Fencing Bear at Prayer

"Adults can hamper progress with their own perfectionism: whereas children throw themselves into tasks, adults often agonise over the mechanics of the movements, trying to conceptualise exactly what is required.  This could be one of our biggest downfalls.  'Adults think much more about what they are doing,' says Gabriele Wulf at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 'Children just copy what they see.' "Wulf's work over the past decade shows that you should focus on the outcome of your actions rather than the intricacies of the movements.   She applies this finding in her own life: as a keen golfer, she has found it is better to think about the swing of the club, for instance, rather than the position of her hands.  'I'm always trying to find where best to focus my attention,' she says.  Similarly, if you are learning to sing, then you should concentrate on the tone of the voice, rather than on the larynx or the placement of the tongue.  Study...

Short answer: No, not if you're doing it right. As, for example, here, where I am trying to explain an insight that came to me at the tournament this past weekend while I was thinking about whether I should just quit trying to fence épée as a second weapon and stick to foil.  I've been competing in épée off and on, I now realize, for going on something like three or so years .  And yet, I am nowhere nearly as strong in épée now as I was when I had been competing in foil for the same amount of time.  By the time I had been competing in foil as long as I have been competing in épée, I was a D.  I'm not even an E in épée at the moment, nor is it likely that I will be any time soon. So why is that?  Well, I don't really get to practice épée much now that our club moved and most of the fencers that I practice with only do foil.  But that isn't all of it.  I could say that it's because I haven't been working hard enough at it, but that isn't quite it e...

I've figured out what it is.  Not talent (but then I knew that all along).  Not time (at least, not time as such ).  Not [fill in the blank with some other difficult-to-acquire something].  Rather (and listen closely, because this is really important), it is the willingness to be absorbed in practice to the exclusion of everything else . How Zen, you say.  But it's true.  The secret ingredient to excellence is the willingness to surrender ourselves to practice without attachment to outcome.    Duh.  Talk about having the magic slippers on my feet the whole time.  This felt like a much more startling insight when it came to me on Sunday as I was typing out that entry from my diary about how fat I felt and came to the part where I mentioned not practicing drawing enough.  I was right, I didn't practice.  Why?  Because I always wanted everything to be effortless, of course.  And if it weren't?  I would give up....

I've been thinking for days about tomorrow: that it will be a year and a day since I started my blog . It really does feel like there should be something important to say, some big announcement to mark this event. Or non-event. It's just an anniversary, not really a thing that is going to happen. But if this were a fairy-tale, what might I expect? I know, I know, I can hear Granny Weatherwax now . We don't live in stories; we live our lives, and that is much better than living a tale. The princess doesn't have to marry the frog; the eldest sister (that's me) doesn't have to be the one whom the shoe won't fit. We create our own stories (hurray for free will!) and thus our own meaning. But it's very hard to escape from the expectation that maybe life really is a story that should go a certain way. For example, if I were a journalist , perhaps I would have spent the past year traveling, having all sorts of adventures and moments of self-realization...

It's not fair. My husband's feet are perfect: smooth, pink, no cracks in the heels, no rough spots along the edges. Just feet. Mine, on the other hand, are almost frightening. My heels are nothing but cracks, peeling and dry. There are calluses on both my big toes and on the ball of my left foot, just where I put the most pressure when I'm fencing. Even the bottoms of my feet are horrible to look at, a spider's web of cracks and dried skin. Sometimes, as last night, I put lotion on my feet before I go to bed and cover my feet with socks. When I wake up, my feet are significantly improved: pinker and not so overtly cracked; the calluses softened a bit so that I can smooth them away. But the lotion makes my feet slippery for when I am doing my yoga, meaning I would seem to have to choose between having smooth feet on the one hand and a sure grip on my mat in Trikonasana and Adho Mukha Svanasana on the other. Nor is this a temporary condition that I might cure by ...

Yes, I'm still disappointed with myself . Last year, the week after I did so poorly at Nationals, I decided to get my navel pierced, in part because I'd just spent ten days in Miami Beach and had seen how many women (and men!) have had their tummies done and so was thinking, "Why not? My tummy is surely as good as theirs"; in part because I wanted something that I could change about who I was. And, of course, because I think it looks cool. This year, now that the piercing is fully healed,[1] I'm shopping for navel jewelry, but everything I like comes in diamonds and I'm not sure I can persuade my husband that we can afford (sigh) more bling right at this moment. I'm not really interested in getting a tattoo and I don't have any more body parts I'm eager to pierce [2], so I'm thrust back upon my blog and trying to think my way out of the paper bag that is my ego-self. But, oh, how I wish there was something else I wanted to have pierced...

A friend of mine who has been following my posts of late has been anxious to remind me that fencing is not something that you can learn by reading a book . In his words: "Fencing is so 3-D and reactive it is impossible to articulate into book learning." Rather, it is something one learns only by doing, more particularly, through the physical lessons that we have with our coach: "Everything you will need to learn about fencing he will teach you. There is no need to look elsewhere." Fencing, of course, is not the only activity to suffer this limitation. Tennis, knitting, singing, playing a musical instrument, walking, speaking a language, prayer: none of these activities is accessible to us in any way other than through practice itself. Far from being able to teach us "how to", books of themselves cannot even teach us how to read, as any one who has gone to a library and picked up a book without knowing the relevant conventions of translating phonemes...

One of the things that I hoped would happen if I started keeping this blog was that I would somehow avoid feeling the way that I am feeling right now, after practice, having lost a bout to one of my clubmates that, in my pride*, I feel that I "ought" to have won. Well, there goes that theory! What is vexing me now is that my friend told me afterwards that she had been reading my blog and found what I said about being fully on the strip, not worrying about anything other than the action of the moment, really helpful** and that she had been thinking about this while we were bouting. And, indeed, she fenced very well and quite appropriately won. Throughout the bout, she stayed relaxed but focused, such that even when the score reached 10-14 against her, she was able to play each touch, one at a time, and come back and win the final touch with the score tied. On the one hand, I am encouraged (not to mention, flattered) that she found what I wrote made sense and was able to ap...

This is a question my coach and fellow fencers have heard a lot from me over the years. Frequently it is punctuated by its obverse: "I'm not getting any better at this, am I? Maybe I should just quit!" Remember, as a fencing bear, I am only a 5-year-old, but even 5-year-olds should get over such childish responses to the challenge of learning, yes? The irony here is that, the longer I fenced, the stronger this response seemed to get. In the beginning, I was simply happy to be on the strip at all, amazed and delighted to be learning a new skill. I watched the more experienced fencers with awe and not a little bit of envy, but at least I was practicing. This was the period during which I lost so much weight, in large part out of sheer excitement, I suspect. For months, I told only my very closest friends what I was doing; I had a great secret that I did not yet want to share. And then the anxiety set in. I practiced a lot, right? I was there in the salle two or ...