This Is Fencing. Advanced Training And Performance Principles For Foil By ZIEMOWIT WOJCIECHOWSKI

This is an excellent explanation of advanced training for Foil fencers! Once you get passed some of the different terminology (a useful glossary is at the back), this is a very good manual for coaches and fencers alike.

Written by a coach who has so much experience as a fencer himself coupled with his long experience as a coach working at national and international level, his training principles are well worth reading and applying to your own coaching philosophy.

There is much here, starting with the Principles of Coaching, Principles of Training and Principles of Performance, moving on to physical preparation; footwork and blade skills; mental preparation; goal setting and tactics, up to analysing performance, it encompasses all that a serious coach must factor in to train a World Champion!

This is a coach who has trained a World Champion! Passionate about Fencing, Zemek is a quiet spoken man, who gets the best out of fencers and coaches alike. Not only does he explain how fencing actions are done, he can demonstrate them at the highest level, all done with a patient and pleasant manner.

This book should be on the shelf of any serious coach (and fencer), who wants to try to understand what it takes to be a successful coach and all the elements that are needed to guide a fencer to the top levels of his chosen sport. It is not a book to read once and put down, but a book to refer to all the time! This book, to me, is a complete manual of how to coach committed competitive fencers.

Prof Peter Northam

President

British Academy of Fencing