While we welcome the end of a fencing match, we also know that the ending is the hardest part of the whole process. The final minutes are always much more challenging than the opening minutes. Taking charge of those riveting and oftentimes overwhelming moments that are the capstone of any fencing match is difficult for new fencers and it can also be a lot for veteran fencers. The fear of ending in a match can take on a whole new meaning when fencers freeze and are unable to seal the deal on the hard work that they’ve done thus far.

How can fencers combat the anxiety of the last touch?

The last touch is not just another touch

In the thick of a match, it can seem like all the touches are the same. There isn’t anything fundamentally different about the final touch that makes it different than all of the other touches, at least not from a physical point of view.

It’s not just in fencing – the last 20% of a project is the most challenging part. Why is that? It’s because the last 20% is the part that we imagined over and over again, so it’s greater than just twenty percent. No one sits around thinking “Ah, I cannot wait for the middle of my fencing match. It will be totally fantastic!” Of course not! They think “Wow, it would feel so great to get to that last point. I can’t wait to hear the referee call my winning touch!”

That last touch is not just the last touch, and it’s not even the culmination of the entire match. That last touch is the culmination of all of the work you’ve put into it to get here, the months of work and coaching. It feels that way inside a fencer’s head.

Over and over again, we notice this scenario with fencers: they bring the score close to a win and then lose the decisive touch. We see this play out in fencing at every level and with every weapon. The most visible are 14 to something heading into the last minute and a leading fencer loses momentum and eventually often loses the bout.

Actually scores of 14:14 often happen and the higher you advance, the more of a chance there is that you will face a difficult opponent and they will be closer to your skill level. That’s why the higher you go, the more likely you are to run up against 14:14 or the priority minute.

These situations are thrilling for the people watching a match, but they are often terrifying for fencers who are living through them. Fencers must learn not to fear the end of a match that comes down to this because, with the right mindset, it can be a positive situation.

Fear of 14

One of the common situations that we see is when a fencer leads 14 to something much less and it’s clear that they should win. This is especially true when we see one fencer far ahead, like 2 or more touches. We all know these matches, those with a dominant fencer who gets point after point with no answer from their opponent. Those unanswered points are clean and sharp, with the fencer calm and relaxed. They are in control, so the assumption is that they will stay in control.

The problem comes when that fencer who is in control stalls out. Suddenly something about the magic number of 14 has changed them. Rather than being loose and relaxed, now they are paralyzed and stiff. They aren’t themselves any longer, and out of nowhere loss of confidence has frozen them. They go on to lose the bout, even though they seemed so handily in the winner’s lane just a few minutes ago.

Why the sudden change from confident to consumed with fear? The problem is that they are afraid to lose!

Once a fencer reaches fourteen points, they now have something precious that is worth fighting for. They are now at their peak, almost ready to jump over the edge and achieve their goal. It’s so close that they can taste it. Now that there is something very real that they are on the edge of getting, they are suddenly terrified to lose it. For some people, that terror turns to freezing.

Our brains are wired to respond in one of three ways to being threatened.

• Fight
• Flight
• Freeze

At the end of that match, with those fourteen hard-earned points, the fencer’s mind is going to flip to one of these three things. They cannot fly away, because no fencer is going to just run off the strip. That means they have to either fight or freeze. Fighting is obviously the choice we’d want a fencer to make in this situation, but as this is a reflex, that’s easy to say but not so easy to make happen.

At first, when they’re building those points, they are thinking “I am winning my bout.” Then it can flip to “I am winning, but what if I don’t?” This is where that fight or freeze piece pours over them. The thought of potentially losing when they are so close means that some fencer freeze up or become paralyzed.

This happens to the best of us, and it can come from out of nowhere. Even if you’ve never reacted with a freeze impetus before, you can sometimes flip over to this when you’re right at the end of a bout.

There are ways to combat this reaction and pull yourself back into action. Here are some effective methods to fight the freeze.

Reset the score in your head. Pretend that the score isn’t 14 to something. Instead, imagine that you’re only at four and you’ve got to get to five. Another effective way is to flip the score in your head – imagine that your opponent is at fourteen and you are at their score. And yet another way is to try to erase the score in your mind completely. Just think how many times you’ve heard coaches shout at this moment “It’s 0:0!”

Pull your focus to the opponent. At this point, the score does not actually matter. All that matters is one more touch. That means you can push all of your focus right onto the opponent who is standing in front of you. Put everything else out of your mind and look at your target area.

Engage three of your senses. This is an effective way to stop the response, and it works no matter when you freeze during a match. Feel the ground under your feet. Listen to the sounds of the arena. Smell the inside of your mask (yes it’s weird, but it works). Engaging three of your senses affects your brain in a fundamental way that will pull you out of your head.

Control your breathing. Your breath is the one thing you can absolutely control in those final moments. When anxiety hits, our breathing becomes shallow and rapid, which only feeds the panic. Practice box breathing during training so it becomes automatic under pressure. Breathe in for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Do this twice while you’re on guard, and you’ll find that your body naturally relaxes. The beautiful thing about breathing is that it’s always there with you on the strip, no matter what the score says.

You are not alone if this is something that you struggle with. Even the best fencers in the world have this happen to them. We saw it in the Olympics in Rio, with a score of 14:10 for Imre Geza, but instead Sangyoung Park won. This happens to every kind of fencer at every level of competition. That’s why it’s so important that you think of ways to deal with it, because it will likely happen to you at some point in your fencing career, and actually many times!

Preparing your mind before you step on strip

The time to prepare for these high-pressure moments isn’t when you’re already at 14 points and feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders. The real work happens long before you step onto the strip for that crucial bout.

Mental rehearsal is just as important as physical practice. Spend time visualizing yourself in those exact scenarios that make your palms sweat. Picture yourself at 14:12, feeling the tension, and then successfully working through your breathing and focus techniques. See yourself making that final touch with confidence rather than fear. The more you practice these moments in your mind, the more familiar they become when they happen in real life.

During your warm-up routine, dedicate a few minutes to mental preparation alongside your physical preparation. Just like you stretch your muscles and practice your footwork, you need to prepare your mind for what might come. Remind yourself that close matches are opportunities, not disasters. They’re chances to prove that all your training and mental work have paid off.

Create a pre-bout ritual that grounds you and puts you in the right headspace. Maybe it’s a specific sequence of breathing exercises, maybe it’s repeating a personal mantra, or maybe it’s visualizing your tactical game plan. Whatever it is, make it yours and use it consistently. When you have something familiar to anchor you, those high-pressure moments become just another part of your routine rather than something terrifying and unknown.

Tactical adjustments when the pressure mounts

Here’s something that many fencers get wrong when they approach that final touch: they completely change their tactics. The very actions and approaches that got them to 14 points suddenly seem insufficient, so they abandon them for something completely different. This is almost always a mistake.

If your aggressive, attacking style got you to 14:10, don’t suddenly become defensive and passive. If your patient, counter-attacking approach built your lead, don’t abandon it for wild, desperate actions. The tactics that worked for fourteen touches didn’t suddenly stop working just because you can see the finish line.

That said, you do need to be aware that your opponent is likely to change their approach as they become more desperate. They might become more aggressive, take bigger risks, or try techniques they haven’t used all match. Stay alert to these changes, but don’t let them derail your own successful game plan.

The key is to maintain your tactical identity while staying flexible enough to adapt to what your opponent throws at you. Think of it like being a jazz musician – you know your song, but you’re ready to improvise when the moment calls for it. Your foundation remains solid even as you make small adjustments.

Learning from the losses that sting the most

When you do lose a match from a commanding position, and it will happen because it happens to everyone, that loss is going to sting in a way that other losses don’t. It’s going to replay in your head, and you’re going to wonder “what if” for longer than you’d like.

This is actually valuable, even though it feels awful. These losses teach us things that easy victories never can. They show us exactly where our mental game needs work and what specific situations trigger our freeze response. The key is to process these experiences constructively rather than letting them create even more anxiety for future matches.

Take time to analyze what happened, but do it clinically. What were you thinking about in those final moments? What changed in your body language or tactics? Were there warning signs earlier in the match that you ignored? This isn’t about beating yourself up – it’s about gathering data for next time.

Most importantly, remember that losing a close match doesn’t make you a choker or prove that you can’t handle pressure. It makes you human, and it gives you specific information about what to work on. Some of the best fencers in the world had to lose several heartbreaking matches before they learned to win them. Your losses are part of your education, not evidence of your limitations.

Fear of the priority minute

“I’m bad at priority.”

We have heard this hundreds of times. Though some people certainly struggle with the priority minute, it’s something that can be overcome with the right mindset. Just like anything, you have to practice in order to get there.

We come back to that idea of fight or freeze. In order to prevent freezing from happening, you have to practice and learn to think differently about the match. If you allow that anxiety to overwhelm you, then it is certain that you will get frozen and fail to win your match.

Staying calm is essential. That means mind over matter. Sure, you can definitely lose the touch just as you lost the fourteen touches up until now. However, if you lose to the opponent because they are better than you, well that’s totally fine. There is nothing about that that you could have ever controlled. If you lose because you gave in to pressure and were no longer able to control your own actions, well that’s a totally different outcome and should be avoided.

Mastery of over nerves during this part of a match is no simple task. With practice, those nerves can be turned around into something positive. Here are strategies for improving your control in the priority minute.

Compete Participating in as many competitions as you can is the best practice and the best way to overcome fear of the priority minute. The more you do it, the more your body and mind will become accustomed to the environment and the big emotions. That will make those big emotions smaller.

Clear the mind. If you’ve ever watched any martial arts movie in the history of movies, you’ll have seen that close up/slow motion shot on the fighter right before the last strike that determines the winner. They are showing through the cinematography how our hero is concentrating and clearing their mind, almost like a few seconds of meditation. Think about this in the Karate Kid in the scene right before the final strike.

In fencing, we of course don’t practice with Cobra Kai, but we do still need to practice bringing the mind into a place of relaxation and tranquility as we jump towards the final blow of a bout. The outcome doesn’t matter, and so calculating our points or our ratings or the glory or lack thereof doesn’t matter. In those final moments, all that can matter is the point we are currently pursuing. The action is the thing.

Simulate priority in training. Even in the club we should try to simulate priority. The problem with training for priority is that there is nothing at stake and our minds and bodies know it. To combat this reality, create a negative outcome for yourself when you are training. Make it something tangible that you do not want to lose to help you feel the nerves

For example, simulate priorities and if you lose in more than 50% of your trials, punish yourself with one day of social media detox. You might punish yourself by reading one chapter of the Odyssey or Ulysses. If you keep doing this, then you’ll be a priority ninja by the time you finish the book or become a well versed person – either way it’s a win-win! Maybe you love Homer or Joyce and this isn’t a punishment, so do this with extra pushups, a long run, whatever motivates you.

Creating creative ways to learn to deal with the priority minute and close matches is so important to growing as a fencer. These are the big moments, the moments of truth where we face our biggest fears. Overcoming them feels even better than just winning.

They say that the one with the stronger nerves wins, but it’s more that the one who can control their nerves is the one who will win. Everyone gets intimidated, and the points on the board can become too much of a focus for anyone. It’s important that you strategize and learn how to deal with that fear before you see these numbers on the scoring machine.

Photo: Augusto Bizzi