One of
the big things with training the fleche is to be able to execute from
any point in your movement without telegraphing that you're about to.
The fleche should explosively take an opponent by surprise. They
should not have the time to realize the fleche is happening or to
respond.
If an
athlete has to fully settle their feet before beginning a fleche,
they lose the moment in which it would be effective. If an athlete
has to load the body and set up the weight to be explosive, they lose
the element of surprise.
This
exercise is a fun one. My youth fencers love it – despite it being
strenuous. I originally started using it for my college fencers to
help teach them to fleche suddenly from light footwork movement. The
team of beginner fencers who first adopted this drill went on to win
their conference's foil title three years running. Obviously, this
drill was not the only element of their success – but their ability
to make sudden bursting attacks, counters, and attacks in prep,
helped set them apart.
It is
also adaptable. You can change the footwork involved, or even
dispense with footwork altogether.
It's
pretty simple. The leader tells a story. While the leader is telling
the story the fencers “float” or maintain a dynamic guard (they
bounce back and forth lightly or shuffle constantly between their
feet, if they have trouble with this an advance-retreat in place
pattern is fine).
Certain
types of words trigger certain responses. Usually you only want two.
You could work it as a recognition and choice drill by adding more
than two – but this can be difficult and those are better as visual
drills.
For
example, we tell a faery tale and every time an animal word is used
the fencer's fleche, every time a color word is used they do a
burpee.
Number
words can be an option also. Or the name of a character. Faery tales
are the easiest to use, but we used The Death of Superman once. One
of our youth athletes likes leading the drill and makes up stories.
The important parts are
- Keeping the story fun and interesting so athletes enjoy the exercise despite the work
- Embellishing the story in the extreme – partially to keep it interesting; in order to add the trigger words as much as possible.
Your
chosen responses can vary.
For
footwork we commonly use fleche, flunge, double advance-lunge. You
could use a distance pull-lunge. You could add an explosiveness
exercise and do a scissor jump lunge, or a squat lunge.
For
conditioning we typically use burpees or sit ups, but you could use
jumping squats, or sprints, or even sit ups. It should just be a
small number, or even only one, so that they can reset to their
constant movement quickly. You'll also be making them do it several
times throughout the story so they don't have to do a lot each time
the word is said since you'll say your trigger words several times.
If you
want to focus on creating a work out instead of focusing on footwork
then you might try three or four cue words. You can increase the cue
words in this instance because they don't have to worry about quick
reaction on a precise or correct execution of a fencing movement,
they are just doing a simpler exercise movement which should be more
natural to them. Then set all trigger words for exercise movements.
So colors trigger a burpee, numbers trigger a jumping squat, and
animals trigger a sprint.
If they
get the cue wrong, give them a jovial reminder of what the cues are.
It's not a choice or decision drill so the error doesn't really need
any firm correction – they just need to get on track so they get
the most out of the drill.
Thanks
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Red riding hood image found on pintrest by Edli on Deviant Art, classic fleche image taken from Sydney Sabre
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