Tuesday: Fencing. Turns out I qualified for Div 3 Nationals, which is apparently the microstakes and slumland of the Nationals (since lots of states only have enough fencers to show up and so qualify 100%). Still, I was 3 points away from going deep in the event, so I think if I keep up my progress, I can actually win the Div 3! So I think I may end up flying out to Cali over the summer to compete.

I feel like my session today went really well also. Took 400mg ibuprofen 2 hours before practice (probably should have taken later to maximize effect).

Fenced an older dude who's not that athletic (at least >50 y/o), but he's thinking on like 3rd level intentions so it's cool. He told me I shouldn't go down so low in my lunge, since that makes it hard to recover and opens up all kinds of angles since I can't maneuver the blade as well. Basically I'd just relax my leg and sink below parallel. I practiced a bit trying to stay tight on the landing, and I think it went well. I beat him the next time trying to consciously stay tight.

Lesson went well. Was able to keep form a lot better, and only towards the end my wrist and arm started to die on me. I think the coach went harder today than before, too, since he saw I was keeping up a lot better.

Then fenced some more, and then did a bunch of footwork. 4 trips up and down the strip, followed by like 50 lunges, and another 2 trips up/down the strip. Lunges in sets of 10, since that's when my quads were giving out. I could probably go for longer without the pain, but the place was closing.

Gonna fill in the missing days of my log:

Thursday 4/26: Fencing. Hit glycogen depletion for the first time, about 1.5 hours into workout. Could barely move and was starting to feel light-headed. Rested 15 minutes to digest a cliff bar and went another 3 hours. I guess I'll have to up carb intake significantly on fencing days.

This one girl kept destroying me at 5-point bouts, but I put up a fight and made her work for it (even though the scores would be like 5-1, it felt like I was really close on a lot of points, and I managed to go 5-4 once). Turns out she's one of the best in the country though, so I don't feel bad, and she gave me some tips after.

Monday 4/30: oly lifting for ~2.5 hours. Snatch doubles up to 50kg, then singles up to 57.5kg. Form felt bad after a week off, so I didn't push it. Then practiced Clean&Jerk for basically the first time. Lots of footwork at 20 and 40kg. Then doubles up to 70kg. Coach says I need to separate the jerk jump from the split, but also split under the bar faster. Muscles were totally confused.

Tuesday 5/01: fencing. ~3 hours with a lesson. Shoulders felt really tired from yesterday, and my speed/coordination felt off. Tried a bunch of time feints and broken time attacks, but my cns would short out and not fire the intended finish . Maybe should have upped the ibuprofen to 800 so I could concentrate more on the actions. Towards the end I mostly just concentrated on staying tight at bottom of the lunge and keeping good trunk posture, but I'm still overextending and opening up my flank, and have crap high parries on top of that. I think Friday I'll exclude the lunge completely and just do advances with prep/disengage to force myself to learn proper setup.

Lesson felt awkward, but the coach said I did well. Later on, got some nice shoulder hits on lefties that I usually offtarget. Then made a guy super frustrated in a 15 point bout, but he still came back to win 15-13. I knew he was thinking like 2nd-3rd level intentions, but I couldn't make a convincing attack and remain tight enough at the end to counter his other intentions. fwiw, he couldn't make a convincing second intention attack to save his life, so if we were fencing for real I'd just run down the clock while ahead.

Friday 5/04: The only thing nerdier than spending friday nights at the fencing club practicing fencing is spending friday nights at the fencing club drawing fencers. Which is what a bunch of people were doing today.

First bout was vs a girl I usually lose like 6-10 against. I tried cutting out the lunge, and lost 1-10 twice. That was a dumb idea. It did give me appreciation for lunges though, they just need to be well timed. Did pretty well after. Only hurt 3 people today, it was a good day.

Saturday 5/05: oly lifting. Started with C&J and asked the coach for input. He recommended I practice the jerk split at home daily for at least 2 weeks without any weight to get the form down, then start progressing weight. Since it's pretty similar to a fencing lunge, but totally different, I'm gonna do that so I don't **** up my back knee. Practiced the split with a chalk outline. Then Cleans up to 80kg for 4 clustered singles. Ran out of time, but it was ez.

Stopped by gnc to reup on brotein. They jacked up ON Gold Standard to $70, which makes it not worth it. The sales people were all jack****s and I couldn't ask them any price questions without hearing about how their product has optimal protein absorption during the 30 minute post-workout anabolic window. Evidently it's not working for them. Ended up buying Isopure since it was the cheapest per protein gram, but I'm just gonna get $50 gold standard on amazon from now on.

Sunday: 5/06: alternating gym and laundry.

Push Press: 155x3, then 2 singles. Elbows were killing me from yesterday.



Focused on jumping through on the push, like my coach said. I'll probably stick to doing these with bumper plates on snatch days though, so I can fail safely.

Then I found an empty room in the basement, marked the floor with some tape, and did ~100 reps of Jerk Split footwork. Progressively lowered the initial hop, and last 20 were from rest. Every so often some dude would walk in from the boxing room and just look at me like "wtf" then go back to his room.

Snatch Grip Deadlifts: 275x5. Belt+straps.



Video craps out after 3 reps. Gonna do these at 315 next time.

Deadlifts: 355x6. Belt+straps. Camera tipped over from lowering the bar, but overall they felt easy.

Tuesday 5/08: fencing. Left my gym clothes at home, so had to come back and get them. Good thing is my TK Bands arrived, so at least I got to wear them. Also had to eat, so by the time I got to the club, there weren't any foilists left (finals/graduation week I guess). Had a lesson and did some form practice, total time maybe an hour at the most with warmup. The knee sleeves pinch when walking around, but not when in en garde, so that's good.

Wednesday 5/09: oly lifting.

Snatches up to 65kg for 3 singles. My shoulders weren't feeling that great so I wanted to save them for the other stuff. Coach's comment was I'm not explosive enough on the second pull and the pull-under, which I know is true. I think it's mostly because I'm thinking about the lift as I'm doing it, instead of just doing it. It's also scary as hell.

Clean + 3x Push Press up to 65kg for 3 sets. Could have gone higher, but lowering the weight was pretty uncomfortable on the shoulders/elbows.

Jerk Split footwork for maybe 60 reps, 20 from standstill. These make me surprisingly tired, but the coaches commented that they looked good.

Thursday 5/10: gym.

Paused Front Squats: 245x3x3

(actual squats start at half way point)

High Bar Back Squats: 315x5x1, too tired to do another 2 sets. Need to focus on pushing through the heel or I start to tilt forward.

(actual squats start at half way point)

Parallel Grip Pull-Ups: bw+35lb x8x2

Friday 5/11: Bar night at work, but I had to skip it for fencing. I think I fenced 6 bouts, and definitely felt the squats. Once I adjusted to post-squat fencing though, I started doing better.

A lot of the fencers today had a strategy of retreating to the end of the strip then closing distance with a counter-attack. The problem is my instinct is to parry, even though I have right of way so there's no reason to, and it often lets them get one-light. So I practiced long marches with a focus to finish the attack ignoring their counter.

As for my retreat+counter strategy, I worked on a feint counter to parry-riposte their finish. I'm gonna have to ask my coach if this is a good idea though, because it's kinda hard to do.

Next time I need to work on starting slow and accelerating. Right now I tend to jolt forward right away, then the only way to shift tempo is down, which doesn't really work. Tuesday has a lot of older dudes, who tend to make really obvious slow second intention actions, so I'm gonna force myself to start slow against them and accelerate once I see their intention.

Saturday: gym. Gotta get that chest pump.

Bench: 170x5x3
- I think I haven't benched in like a month. This morning I busted out measuring tape, and measured my arm distance at the bottom if they were in bench position perpendicular to the floor, it was about 30" between inner knuckles. Went to the gym and that basically corresponds to gripping outside the second markers. Was finally able to bench to sternum instead of bottom ribs, and actually felt a chest pump, which I don't remember ever feeling.

Needless to say, I'm very excited about this. Maybe I can finally break 200 (225???)

Jerk Split Technique: 20x3
- Did sets of 20 between bench sets. After a few warm-ups, did the rest (~50) from standstill. I feel like I'm getting pretty good at this, gonna progress to holding a pole.

Tuesday: fencing.

Pretty much nobody was around, so I messed around until my lesson and then fenced a bout. My timing felt off, but my blade actions felt more comfortable. The coach said I was pretty good.

Does the coach ever say you suck balls?

Seems you're doing more fencing than you were doing (or could be just b/c I read 234234 updates at once) - does this mean you're making a big push to dominate that upcoming tourny or w/e and become a fencing stud?

Also (random story I guess) my friend's mom in N CA was an "epic" fencing teacher for a lot of her life and apparently had a bunch of really good students. That really has nothing to do with anything except I've never encountered anyone else who fences except her and you (well I'm sure I've met a bunch of ppl who fence just never knew).

So uh...is there another meaning to fluffing beyond the xxx one?

He doesn't say I suck balls, but he makes me work on actions I don't perform well and tells me to practice things outside the lesson. He also gives cues to improve stuff, like "relax your shoulders"

One of these days I want to take a group lesson, so the coach can watch me fence an actual bout and note how my form breaks down. I feel like an individual lesson doesn't cover that as well because I'm allowed to focus on form a lot more. The reason I haven't gone yet is half the group lesson consists of conditioning.

I think it's because my recent fencing logs have been longer, they used to be just "I fenced today". I still only fence twice a week and take one lesson a week. Though I recently got a raise at work, so I might take lessons twice a week now.

The goal is definitely to dominate the upcoming tourney, but I'm debating between doing 5-3-1 for a month, or upping fencing to 3 days a week. I think since I'm probably the strongest person in my club (including all the olympians), but I'm in the mid-bottom rung as a fencer, doing more fencing makes more sense, and then focus on strength training post-season.

I'm guessing instead of "epic" she probably taught "epee". An epic epeeic fencing teacher, perhaps? Yeah, it's a niche sport that requires a ton of equipment, so meeting a fencer is pretty rare. So far the only fencers I've met outside the fencing clubs have been people who took a class in college (which is basically the equivalent of learning about poker hands and saying you're a poker player).

PS, actually there was one girl on the subway who said she used to compete in NCAA and knew a bunch of high level fencers, but she only came up to me because I was carrying fencing stuff, so I didn't just run into her by accident.

I requested a log title change to "F*ckarounditis log", which violated rules so Aidan made it "Fluffarounditis log". That didn't sound that great, so I requested a change to "DWarrior's fencing log" and he made it the current title. I'm guessing it's best not to push it, and the title is kinda cool imo.

I'm no expert on fencing (or fluffing for that matter ) but it seems to me doing fencing specific training and maybe a bit of lifting to keep general strength levels will help you with fencing at this point waaaaaaay more than just getting stronger. It seems like an extremely technical sport and if your technique and experience aren't where they could be, you're leaving a lot on the table.

On the other hand, at some point of course having a huge boost in strength will probably allow you to really bear down on other guys and be a huge monster....but if the best fencers aren't really strong then I'm guessing that's much more secondary.

You're right, I'll up it to 3 practices/week, continue to do oly (it's largely technique practice for now), and just find time to lift heavy whenever I feel good.

Thursday: fencing. A little under 3 hours. Started off really well, went 4-5 vs a really good chick (but she was returning from a long break). Got tired toward the end, probably because I didn't eat enough the past two days.

The problem I've been having since I've started taking ibuprofen pre-practice is after about 2.5 hours, my left quad muscles start to cramp up. Today I brought gatorade and chips, so I don't think it's electrolyte shortage.

I know it's definitely from fencing at higher intensity, but I don't know what I can do to fence longer. Is this just a matter of conditioning? It feels like something biochemical that can be fixed.

I'm having pretty ****ty muscular pain in my upper back and right pec/shoulder. Not sure why, since I haven't been doing that much this week comparatively. Only new thing is I'm GTGing 105x5 OHPs a bit more than usual, but I haven't done any gym/oly lifting this week.

Sunday: fencing. Went out Saturday night and only got home at around 2am. Planned to sleep in and skip the tourney, but instead woke up at 6 and couldn't go back to sleep. Figured I might as well go fence, so I did. I'm glad I went, but I didn't do very well.

Even though my left foot is supposed to be solid callus, I managed to get a blister right in the center of my underfoot. So until it heals, I kind of have to walk on the side of my foot, which is making all sorts of ankle muscles hurt.

Tuesday: Fencing. Felt tired and out of sync.

The blister returned after Tuesday, so I decided to skip gym and stuff.

Saturday: fencing, 3.5 hour class. Did drills and fenced tons, and I think I did really well after the 3-day break. Still need technique work, and I'm also focusing on starting slow on the attack and accelerating at the lunge (per my coach's advice). It's pretty difficult now, so I gotta keep working on it.