Goals and Motivation

I know I don't actually need an introduction for this sort of thing, but old habits die hard and it might some day be useful to know where I'm coming from on these topics. With that in mind, why did I start fencing and what are my goals for fencing now?

On the broadest level, I've been wanting to learn a martial art for years. For my health, for my curiosity, for the pleasure of safe and controlled violence, and in more recent years to combat body dysphoria with greater body awareness and control. Fencing, of all martial arts that I could look into in my area, offered the opportunity to learn surrounded by friends and folks I already knew in an already familiar environment, and given my massive social anxieties, that wasn't much of a contest. As an added bonus, it gave me more to do at SCA events!

My goals have since then revolved around learning historic Italian fencing in general and Capoferro in particular. In part because I learn through structure, and there are already all of these lovely resources that break down historic Italian fencing in ways that are easy for me to digest. It's a consistent style that I can study, work on, and measure my goals against. (Though I do need to switch to reading Capoferro directly, and will talk about that here at some point.)

I'm also coming at this as a nerd who's never been into sports, and so for me it's more of an intellectual and research exercise than a desire to be competitive. Learning history and a specific historic skill set is fun, interesting, and entirely in my wheelhouse. Learning to win at a game is not as familiar a motivation, and arguably not as tangible and realistic a goal. It took a while for folks to even sell me on tournaments, since it seemed outside of what I was doing, but I see their value now. I'd still feel more accomplished losing while staying in the forms I'm trying to learn rather than winning messily, but tests and markers are important regardless. (Obviously winning cleanly is better than both, but priorities are helpful to acknowledge, and in any event I'm still at the losing messily stage and will be here for a while.)

And a smidge of the reason is that of the fencers I most like to watch, many are fighting in one specific style (not all Italian, mind) and there's a crispness or a cleanness in the way they move that I enjoy and would love to one day echo. That might not end up being Italian for me, but it's a place to start.

The rest is all Donovan's fault, probably.

For now I go back and forth between focused research and drilling and less focused "I'll go to practice and try to get better at swording in general", but my main goal is definitely one specific style. Once I feel comfortable with Capoferro, I'll be interested in branching out and looking at other styles for new learning and for the sake of comparison, and I'm very interested in one day looking more into cut-and-thrust, (for reasons that are in no way related to my guilty love of Highlander), but one thing at a time.