movie

Some people things that fencing is interesting, me too.
Some people are studing to be journalist and becaouse they thing fencing is cool, they do some small project with fencing.
Few Swedish students likes fencing, so they make small movie.. about coach.
Movie is in swedish..

Fäktare klarar sig alltid bra i livet

Becoming a better coach

Quite often I try to find something new, something what can be new inspiration for me. I need new inspirations to be better, to be motivated. Sometimes is just enough to see good fencing, sometimes is enough to talk with some coach, sometimes is enough to read somethin.
Today few tips from very good coach, about how to be better coach.

Allistair McCaw has trained some of the world's best athletes including four world number 1's, five World Champions, nine Grand Slam winners, two PGA Tour winners & six Olympians. He has trained the world number one player Dinara Safina, 2x Grand Slam Champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, as well as the world number one & two squash players, Nicol David & Natalie Grinham.

And there are few "powerful tips" from him:

1. Never stop learning

Every single day I spend at least 45 minutes to an hour reading and researching anything coaching or training related. I also like to observe how other coaches carry themselves and speak to people. One of the great things about this profession is that you are never too old or knowledgeable to learn. The thing is to never stop learning and challenging yourself to improve. Remember that in order to make our athletes even better, we too need to become even better coaches.

 2. Talk to experienced coaches

It’s not enough to only observe great coaches in action, so if you have experienced coaches around you who inspire you, talk to them. Pick their brains about the technical and mental aspects of coaching. You will find that great coaches are more than willing to share their knowledge. Often they will tell you stories about when they first started and these stories will be of great comfort. The great ones were also once a little frightened and intimidated. They have also made mistakes along the way and still do.

My advice is that you hang out with people who simply make you better.

 3. Lead by example.

I was fortunate enough to have a good sporting career and competed in five World Championships in the sport of Duathlon. But you don’t need to be a world class athlete to be a great coach. However, I do believe that you should look the part, meaning partaking in a sporting activity and keeping yourself in good shape. I am a firm believer in the ‘Practice what you preach’ theory. I also ask my athletes and clients to step outside of their comfort zone and confront places of fear. In other words - take some risks, because if I’m not living by that, why should they trust me?

One last thing on this subject, take pride in your appearance and look professional.

4. Experience is your greatest teacher

I’ve been a coach and trainer for almost 20 years now. I started working as a fitness trainer whilst still in school to help pay my Triathlon habit. Over those years I studied as many subjects as I could and completed numerous certifications related to the industry. However, the place I’ve learnt the most is on the field, court, track and in the gym. You see, nothing beats the real raw time actually spent teaching and coaching. There’s no book or class that can prepare you for the reality of day-today coaching. Gain experiences. Make mistakes. Learn from failure. We all fail. Those who are ultimately successful are those who learn from their failures and do not repeat them.

 5. Evaluate yourself from time to time.

Even though I’ve been a coach for a while now, I still need to stay on top of things and make sure I’m giving my athletes the very best they deserve. A good self-evaluation can sometimes be hard, but is a fast track to becoming even better. The more comfortable you get with being uncomfortable and putting yourself on the spot, the more you will learn.

 Sometimes get another person to sit in on one of your lessons and afterwards give you specific feedback. Things like the way you brought across your message and was it clearly understood? Was the training challenging enough for the athlete or athletes? Was there maybe an ‘information overload & toO much talking? etc..

6. Become an even better motivator.

If there is one thing I can tell you all great coaches have, it’s this: They know how to motivate and get the best from their athlete/s. Sometimes, just some encouragement and positive words can make an athletes performance go from average to exceptional.

If you want to get more from your athlete/s, find out what motivates them and what makes them tick. When you tap into this, you will discover that you are more than half way there.

On closing, the road to mastery is a long and humble one, but it’s one that is rewarding to no end. My journey so far has been more than I had ever expected and It’s one I’m happy to be on. I have learnt that patience is huge part of the journey and I can only hope that someday, years down the road, while continuing a never-ending quest to learn, I will have motivated as many athletes, coaches and anyone for that matter, who seek to get the very best from themselves.

Swedish Foil Team on European Championship

Its time.
For many it was a main goal for this season, for few is just another Championships.
Sweden is sending full team in Cadets (8) and full team in Junior (8).
Chances for winning? ... not really
Chances for great results? ... not really (even if I want to belive, we need to be realistics)
Chances for good fencing? ... I hope
Chances to learn something and get more expierence? ... I wish
Chances to be more motivatet, and se what we need to do to be better? ... its my expectation

Usually to be in cadett or junior national team is quite a great thing.
I remember when I was in national team and get my "POLSKA" track suits..
Swedish fencers need to buy their "SVERIGE" track suits by them self.
They pay for travel, hotel, entry fee, referee fee and everything what you need to pay.

I always try to understand how cool is to practice whole season, travel on few national and international competitions (always pay for everything by them self) and when you get quite good results you can jump in to national team.. and pay by your self if you would like go to European Championships.

I do many things without reason, becaouse I want it, and I just hope that my fencers do fencing with same motivations..
I see no carrot in this system, so I can just wish that mine students parents have good economic situation and their kids likes fencing and has great motivation to work hard.

This is f..g annoying

I promissed to avoid criticism.. so I cannot write more about it.

So here we go, those foil fencers we can see on fencing pistes in Budapest:

Women - Cadett
Ester Schreiber, GFK, 1997, rank 1, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Linn Löfmark, FKC (but GFK actually), 1996, rank 2, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Harriet Rundquist, EGF, 1998, rank 3, coach Tomasz Goral
Julia Engström, EGF, 1997, rank 4, coach Tomasz Goral

Men - Cadett
Josef Rizell, GFK, 1996, rank 1, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Elis Wickman, EGF, 1996, rank 2, coach Tomasz Goral
Carl Ahlgvist, MF19, 1997, rank 3, coach Dmitri Lee
Vincent Mindelöf, EGF, 1997, rank 3, coach Tomasz Goral

Women - Junior
Ester Schreiber, GFK, 1997, rank 1, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Linn Löfmark, FKC, 1996, rank 2, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Alice Engström, EGF, 1995, rank 3, coach Tomasz Goral
Alida Falkenström, EGF, 1994, rank 4, coach Tomasz Goral

Men - Junior
Julius Martin, GFK, 1994, rank 1, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Simon Rizell, GFK, 1994, rank 2, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Josef Rizell, GFK, 1996, rank 1, coach Henrik Lundegard*
Ludvig Flyborg ÄFK, 1993, rank 4, coach Aliksandr Siniak

*You should know that Martin Roth Kronwall is working as a coach in GFK too, but Im not sure which fencers hi is working with, so as a know Henrik is a head coach, so I wrote head coachs name behind all GFK fencers, it can happend that Martin should be there too. :)

Maybe for few of you it seems little "boring" that 2 clubs has so many fencers in this team...
I will wrote about it little latter.

Good Luck for all fencers!
Remember is always just 1 hit which is counting right now... and than another one.

A Championship effort

I found very good text by David Littell . So I hope you will enjoy it too.

Maybe some of you will understand little more what coach are saying now.

 

Since retiring from competitive fencing I have turned my fencing energies toward coaching. I expected that this experience would require teaching fencing skills, strategy, and motivation. But I had not anticipated that it would be hard for students to understand what it took to be good at a sport. I had been an athlete for so long that this stuff was just part of me. Over the years I have been struggling to find the words to explain to my students what I think learning fencing, and for that matter, any sport is all about. Here it is.

 

I hope that you love fencing. Please, please, please, do it because you enjoy it. There are so many sports and other activities out there to pursue. Do yourself, your coaches and your families a favor, pick activities that your really love. I’ve never met a parent that doesn’t want that for their children. Also, I’ve never felt bad losing a student to another passion. I only feel bad losing a student to fear, lethargy or lack of commitment to anything. In addition, if you look around almost all the greatest athletes are the ones who simply love playing their sports.

 

I expect that you will try as hard as you can to master the skills. This is often the hardest. Although it seems simple, it’s really a complex idea. It requires that you appreciate several key concepts of sport. One is " it is not as easy as it looks". Each and every one of us is guilty of this one. Somehow, in the human experience, we think if you can do it, I can. The second concept is "mastery is in the details." Getting good is as simple as learning to master the skills. However, no matter how many times I say this most students don’t practice their lunges, extensions, disengages, footwork and other fencing skills. I wish I could come up with other ways to say it, but the bottom line is learning requires more practice then you can imagine.

 

Develop an appreciation for how hard it is to master your sport. Mastery is difficult. In fencing you have to master a million skills, put them together in some orderly fashion, develop strategies for different opponents, and learn to do this under pressure. Then you have to start over at every new level of competition. Getting good is hard. Truly knowing this also means that when you do succeed you will enjoy it more. If you ever listen to athletes on TV you notice that the best athletes have a sense of humility about competition. They know that every time they go out there anything can happen. This respect for competition comes usually after losing and getting up and trying again. And when these athletes succeed, you can sense the appreciation even the awe of their performance. On the other hand are those athletes who get frustrated and quit. In my estimation, many of these never appreciated how hard it is to get good. They act defeated and as if they have a lack of self-confidence. They say things like, "I should be farther then I am", and "I can’t believe how bad I am". When I hear this I don’t hear a lack of confidence, I hear overconfidence. In most cases the reality is your right where you should be!

 

Clearly decide where fencing fits in your life and go for it. This means figure out how important this is to you now, balancing your other interests and responsibilities. This requires looking at the time available, your level of interest and your goals. I primarily see the function of goals as helping you determine how much work your going to do. Once this is done, now get down to work! Establishing priorities helps you get what you want and also helps you to enjoy the journey.

 

Become coachable. This is easy for some and almost impossible for others. It requires the belief that you need something, that the other person can offer it, and a willingness to diligently try to master what they have to offer. It seems to me that most fall down in the first category. For many different reasons people have trouble opening themselves up to advice. Be it fear, embarrassment, bad experiences in other learning environments (like school) or overconfidence, opening up to advice and new ideas is hard. Also, know that if you’re going to be great, you have to learn to become coachable. At the same time, I don’t think being coachable means being blindly following the leader. You have to learn to be discriminating. At times, I am certain that you will have to reject some advice- and it might not feel easy to do.

 

Learn to make an honest and rigorous self-evaluation. This means giving full weight to both the positive and the negative aspects of your game, your training program, and your competitive demeanor. If you don’t appreciate your strengths, two things might happen. One, you’ll get depressed and discouraged. And two, even more dangerous, you might throw away what you do best. Another trap here is that sometimes what seems to be a weakness is really a strength. For example, if your best move is your counterattack- it may not mean that it’s time to start over. It may only mean that you need to figure out a better way to set up your counterattack. On the other hand, it’s also important to be able to look at your weaknesses openly and honestly. If you don’t you’re doomed. Saying after every loss "I choked" isn’t going to get you anywhere.

 

Learn to reach out for what you need . Think big. Many people have a closed view of where to get help. The coach, the coach the coach. You, not the coach is at the center of your fencing. This is your activity and the coach as well as the rest of the world is full of tools that will help. Please try and stay and touch with the fact that fencing is yours and where you go with it is up to you. Other life. Part of thinking big, means knowing that what is going on in your whole life can impact on your fencing. For me, those people in my life that support and value me for things other then fencing- have been crucial to my athletic success. They helped to keep fencing in balance and to never seem to important. Also, in many cases, the stuff that keeps us from getting good at fencing has to do with problems outside the sport. When I went to the Olympics I met many athletes, who were not problem free, but had overcome personal problems in order to get there. Keep your ears open. If you listened carefully, everything that you need to know to become an Olympic athlete was said on television by the athletes during the recent Atlanta Olympic Games. Be creative. When you read biographies of athletes, you see that each had a unique road to the top. Many times they chose unusual and creative paths based on their own personalities and experiences.

 

I expect that you will practice good sportspersonship This is not easy, and I have carefully chosen the word practice. It also means that if you fail, you apologize immediately. Still, I’m not sure that I say this enough to my students- it does really mean a great deal to me. One of the hardest parts of being a good sport in a one on one sport is appreciating your opponent’s efforts. It’s easy to be miserable, but it truly is important for you to say to your opponent, congratulations on your performance, today you were the better fencer. And the fact is, it’s true!

 

I expect that you will try to try to win until the last touch. All you can do is try. And as easy as that sounds, it is almost impossible. Almost all athletic contests are over before the end. Most times one of the athletes has conceded by the end. It’s so hard- yet so simple- try and win this touch, then after that try and win the next one.

I want to finish by saying that often fencers and their parents ask me if I think that they can make an Olympic team. This question is unaswerable, especially in a sport that has so many paths to success. However, what is almost always easy to say is "I believe that it will be a valuable experience for you to pursue a goal of making the Olympic team". Because, doing so means having to pursue mastering all of the goals that I just mentioned, and these can help you in any pursuit that you choose. Also notice that this same process goes for pursuing much less lofty goals. If you succeed at most or even some of these goals, you will take something away from the sport that will be invaluable throughout your life. Also, I, as the coach will be completely, totally, and absolutely satisfied, even if you lose 5-0.

 

When spotlights shut down

Nobody thinks about it, nobody thinks about it so much because everyone hope this is not about him.
But what if things go not exactly as we thod?

Most of us dont think that things can go wrong.
We do fencing, sometimes whole life, running after our dreams.
We achieve our goals and give great moments to our fans, federations and sponsors.
Big time when carrier is end. New life, sometimes just same but on other side, when you decide to work as a coach, or get great position in federation. Some of us are great lawyers, doctors, politics or businessman.
Fencing people usually get what they want, we are succesfull people.
We are great fencing family. Fencing give us our best friends, fencing give us our wives and husbands.
Here are people we can count on in hard times. Thats why Im writing this time about Jacek Gaworski. I hope, there is someone who will read it and can help Jacek as many others fencing friends already do.

There are things we cannot controll.
Illness or accidents which change our life in few seconds.

Jacek Gaworski was a great fencer, I hade oportunity to meet him on the piste. I was young cadett when hi was att the end of his succesfull carrier.
But after all fencing duells in his life, Jacek has one more to win... this time about his life.

Video with slideshow about Jaceks carrier

Multiple Sclerosis became a opponent that Jacek need to fight against now!
Jacek is great fighter, and never give upp. Hi is doing well! But hi need our help.
Fencing, this time on wcheelchair is helping him... and fencers helps him too!
Unfortunatelly health system in Poland cannot help him. There is many administrative bulshit rules.
MS get also help and try destroy Jacek together with cancer, but Hi got us in this fight!
We are members of Jacek Gaworski team..
Hi started foundation "Help fight about life"
Hi can count only on us, other fencers!

About Jacek Gaworski

About Foundation "Help fight about life"