June Developments

Hello everyone! Another month is gone already. Time is truly flying these days.

This was a solid month of dieting and practicing. I set a goal of bulking up to a lean 180lb and am nearly there, walking around at 176lb and feeling really good. Hopefully in the next month or two I’ll reach it and then work on leaning out as much as possible.

There’s been some great developments on the fencing front. My hand and fingers are finally strong enough to manipulate the blade at competition speeds so my accuracy and efficiency are way up, and I’m starting to win against good people in saber. We made some strategic adjustments too to keep the game where I’m strongest and those are started to pay dividends as well. I’m very happy with my saber and athletic progress and am about to ramp it up again.

I will be training at a new club in epee which I have neglected for the past 6 months, epee is my strongest weapon by far. This is actually the #1 epee club in the US and has many olympians and world champions training there. Epees are also 50% heavier than sabers and require more control so this should elevate my game in both weapons to the top tier. The plan is to practice there and work on adding the last bits of size and power for the next 4 months before putting it to the test in Thailand at the end of November.

Lastly I have finally made progress on my classification paperwork. I have a few months to create my case on why I should be in the B division and not A and then it’ll be up to the classifiers. I will either be at the top of the B division or bottom of the A division as far as disability goes and it’ll be a tough choice for them. I think I can still win in A but it will be against much more physically able bodied opponents. There was talk of creating an intermediate division but it doesn’t appear to be happening for LA28. Either way we will work with the cards we have and go from there!