Roger,

You did great! Winning by force, but not being in touch with or able to
moderate your mental state would have been worthless. The ability to see
your need to change your focus, then to be able to do it is as critical
to your future in fencing as the need to continue to practice. By
consciously changing up your balance of attack/defense you keep control
of your choice of actions - you are taking control of the fencing
match. If you do 100% attacks the defender can bait you into becoming
over committed and parries executed from this posture are usually made
in desperation and do not yield clean reposts. Being on 100% defense can
help slow the match and make the attacker desperate, but you will
eventually run out of room to withdraw. The ability to subtly shift back
and forth between 80/20 and 40/60 is a tremendous mental ability that
needs to be cultivated. You do not really need a good reason to switch,
follow your instincts and try to shift around to keep control of the
encounter. Better, if you can use a defensive posture when planning to
attack, then you can attack preemptively when the opponent tries to
approach. And, if you can appear aggressive while focusing on defense
you will be very likely to land one of those very lucrative
counter-reposts. This offensive defense is the posture that leads to the
tactical structure called second intention. You can keep yourself from
being under attack longer sometimes by constantly threatening (with out
getting committed to landing any particular attack (keep your feet
(balance))), rather than withdrawing.

High marks for you, Roger.
Cheers!
CLF

rogerthedodger17552 wrote:

> Total of 22 fencers. I was in a pool of 6 bouts, against 3 U's and 3
> E's.
> I had a rather slow start- after going 0-4, I realized that I was
> focused on attacking, rather than a balance of offense and defense- I
> also was not focused on the target, since I was off-target too often.
> In bout 5, I allowed my opponent to attack more, and got the parry-
> reposte, winning 5-3 against Rebecca Chung, a young E fencer from
> Virginia Academy of Fencing. The lowest person in the pool would not
> move to the DE, so I needed another win- after being down 1-4 against
> a lefty, I fought back to win, 5-4, squeeking into the DE.
> Unfortunately, I lost my DE 7-15. In my pool, I faced several fencers
> I met in the past, and several new. Included in my pool were Spahr (E
> from Black Diamond), Mattie Condray (E from Virginia), and Rebecca
> Chung (E). I was disappointed in the number of losses, but each event
> is a learning experience.