Swiss Camp
This past week I spent training in the Alps at a Swiss training center called Centre Cantonal. It was really interesting to train there and I really enjoyed myself. There were are a lot of different countries represented (Japan, Italy, the USA, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweeden, Slovania, and Venezuela).
We had a pretty hard week, but it tapered. The beginning was much harder than the end.
Another nice thing about the camp was that it was at 1350 meters. So I got in some “high altitude training” regardless of the fact that I didn’t get to go to the training camp in Colorado Springs (I don’t even want to talk about how or why that didn’t happen.) In any case, we got a lot of fencing in (at least once a day) and the activities varied, which is nice. We did a lot of gymnastics, balance and equilibrium exercises, cardio work (sprinting, jogging, skipping), agility and explosivity exercises (plyometrics, footwork) and muscle work (isolation exercises). There was the physical training every day for at least and hour and then an hour and a half or two hours of fencing. There were also the “wake up” exercises that we got at 7:15 every morning, which included jogging on the mountain and stretching.
Thank god we went to the hot springs and the sauna! That saved the week. Otherwise my body would have completely fallen apart.
I was also able to get 4 or 5 lessons in this week, from two different coaches, which was funny because I haven’t had a lesson in awhile. But it was good. I can already see that the Matire’s lessons at Racing will be totally different than the ones I got at my old club in Paris. But the mix will be excellent. It will be great to morph into a fencer that is able to take the best from the two. I’m looking forward to that.
I got some nice bouting in, too. Everyone had such different styles that it was really fun fencing them all at the same practice. And it’s not like they had different styles that were “annoying” or “weird” or that were just bizarre...I guess what I mean is that they were all really clean fencers, even the younger ones. So that was cool.
I guess I can say I did about 6 hours of fencing or physical training a day. Not bad. I think it was just what I needed before this zonal competition in Montreal next week.
We had a pretty hard week, but it tapered. The beginning was much harder than the end.
Another nice thing about the camp was that it was at 1350 meters. So I got in some “high altitude training” regardless of the fact that I didn’t get to go to the training camp in Colorado Springs (I don’t even want to talk about how or why that didn’t happen.) In any case, we got a lot of fencing in (at least once a day) and the activities varied, which is nice. We did a lot of gymnastics, balance and equilibrium exercises, cardio work (sprinting, jogging, skipping), agility and explosivity exercises (plyometrics, footwork) and muscle work (isolation exercises). There was the physical training every day for at least and hour and then an hour and a half or two hours of fencing. There were also the “wake up” exercises that we got at 7:15 every morning, which included jogging on the mountain and stretching.
Thank god we went to the hot springs and the sauna! That saved the week. Otherwise my body would have completely fallen apart.
I was also able to get 4 or 5 lessons in this week, from two different coaches, which was funny because I haven’t had a lesson in awhile. But it was good. I can already see that the Matire’s lessons at Racing will be totally different than the ones I got at my old club in Paris. But the mix will be excellent. It will be great to morph into a fencer that is able to take the best from the two. I’m looking forward to that.
I got some nice bouting in, too. Everyone had such different styles that it was really fun fencing them all at the same practice. And it’s not like they had different styles that were “annoying” or “weird” or that were just bizarre...I guess what I mean is that they were all really clean fencers, even the younger ones. So that was cool.
I guess I can say I did about 6 hours of fencing or physical training a day. Not bad. I think it was just what I needed before this zonal competition in Montreal next week.