anotheranon | more on genius/achievement

Just finished reading this article, The Expert Mind, about what makes a chess grand champion or an "expert" in any other field of endeavor. According to the article (and evidently years of psychological research), innate ability or talent won't take you as far as concious, deliberate training.

The article has sat in my mind as I'm looking at my foil fencing game. I've kept up my fencing this summer much as I have for the past couple of years, through free fencing practice once a week against a variety of different fencers. I feel like I've improved in the past 6 months-year in terms of confidence and separating my different fencing styles on the strip (for awhile I think I was mixing up my saber and foil moves and using "hack and slash" for the latter where they really don't work).

However, I've not had drills or instruction for almost two years - economy has dictated that I have to choose between bouting and instruction and I've always chosen the former because.. well, it's just more fun :P Lately though I've started to think that I'm just going to stand still with the sport if I don't get back to basics for a bit. Hence my thinking out loud from a couple of weeks ago. And it's not that I have any current ambitions to compete, but I'm just itching for "more", somehow, and I think instruction may be the way to go.

True to form I'm taking my time to decide, but once I actually pick a club/class I'll be very certain of my decision. I'll keep fencing this fall, even if it's just once a week w/ floor fee like I've been doing, but I find it surprising and more than a little amusing that little old "always picked last for kickball" me is thinking like.. well.. an athlete (!)