When you read the sports pages or sports records 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 statistics only in the framework of how they placed in tournaments.
Fencing is inherently a game of one hit. A difference of one hit can determine placement in a pool, and the placement in the direct elimination tableau, and thus the chance of overall victory. This means that improvement of one hit is a significant goal.
But how do we know how many touches we are scoring? The answer is that you have to do the record keeping to develop sports statistics. Ideally the coaching structure of your club or salle does this. However, if they do not, the individual fencer needs to do the work.
There are a number of simple measures of fencing performance:
(1) Number of victories–a gross measure of how many bouts you win.
(2) Victory percentage (the number of victories divided by the number of bouts fenced)–a measure of success for the first factor considered in your placing out of your pool.
(3) Touches scored–a gross measure of how accurate you are in delivering the hit in a tactically valid way.
(4) Touches received–a gross measure of how badly you do in defending yourself or how good a job opponents do in hitting you.
(5) Indicator (the touches scored minus the touches received)–provides a gross measure of how much better your offense is than your opponents’.
(6) An indicator per bout average (divide the total indicators by the number of bouts fenced)–gives you a picture of how much you win or lose each bout by on average.
The victory percentage and the indicator per bout average are probably the key numbers. If your victory percentage is going up, your placement in your pool is going to go up. And if your indicator per bout average is going up, your victory percentage will be going up.
In using this data you should be tracking two distinct categories of bouts. The first is your performance in competition bouts. This is the acid test of how you do against the opponents you meet in tournaments. Your objective should be improving numbers when you compete at the same level, and at least remain stable in higher level competitions.
The second key measure is how you perform in practice bouts in the club. If you fence bouts for touches in a competition format, you are training for competition. Therefore it makes sense to track how well you are doing against the members of your club.
The key to this data gathering is that it has to be structured to gather data in a way that allows comparison. For competition results, this makes the most sense if you do it as a rolling analysis for a set period based on the frequency of meets or doing it as a seasonal analysis. For practice bouts, a logical period is monthly.
Once you have data, you need to use it. Review your numbers regularly. Look at the trends. Ask yourself whether you are improving,. If you are not, ask yourself what the data tells you and how you need to adapt your training to meet your training goals.