Autogenic Training

My coach lent me a book called preparing the mind. it's all about Autogenic Training or AT. the simplest way to describe AT is to call it self hypnosis. though that is an inaccurate description. it's more of a calming technique because the idea is that if you do it properly it's supposed to help you re-energize, and do everything perfectly.

so far I've been able to relax my muscles, make my arms and legs, and solar plexus (area below the rib cage aparently) feel warm, focus on my breathing and feel my own heart beet without taking my pulse which is a bonus because I suck at finding my pulse.

I still can't get the hang of making my limbs feel heavy, and have had only limited success at making my forehead feel cool. I also need to learn the part about coming out of it and feeling energized because so far most of my attempts have ended with me falling asleep. I have yet to feel the boost of energy or feel extremely refreshed. then again I have yet to try it when I feel physically exhausted.

My other big problem is that I'm supposed to practice it 3 times a day at the same times every day and only practice for 2 or 3 min. right now getting to a point I feel comfortable calling a good result takes more than three minutes. I just tried it a few min. ago in learning lab and it took me 7+ min. to go through my slightly messed up version of autogenic training.

I think my problem is that I don't feel right about moving on to the next stage until I achieve the desired result for earlier steps also it's easier to feel my heart beet after going through the other steps. I end up spending a lot of time on the part about making your arms and legs feel warm. however once my arms and legs do feel warm, making my solorplexis, feel warm is really easy and once that happens I start feeling my heart beat without even thinking about it.

but I still have problems with the "my face is cool", "my body is heavy" and "my body feels re-energized". those just aren't working out yet, but never fear I'll get there yet.

gotta work on reducing the time required to a minimum, preferably less than 60 seconds. that way I can make use of this in 15 touch bouts. I also need to work on memorizing the autogenic phrases.

tourny results

there were 16 fencers. but nobody got ranked for strange reasons beyond our understanding. Austin placed First Tim placed 2nd Bronwynne placed 6th and yours truly came in third. =) kept track of my scores and things I need to work on will probably edit this post later to tell the whole story and relate scores in the meantime i have to go post on my Internet duel and see who is winning =).

Edit:

OK so I'm winning my Internet duel both in total average and in highest average. true we only just started the duel a few days ago, and the total number of tournaments is three, and only one of those is mine, but I'm happy with that regardless. =)

I believe the reason no one got ranked was actually because there were no ranked competitors which no one could do anything about because it was a novice tournament to begin with. in other words ranked fencers were not allowed to compete.

I came in third at the tournament because I lost to Tim in the semifinals but it was all good because we both enjoyed the match. on the other hand i did not actually get to fence for third place so third place was actually a tie because they did not hold the bout which i was ripped about because I wanted to keep fencing.

I'll post some of the pics that i got from my coach over the 4 day weekend so look forward to them.

Mental conditioning

the top secret mental conditioning was coach telling us all to play chess for like 45 min. I won two games and started a third. =)

Internet Duel

I met another fencer through my new favorite manga site cloud manga. anyway we got into a long debate about whether or not Naruto was more likely to hook up with Sakura or Hinata, whether we thought Naruto would die before that question would ever be answered and what was more likely based on the style of the manga. also about whether or Naruto is not as good as it used to be. I was the one saying it's starting to get dull which it is they had an 80 year old with a bad back flying a turtle the size of an island around. I'm sorry but I think even in a work of fiction that is a new level of baloney. baloney^10000000000000 or something like that.

cough, cough...... anyway.

point is it got obvious that neither one of us would admit that we were wrong, and I got sick of the argument so I decided to say "screw this and for making me waste all this time arguing with you oh brick wall for brains and seeing as we both fence I challenge you to a duel" well OK not those exact words but it was to that effect. problem is he lives on the other side of the country so meeting for a friendly bout seems out of the question. so I came up with the plan to make a chat thread on the site's forms title it duel and every time we go to a tournament keep track of points we scored, and points scored on us. then subtract the number of points scored on us from the number of points we scored. and divided that by the number of bouts giving us an average in this way we can compete by trying to beet the others average.

little mistake

ran conditioning today. no mental torcher, turns out that is on friday.

Mental conditioning

I'm gonna be running conditioning, with Dru, on Monday and it is going to be a mental and physical torture for everyone details after the fact

RIFAC

Rhode Island Fencing Academy, is where I went yesterday after conditioning with Coach Floyd and Kevin. It was a great experience I got to fence a legitimate A rank not the lucky D level fencer I fenced at the last tournament I attended. I got in 3 maybe 4 touches as apposed to this guy who scored at least 12 touches probably more I couldn't even keep track of the number of touches this guy was getting. Normally I would have tried but I was too preoccupied with dealing with his foil which was more like a bolt of lightning than a piece of steel.

When I fence I use a lot of target displacement. I get down low when I lunge and I twist my body to get out of the way of attacks. This guy figured that out pretty damn quick. He would offer me some bait (an opening) and I would take it, but instead of me getting the point he would parry my blade and do a flick attack making use of the fact that my back was wide open and down low making a perfect target for a flick attack.

This guy is exactly what my coach was talking about, the ability to think several moves ahead of your opponent. This A rank was all over that. It was more than just that though he was like greased lightning, fast, fast, fast, and precise too. that was awesome.

I also got the chance to try out something I had been meaning to. last year I fought defensively which worked out alright but now I think that was a mistake I have a great reach, longer than most high school fencers that is and I should start making use of it so yesterday I tryd going on the offencive against several fencers against the A rank I didn't do all that much offense (was to busy worrying about his offence) but against a different fencer closer to the average level for varsity fencers at other schools I did give the offensive approach a good try and it had fairly good results. I'm still most comfortable with defence but I think from now on I will get better and finding and exploiting openings instead of always waiting for the attack so that I can make a parry repost.

I also learned a new remise attack, which I feel will be a useful addition to my arsenal, by watching Kevin's lessons.