When you read the sports pages or sports record books, you are immediately confronted with lists of statistics. Who runs, how fast, how far, to score what is central to almost every sport. And yet, in most cases, fencers tend to think of their stats only in the framework of how they placed in tournaments.
Fencing is inherently a one-hit game. A one-stroke difference can determine placement in a bracket and placement in the knockout bracket, and therefore the chance of overall victory. This means that improving a shot is an important goal.
But how do we know how many touches we are scoring? The answer is that you have to do record keeping to develop sports statistics. Ideally, the training structure of your club or room does this. However, if they do not, the individual fencer must do the work.
There are a number of simple measures of fencing performance:
(1) Number of Wins: A raw measure of how many matches you win.
(2) Win Rate (the number of wins divided by the number of close matches): A measure of success for the first factor considered in your placement outside of your party.
(3) Hits Scored: A raw measure of how accurate you are in striking in a tactically valid manner.
(4) Touches Received: A raw measure of how poorly you are at defending or how well opponents are at hitting you.
(5) Gauge (touches scored minus touches received): Provides a raw measure of how much better your offense is than your opponents.
(6) One metric per fight average (divide the total metrics by the number of fights closed) – Gives you an idea of how much you win or lose in each fight on average.
Win percentage and average gauge per match are probably the key numbers. If your win percentage increases, your placement in your party will increase. And if your average metrics per fight goes up, your win rate will go up.
When using this data, you need to track two different categories of tips. The first is their performance at the extremes of the competition. This is the litmus test of how you fare against the opponents you encounter in tournaments. Your goal should be to improve numbers when you compete at the same level, and at least stay stable in higher level competitions.
The second key measure is how well you perform in club practice matches. If you fight for tags in a competition format, you are training for competition. So it makes sense to keep track of how well you’re doing in front of your club members.
The key to this data collection is that it must be structured to collect data in a way that allows for comparison. For competition results, this makes more sense if you do it as a continuous analysis over a period of time based on the frequency of encounters, or if you do it as a seasonal analysis. For practice purposes, a logical period is monthly.
Once you have data, you need to use it. Check your numbers regularly. Look at the trends. Ask yourself if you are improving. If you’re not, ask yourself what the data is telling you and how you need to tailor your training to meet your training goals.