In Moliere's satire Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, the character of the fencing master is depicted giving a lesson in what was possibly the style of the 17th century, but no doubt familiar to many today: Come, Monsieur, salute. Your body straight. Lean slightly on the left thigh. The legs not so widely separated. Your feet together. Your wrist in a line with...

Preparing to be a champion isn't limited to the effort you put in at the fencing club or in a gym. While mental preparation is often touted for its value, it's important to recognize that creating and improving a champion mindset isn't something limited to just the time set aside for visualization, meditation, and other exercises*. Champions are not only "champion-like" when they are at a competition. That mentality extends...

There are many ways to create exercises that are fun, dynamic, and engaging. The video below demonstrates how basic general fitness activities (in this case, jumping and catching) can be combined with fencing movements (here, lunging) to improve power, balance, and coordination without relying on the dull "footwork drills" that are so common in fencing training.

What do the West Point cadets who make it through their initial six week summer training--an intense, physically and emotionally grueling program known as "Beast Barracks"--and the finalists of the Scripps National Spelling Bee have in common? According to University of Pennsylvania Psychologist (and apparent John Wayne enthusiast) Angela Duckworth, the answer is...

Success, like many things, starts in the mind. Similarly, anticipating or expecting defeat gives a fencer a "head start" on losing. So it is certainly appropriate that athletes spend time developing their psychological skills along with their sports skills. While many people understand, at least to some degree, that their bodies can be transformed through exercise, far fewer believe that their minds and even personalities are similarly plastic.

The children of Montevideo, Uruguay, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, had been trying to deal with the fundamental problem of heavily crowded cities--a lack of space--when, in the 1930s, they each created something that would change the world of sports forever...

In 1965, Harvard professor of social psychology Robert Rosenthal and San Francisco elementary school principle Lenore Jacobson conducted an experiment. They gave the children in Jacobson's school (the majority of whom were from lower-class households) a standardized IQ test but, rather than reveal what the test actually was, they told teachers that the test was The Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition--an impressively titled...

Learning is serious business. Whether in sport, academics, or our careers, we can spend thousands of hours and potentially even more dollars trying to improve our knowledge and abilities. Sometimes, however, in our efforts to excel, we forget one of the most serious parts of learning: the need to...

Legendary Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Gomez once joked, "I'd rather be lucky than good."* Though Gomez's tongue was comfortably situated snugly in his cheek, there are many athletes who compete as though they are waiting for luck to hand them a victory...

In his classic book The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, martial arts legend Bruce Lee writes: Fighters can be placed into two main categories: the "mechanical" fighter and the "intellectual" fighter. It's easy for the mechanical fighter to give advice because his fighting techniques and tactics are the result of the mechanical repetition of strokes, bred of a lesson which was purely automatic and lacking any explanation of the why, the how and...