A hard lesson to learn

One of the first things we try to teach new fencers is that this is a martial sport and that you will get hurt. But what we too often forget to teach them is that not only will you get hurt, but that you will hurt someone, too.

We had a young fighter learn that lesson the hard way at last weekend's regional fighters practice. It was about three hours into the practice and he was going hard and maybe just a bit tired. His opponent zigged when he expected him to zag, and he nailed him kind of hard on the tip of the thumb, breaking the nail. Not a bad injury, but a painful one.

And, bless his heart, the young fighter is a gentle soul who took injuring his friend to heart.

So we stopped fighting, and started talking. The first thing we did was to ask him if he'd intentionally injured the other fighter. His answer was no, of course, so we continued on. We explained to him how, as people get excited or tired, their control starts to wane. We explained that, no matter how hard a person tries, telepathy doesn't work, which means that sometimes you will guess wrong about what your opponent will do. We explained that sometimes your opponent's armor isn't quite what it should be.

In short, we explained all the various ways that you can unintentionally and possibly through no fault of your own injure your opponent.

This is one of those lessons we wish we didn't have to teach and far too often we gloss over it, but it's probably one of the most important lessons we can teach.