn what actions and penalties a ref is calling. Instead I see fencers inattentive or even wandering away. In a DE, pay attention and don’t try to prove that a ref is calling something wrong or not at all. “This is the way”.🧑🚀