Fun and more than fun.

I've been thinking a lot about what I get out of fencing. I currently don't have the time to compete or to train as much as I would like. I have been shifting my goals to be more processed focused, with mastery (however unattainable and for that matter nebulous) as a the long term goal. Each week I'll find an area I need to improve and then work specifically on developing the skills I need to achieve this. This, I hope, will make my training more productive and more fun. It is not that my training was unfocused in the past but rather that my goals were set around achieving success in competition. Now I see competition as an added bonus. If I get to compete that is fantastic, If I achieve a good result even better. If not then each week I'm still improving, still enjoying fencing and still learning something about the sport and about myself.

Learning about myself may be the greatest benefit and the most "fun". This blog post about explanatory style started me thinking about my own attitudes to both fencing and life. It also led me to read the excellent Learned Optimism. I've often felt that some of the purported benefits of sports are mere propaganda spread by complicit group: sporting bodies; clothing companies etc. Yet a blog about fencing, led me to read a book about optimism, mainly to garner some psychological edge, and this in turn has got me to reexamine about my whole approach to life. This seems like a very tangible benefit from sport in general and fencing specifically.

A final thought on taking pleasure in long term improvement. I recently watched the excellent film Senna. It's a must see, even if you are not a Formula One fan. Serendipitously the following quote from Ayrton Senna himself was posted on another great training blog. It sums things up nicely:

“I believe in the ability of focusing strongly in something, then you are able to extract even more out of it. It's been like this all my life, and it's been only a question of improving it, and learning more and more and there is almost no end. As you go through you just keep finding more and more. It's very interesting, it's fascinating.” -Senna