Everyone,
We’re working on video to help home practice for you, but here are a few things to make sure you have:
- Enough open space to make at least a double advance lunge
- Foil: targets for point thrusts: wall target, hanging ball (tennis ball, golf ball, even coin will do) or multiple hanging balls.
You can use an old pillow you don’t care about, you can stuff your uniform jacket to make a target to hit, use your imagination (just not your siblings).
- Epee: same as above, but you can add a shoe to the list, place it below your primary target so you can practice toe hits. There is some fun video of epeeist Max Heinzer practicing at home; however, unlike Max Heinzer’ example, you should wear a mask if you are hitting something, your blade could break and pieces could fly into your face. We especially don’t like that Heinzer is practicing with no mask in front of a mobile arm!
- Sabre: you can hang your mask from the back of a chair, or a tall chair or even from a pull handle large enough to accommodate the tongue of the mask. Most of you have a non sabre mask you can use for this purpose. If you do not, be sure to wear eye protection while practicing.
Everyone can do a home workout with calisthenic exercises and/or footwork exercises with cards like we do at fencing practice; most of you have done this at training. for those who haven’t yet:
*CARDS assign an exercise or piece of footwork to a suite, shuffle and play through the deck
examples: Hearts= pushups, Diamonds= burpees, Clubs= jumping jacks, Spades= mountain climbers
and/or Hearts= lunges, Diamonds= double-advance double-retreat, Clubs= advance balestra (or adv, adv-lunge), Spades= jump forward, jump backwards, adv-lunge
Let us know what your favorite combinations are and ask if you have any questions!
Coach Lara Masters
