A moonshot idea is one that reinvents and revolutionises an industry or in our case a sport. Normally designers take a single product and look to make a series of incremental improvements. A moonshot idea is to improve by a factor of 10 making it a giant leap forward in a short space of time. Google calls these ideas project X, which just makes it sound very cool. I have always looked at each problem as they come up and then acted on this individual problem. Often through discussions with fencers, a “problem” is identified and we work out a...

A season's retreat

Gaining a title is never easy. In any sport, at any age class, at any time. To defend a title is, it is said, even more difficult. On March 23, 2016, I managed to win the title of the German B-Youth Champion at my first German Championships in Halle, Germany. It was a hard piece of work, but the feeling of triumph was worth all the hard training, sweat and pain. What I did not know by then was that it was only the beginning.

Text: Leander und Timo Helm
Videos: Timo Helm, Oliver Gröteke

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A lot has happened since I first picked up a weapon in August 2010 when I decided to 'have a go' at fencing at my local club, had I known that within 2yrs I would compete in my first international and within 6yrs, hold a World No1 ranking and a Paralympic Silver medal I am sure I would find it all rather unbelievable but the moment I started, I knew fencing was the sport for me and so as I continue to train and prepare for Tokyo 2020, I will do my best to share some of my experiences with...

Do Not Read This Article on Strip Coaching Fencing Team Relay Edition Pardon the interruption for a verbose warning that you, most likely, will ignore. Today’s warning will focus on why Not Reading about coaching concepts for the Team Relay Fencing Bout.  If you are a fan of fencing, and watch team bouts you have probably seen a team bout and scratched your head when you looked at the scoreboard and the team with the lead was not the team you predicted based on the individual player talent level or initial seeding.   If you are like many Americans or you follow politics you...

Fencing is a sport that is surrounded by an air of inaccessibility and mystery for most of us outside the fencing world and it’s no secret that the majority of people who fence start when they are very young. As an adult beginner, in the world of this ancient discipline, I wanted to share with you my experience of starting out. For a lot of people the first question I get asked is “Why Fencing?” it’s a very niche sport for someone to take up. For me the answer to this I quite simple, a year ago, I began working for...

How to mount a fencing sword? Mounting a weapon, making a sword, building a blade are just a few ways that people describe the process of putting together a fencing weapon. As many ways as there are to describe the action, there are to do it. You will find that many armourers have many different ways of doing it, and there are not necessarily any truly wrong ways. However, if you are new to mounting a weapon then this will be a good place to start on at least following a correct procedure, to ensure that your weapons last as long...

It’s hard to improve something if you have no idea how to measure it. “Being a better fencer” is a worthy goal, but it is difficult to know if you’re achieving it.

We all want to be better fencers. If you don’t then you can stop reading here - but leave a comment at the bottom because I’m curious why you’re on this site. We train,  drill, spar, compete, pore over old books and read modern fencing handbooks on the sly. All to be better fencers.

How do we know if our training is working?

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