A Mental Tip: Weaknesses

A lot of strategy is usually just common sense, but with adrenaline pumping or under pressure, this is easy to forget about. I would like to share a simple tip that I realized one day in fencing practice. This is probably something that is heard very often, but it is also something that very few people put into practice.

During fencing practice, we were doing some free-fencing, and I had a clash with my opponent. I can't remember the details exactly, but after a quick series of attacks and counter attacks, we backed off with no one scoring a point. In fencing and in many other forms of competition, after action, the position one returns to is never as good and proper as at the beginning.

At this time, I didn't really know what to do; normally, in this part of combat, many people will either blindly rush in due to pressure or may freeze up. This time however, I was luckily able to pull my head out of the cloud and remembered some common sense. Without knowing what to do, I gave myself an objective: I examined my opponent's guard/stance. What did I find? He was exposing the under side of his arm. Now with a clear target, I calmed down and gradually pressed and waited. As soon as he began to move at me, I extended and got a point on the underside of his arm.

After this I realized that there are two really good things one can always do when unsure about what to do next: check one's own position looking for weaknesses and check the opponent's position looking for weaknesses. This gives something very productive to occupy the worried mind. It is also the groundwork for the formation of plans.

So next time you are unsure about what to do in competition whether it be real time strategy, chess, or martial arts, first check your own position for weaknesses to correct, and second check the opponent for weaknesses to exploit.