In this episode of First to 15, Corwin Duncan breaks down why fencers often look sharp at practice but struggle when the pressure is on at competitions — and what to do about it. Bryan and Corwin dig into expectations, stress, and the in-the-moment tools that help you reset, refocus, and fence the bout in front of you. If you’re a youth fencer (or a parent trying to support one), this is a practical, skill-focused conversation you can use right away.
Guest: Corwin Duncan is a mental performance coach, former national champion and world team member, and a longtime fencing coach and referee. He works with fencers of all levels to build concrete, in-the-moment skills for managing pressure, emotions, and focus — on and off the strip.
What we cover:
Why tournaments feel different than practice: familiarity, “safety,” routine disruption, and expectations
How spirals start (and how to interrupt them before they snowball)
The “5-second reset” breathing technique you can use between actions
Using time wisely on strip (shoe tie, blade straighten, creating a moment to think)
A parent’s role: supporting without adding pressure, and managing your own stress
“Losing to weaker fencers”: how expectations can lower intensity — and what to do instead
Reframing a bad result so it doesn’t define you
When it’s time to consider a mental performance coach (including “I’m not enjoying fencing anymore”)
Building a mental warm-up and why routines should be consistent, not rigid
Why Corwin cares about skills that transfer beyond fencing (the “doctor’s shot” story)
Links mentioned:
SharperMind Training: https://sharpermindtraining.com/
SEASON 2, EPISODE 23
[0:00:01] BW: Have you ever watched your fencer or even yourself fence really well in practice and then you only struggle at a big competition? It's a common story where your bouts in the club might be smooth and then at the actual tournament everything kind of falls apart. Today with our guest, we're going to tackle why that might happen, why you can't fence at competitions quite like you do in practice, and how to fix it.
I'm really excited to welcome Corwin Duncan to the show. I've known Corwin basically ever since I started in fencing. And we started communicating about what he's offering to the fencing community. But he's been around the fencing world a lot longer than that. He's a former national champion, a world team member, and he's worn pretty much every hat in fencing, athlete, coach, and now a mental performance coach, which means he's worked with national team members from four different countries and helped fencers of all ages manage their emotions and sharpen their focus both on and off the strip. So, he can help bridge that gap between practice and competition.
So, welcome Corwin. Excited to chat with you.
[0:01:00] CD: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited for this conversation as well.
[0:01:04] BW: Yeah. And I really appreciate you reaching out because it's been something that we haven't really covered in this podcast a ton. We've talked about a lot of different things, but not so much the mental side. And I'd love to start by you telling us about your fencing background and how you kind of got into this side of the sport. And maybe what from your own time in fencing might have informed you to take this step into a new career.
[0:01:30] CD: Yeah, great question. I mean, it all kind of ties together, right? When I was younger, I got started competing nationally when I was around 13 with my first JOs, which went terribly. It was awful. But that wasn't the end of the story, right? I kept competing. And happily, as you said, I was able to go on to some good national results. I won national championships. I was on the national team.
And during that time, I was aware of a kind of limiting factor. I'd go to World Cups and just not quite do as well as I hoped or not feel like I was fencing as well as I could, which pretty much everybody in the sport has experienced. And it's so frustrating. I was in a wonderful club, a lot of wise and experienced fencers around me. Veterans, world champion, Kaz Campe, who won back in I think '98. A lot of experience.
And I got this advice at times around mental training that was good. It was, "Be in the moment. Stay focused. Let go of the outcome," things like that. All of it is correct, but it was not helpful to me in the moment. And what I struggled with was how do I take these ideas and apply them in practice?
So fast forward now, I've worked in mental health for a few years. I've been a coach. I've been a referee. And I wanted to offer something that I knew the fencing community needed from my own experience, from hearing from people around me, "Oh, it's a mental game. It's a mental game. It's this. It's that. I'm losing focus. I'm struggling at competitions compared to practice. I'm losing to people I shouldn't." These things that we hear over and over. But it was really important to me to not leave it in terms of nebulous or vague kind of concepts.
Some of those are important, right? It is really valuable to hear how a top-level fencer thinks or what their mindset is. And at some point, we need the rubber to hit the road. We got to have something actionable to do. So my personal approach comes from what I was looking for back in the day was skills that I could apply on the strip. And I wasn't really finding that kind of concrete support. And so now what I really focus on offering is concrete skills that all of my clients can take with them and use in real-time in the moment on the strip when they're struggling.
[0:03:56] BW: We'll link SharperMind training in the show notes for, people who want to connect with you and see what you can offer them. But in your opinion, why is there that disconnect between fencing well at practice and struggling at a tournament? You're in this safe environment of a club, you're the best fencer in your club, then you go to the tournament, and maybe you crash out in the round of 128, or 64, or earlier than you were hoping.
[0:04:21] CD: Right. Right. I mean, you just hit on part of it right there, which is at your club, you're in a safe environment. It feels good. You feel comfortable. I mean, realistically, there's a variety of factors, so we can't know all of them at any given time. But there's some big ones we can speak to. For sure, it's less familiar. Even if you've been to a bunch of competitions, it's not as comfortable or as comforting, really, as being at your own club where maybe you're the best person there. You don't have anything to worry about. Everybody likes you. Nobody's going to look at you. And if you make a mistake, go, "What's going on there? What's happening?" You're good. You're safe. And that feeling of safety plays a huge role in our kind of underlying stress level.
On top of that familiarity and feeling of safety at a competition, there's all the pressure of expectations, which huge. The gap between your expectations and your reality just becomes stress, right? If you can let go of expectations a little bit, so valuable to becoming more calm and fencing the way you want to. I mean, there's every kind of stress you can imagine at a tournament, from other people watching, from the results mattering suddenly, to you're in a different environment. Your routine is thrown off. You're not just like, "Okay, I put on my stuff."
But one of the biggest things is just the feeling that now this matters and the expectation that we can do it just as well. The belief. I'm just going to show up at a competition and fence like I normally do. For a lot of people, that's not realistic. You got to plan to struggle a little bit more. You got to be ready for that.
And so what happens if you're not ready for that is you show up, it's a little harder than you think. And that's when that spiral begins that you mentioned earlier, where it becomes not just, "Oh, I'm fencing a little bit worse. I'm struggling a little bit more, but now I'm frustrated about it. Now I'm confused." Yeah. I mean, your face, you understand. You're like that. And we've all seen it. It's not just something isn't going right, but it's then you're upset about it, and everything goes downhill from there.
[0:06:37] BW: Yeah. So, how do you avoid spiraling then? Because maybe you're talking to yourself after a bad touch and you're like, "Okay, man. I'm not good enough." You're right there in the moment. The clock is not your friend in that situation. Maybe that there's a big crowd that seems to have gathered for whatever reason for this quarterfinal bout, and you're focused too much on the wrong thing. So, how do you coach the fencers you work with to get out of that spiral in the moment when the only person who can talk to them in that moment is themselves?
[0:07:10] CD: Yeah, that's a great question. There are, again, a couple of different factors. I got to step back here and say that when we're talking about competitions, I use the word stress almost as a catch-all of like all of the different factors that get in your way that make it harder to be at your best in a competition. And I break that down into in the moment the stress from a touch just happened that you didn't like, or something is not the way you want it to be, to kind of the stories that you're carrying or the beliefs you're carrying with you that give you like an underlying level of stress.
If I don't do well here, I'm not going to get into college. This is my only chance to get national points. This one competition matters so much. That one competition almost never matters very much. Almost never matters as much as it feels like it does. The longer-term training is to approach competitions with a balanced view of, "Hey, I want to win, for sure. But it's okay if I don't. I don't need to win. I'm not going to let it become a big deal."
On the flip side, in that moment, you need to have some way of managing that stress. Number one, pause and breathe. And there's a specific breathing technique I recommend, which I call a 5-second reset. And we can do it right now. I'll invite you to do it with me. So, just take a deep breath in, take another breath in, and then breathe out all the way. How do you feel after doing that?
[0:08:56] BW: Yeah, it does kind of relax the muscles and force you to just reset for a second. And I could see that working on the strip as well. You can maybe pretend to tie your shoe or something like that and give yourself that 5-second break.
[0:09:12] CD: Exactly. So, you got to take a moment. You got to breathe. And then crucially, you need a little bit of time. When you're under pressure, when things are feeling rushed, it's so hard to think straight. It's so hard to be clear in your thought process. So, you got to get a little bit of time. And if you can, straighten your blade, tie your shoe as you said. If you can't, and any referees listening, close your ears right now, you just walk away from the on guard line and ignore the referee for a minute. Until you get a card, you can kind of push that limit.
And a lot of fencers never push the limit. They're like on guard, "Okay, I got to hurry up." And until you know where that limit is, you're just going to be scared of it, right? Push it at some point. "Hey, how far can I get it before I actually get carded? It's a yellow card. Not a big deal." If you already have a yellow card, then you got to be a little bit more on top.
[0:10:14] BW: Right. You don't want to lose a point over it. Yeah.
[0:10:16] CD: Exactly. But I would even say, if it's fence while you're not ready, or lose a touch, get a red card and lose a touch, I would lose that touch unless it's like in the double digits at this one. Unless it's like 14 or something, then you need it. But otherwise, give yourself a moment to think, and you're going to be able to just do a lot better at that point.
[0:10:45] BW: I love that, by the way. And you talked about the sources of pressure, right? And, obviously, internal pressure is one, pressure from a coach. But we have a lot of parents who listen to this, and I imagine that, whether they know it or not, they're putting some pressure on their fencers, their youth fencers. So, to the parents, what is your advice? Because, yes, they want their fencer to do well and, yes, it would be great if their fencer got into one of those colleges that offers fencing that we all know the names of. But what's your advice to them really? Are they putting, in many cases, too much pressure on these young fencers in a way that actually might be detrimental to their potential success?
[0:11:24] CD: Yeah. Sometimes, yes, simply. And my advice broadly – and I'll get more specific, but broadly to the parents, manage your own stress. And a lot of the people who work with me, the parents come to me, and they are trying to do everything they can to support their kids. They want to see their kids do well. They want to see their kids be happy. Sometimes it's just, "Hey, my son loves fencing, but he's not enjoying it." "My daughter really, really wants to compete, but then she is so frustrated afterwards, or she starts crying," something, right? And these parents, all they want to do is support their kids.
And even those parents, when they're at the side of the strip, and they're anxious, and they're worried, humans are sensitive to other humans, right? We're going to pick up on stress levels. Sometimes even the best-intentioned parents can be adding on a little bit of stress and pressure because they're feeling it themselves. And we can't help but reflect a little bit of that or pick up on the people around us.
So, one thing, manage your own stress. And if you're like, "Oh, no. I'm fine at competitions. I'm not stressed." Double-check that. If you have like a wearable heart rate monitor, check your heart rate. For some people, I know a coach, a very good coach at Fencer's Club, Dwight Smith, who has mentioned that, coaching, his heart rate will go up higher than when he's actually fencing.
[0:13:01] BW: Interesting, huh?
[0:13:03] CD: And he's a high-level fencer. I mean, when he fences, he really goes for it. So that's saying something. Besides that, really when you are, let's say, off the strip between competitions, keeping in mind, reminding your fencer that you are not there to push them on the results. You are there to support them in whatever their competition looks like. It's not the only thing, right? And a lot of these kids put so much pressure on themselves. But it doesn't hurt to just say, "Hey, we're here to fence, and it's not just about the result. Whatever the result is, we're not worried. We just want you to be here and enjoy yourself." And if, as a parent, you're already saying that, good job.
[0:13:49] BW: Yeah, that's great. Corwin, you talked earlier about a big frustration for especially younger fencers is losing to someone they feel is weaker than them. And it's easy to look at the tableau and see who is supposed to be the better fencer based on their seedings. And now we've got fencing tracker, which is great in a lot of ways because it gives you a lot of information, but it actually says, "Okay, here's who should win this bout." Why even go out there and fence? Just look at fencing tracker and whoever is higher, advance them to the next round. But regardless, when that happens and when someone either is about to fence a "weaker fencer", or they actually lose to that again "weaker fencer", what do they do in that moment?
[0:14:33] CD: Well, I would say it's pretty different answer before and after the bout. The big picture of this, I would say, is it goes back to expectations and reality. And there's two things happening there. You expect to beat someone, you think you're better than someone, immediately, it's very easy for the brain to kind of turn off just a little bit, just to go down from like 10 to eight in terms of intensity. So, you're not really fencing at your best.
And then the unthinkable happens. They get the first touch, "Oh my god, what's going on? I'm going to win this – I'm supposed to win this bout." And immediately, your reality and your expectation start to separate. They get two touches, "Oh no, what's going on?" And it's this weird experience. And I'm pointing to my body because one of my big, big things is the body and the mind are connected. Anything affects the mind, it affects the body. Anything that affects the body affects the mind.
It is often a physical experience of disjunction. There's two different things happening. My head's living in this reality where I'm winning, but the rest of me is in this reality where I'm actually losing to this guy who maybe he doesn't even have a rating, whatever it is. And I've been there plenty of times, right? I've been there so many times.
And so, often, there will be this effort to come back where we over complicate, and we're trying too hard, and we're doing too much. But with that is this intense frustration and this internal tension of, "Oh, my god. I need to fix this." And if you're down 3-0 against somebody you can beat 5-0, you don't need to fix anything. You just need to settle down and get one touch and then do that a few more times. That's what happens right?
What you want to do in that situation, first of all, go into the bout taking it seriously. There's no easy bouts. Sometimes if you work hard, there's an easy bout. But if you approach it as an easy bout, sometimes it's not so easy.
[0:16:38] BW: Important difference.
[0:16:39] CD: So, no easy bounce. You go in really trying your best. Keep it simple, but try your best. Second, let go of the outcome or the expectations for what's going to happen and focus on the simplest, most basic elements that you can control. Can you do a little 5-second reset between every touch? Great. Do that. Can you make sure you're on guard is really good, or your footwork is solid, or you're doing the thing that your coach always tells you to do? Can you do that? Do that. And 9 times out of 10, if you're really the better fencer and you do that, you're going to win the bout. If instead you get caught up in, "Oh, I'm going to win. I have to beat this person, this, that, the other," you're toast. Or maybe not toast, but at least your life gets harder.
[0:17:31] BW: And then if you do end up losing, is there a way to reframe that? Your tournament day is done. Maybe you've got another event the next day, maybe not. But that loss is really going to sit with you now. And you don't immediately get to get back out there like you would in pools, maybe, right? If you lose that first pool bout. What's the mental coach advice in that situation?
[0:17:54] CD: I actually have to go back to a tournament that I fenced after becoming a full-time mental coach. And that was a weird pressure to feel, because I'm like, "All right, now I have people who I'm coaching on being focused. I better be really on point mentally."
[0:18:11] BW: Yeah. Practice what you preach.
[0:18:14] CD: And then I thought, "Wait a minute. I'm not out there telling my clients you have to be perfectly focused for every competition." What I'm telling them is let go of the things you cannot control. Focus on the things you can control and do those parts right. And that gave me a little bit of ease myself. I'm out here saying, "Hey, the mentally strong fencer can handle loss and come back and say, "Hey, this is all right. I'm not defined by this experience. I'm not sunk because of one bad tournament." And the ideal is not that we never lose. And the ideal is not even that we're always fencing well, but that when things go bad, you can't always be at the top of your game. Then it's not the top of your game. It's just the middle.
[0:19:01] BW: Right. It's true.
[0:19:02] CD: So the days that don't feel good, you got to be able to just accept those. One of the skills that I teach, and I practice, and I think is so important is mindfulness. Observing the present moment without judgment and without trying to change. That's tough when you've just lost, and you've fenced badly, and everything in your body feels bad, and everything in your brain feels bad, and you're just like, "Ahhh." And you want to throw things or yell, which, if you want to do that, go for it. Go out of the venue first, then yell, then throw something. But in that moment, we got to be able to say, "I am bigger than this. The loss isn't everything that I am."
[0:19:49] BW: At what point is someone ready for a mental coach? How do you know if you, or if we're talking to a parent, their fencer might benefit from working on the mental side with a coach like you? Is there like some type of trigger that they should look for? Is it ones that are at a certain competitive level? What's your advice there? I know, for example, you set up tables at USA Fencing tournaments, and I imagine you might get this question, "Why would I come to you? And when would I come to you?"
[0:20:20] CD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, a couple ways of looking at this, and one that I like is you go see your fencing coach for technical skills. Maybe you see a personal trainer to work on your physical fitness. See a mental coach as you go up in level, as you want to get to the next level to improve your mental skills, to really be where you want to be.
Realistically, though – and I think that was a little bit where I was at. I was like, "There's nothing that's making me go I can't go on this way. However, I wanted to get to the next level as a fencer." With that said, most people come to me because something's happening that they don't like. They're like, "This has to change." Whether they're getting panic attacks on the strip. Or they or their fencer, right? A parent who's watching their daughter go up on the strip and start crying on a regular basis. That doesn't feel good. So, it's feeling a lot of stress and pressure around fencing, around competitions.
Honestly, the big one that I think some people might not recognize right away is if you're just not enjoying it. Maybe you used to enjoy it. You used to love fencing, and now you're just like, "This doesn't feel good," but you still want to, or you still have competitive goals, or whatever. Or some days you love it, and some days you're miserable. That's a great time for us to work on some things that can make the difficult days a bit easier and make the easier days phenomenal.
[0:21:56] BW: You're right. The time to have a mental coach might even be before you think it's necessary, right? Because I do see it as – and we hear from elite athletes that tell us the same thing. And I am including you in that group. But from a conversation I've had with Lee Kiefer, for example, she talks about having someone that she talks to about this. And I love that fencers are being more vocal about this because it's not actually a sign of weakness. Maybe 30, 40 years ago, it would be seen that way before we knew what we know, that this is something where, "Oh, he or she is working on their mental game. They must have some sort of problem." But now we know better, right? And the best are doing this in all the sports.
What is it that's missing in the mental training for most people once you start to work with them and really dive in, knowing that it's going to be different for everybody, and there's no one-size-fits-all? But is there some aspect of mental preparation or psychology that you found that even the best fencers aren't practicing enough?
[0:22:59] CD: I am excited to answer that. I got to go back to what you said a minute ago, though, about how mental coaching might have been seen as like showing weakness in the past. Because, yeah, at the same time as like 40 years ago, people might have been like, "You see somebody for your mind? What's wrong? Those were people who were seeing trainers to get their body stronger, right?
[0:23:22] BW: Yeah. Exactly. And no one thought twice about it, right?
[0:23:26] CD: It's not only that. It's so obvious you need a trainer if you're competing at a certain level, at a certain thing. But for myself, I'm like, "There's a lot of things I could do in my life without seeing a therapist every week, but I can do them better and easier, and I enjoy them more with that ongoing support." And so, there's that, too.
The kind of when to see a mental coach. I guess the summary of my thought there is if there's something specific and clear that you want to change or that you want to address that's not being addressed in your coaching, or if there's not a specific thing but just something doesn't quite feel right. Sometimes just getting an outside perspective can be helpful. Yeah, there's that.
[0:24:13] BW: Yeah. So, moving on a little bit to like going to a first competition or the first competition at a new level. For a lot of young fencers, that can be really intimidating. So, what is the mental warm-up routine that you recommend? Their pool's going to start at 8am. They show up at the venue at 7. I think from what I see, most fencers know that they need to do a physical warm-up to get in the right physical space. You see them running around, doing stretches, doing some practice bouting with their club mates. But as far as I know, I'm not seeing a bunch of people just sitting there focused on the mental side. What is that mental warm-up that someone might be able to use as soon as this weekend?
[0:25:01] CD: I love that you're using the phrase mental warm-up because I don't hear that very often, but there is a specific set of skills that I actually call a mental warm-up. For me, it's the three-minute mindfulness exercise I teach, activation breathing, an exercise I teach, and then box breathing, which is like a lot of people kind of know what that is. But the bigger thing is just to have something. To have something that you're doing for your mind. And for some people, that is just their physical warm-up. It's the same routine. It's consistent. It's familiar. They're able to go, "Okay, I go into this routine, and I know I'm about defense."
For other people, it might be like a minute of focused breathing or some other kind of mental training exercise, but just having something to say, "Hey, I'm doing this to get my mind ready," can leave you with a bit more confidence going into a competition. And then the other piece of it, just anything that's routine. If you have a routine, just follow that routine. Don't make it rigid. Doesn't have to be the exact same 45 minutes minute per minute, but try to hit like a couple of high points that you do consistently for every warm-up.
[0:26:07] BW: Why not make it rigid? Because I know some people have these superstitions that they need to do the exact same 30-minute warm-up. In your view, why is it important to have some specific things that you do in there every time? And that means it's consistent, but doesn't have to be a carbon copy from Kansas City, to Cincinnati, to Cleveland, to all the stops on the NAC tour, for example.
[0:26:32] CD: Richmond, Portland, Oregon. Yeah.
[0:26:34] BW: Yeah. Exactly.
[0:26:35] CD: I actually think having a 30-minute warm-up, like physical warm-up that's pretty much exactly the same, is great. The reason I'm saying you don't want to be rigid is because it leaves you open to frustration or just getting really thrown off if something doesn't go the way you expect.
[0:26:55] BW: Which is almost guaranteed to happen, right?
[0:26:59] CD: Right. Given 30 minutes in your warm-up, you can probably fit most of the things you're doing. I have basically a 20 to 30-minute warm-up routine. I do the exact same exercises in the exact same order. But I know if I can't find a strip, if something goes wrong, I let it go.
[0:27:15] BW: Somebody comes and kicks you off the strip, or the venue is not exactly laid out the way you thought. Yeah, I can think of a hundred things that would go wrong. But please.
[0:27:25] CD: Exactly. Right. And the issue is more so when it's like, "Oh, this whole two hours needs to go this thing, then this thing, then this." Because then something goes a little bit – it's like your whole fencing day becomes dependent on that. Even if it's not actually, in your mind, it is. So if something goes wrong, you go, "Oh no, now I have a problem." You don't have a problem. There's no problem. Just get on the strip.
I mean, some people's best results come when they're sick, or they're thinking about something else, or something is wrong, and they're just like, "I guess I just got offense." And you just fence. It gets simpler, you know?
[0:28:01] BW: Yeah, that's interesting. And speaking of best result, I'd love to hear what your proudest moment as a mental coach is so far. And obviously, without sharing any specific names of people that you work with. But just generally speaking, is there an athlete that you've helped or a moment when you were like, "Hey, this feels really good. I'm making a difference here." And most importantly, the fencer is improved because of the work that we've been doing.
[0:28:28] CD: Yeah. Well, there's two examples that come to mind. Wildly different. And one of them I can be specific about because, actually, he's consented to be on my website. He's like, "Yeah, sure." You can see his picture first thing when you go there. And that's Simon Lioznyansky.
[0:28:46] BW: Alliance epee fencer. Yeah.
[0:28:48] CD: Yeah. Exactly. Now at UPEN. And it was such a perfect situation because very skilled fencer, driven, motivated, all the things that you look for, but had just not been having the results he was looking for. Don't quote me on this. He might have actually dropped off the junior points list by the time we worked together.
And so then we worked together. And we didn't even keep going for a super long time. We started the end of the winter. That July, he won the div 1 at Summer Nationals. He was a junior at that point, but first year in juniors. He won the div 1, gold medal. And then that season, he became the world number one in juniors. And I believe today he is world number two in juniors. It was just such – yeah, everything is there. Everything is there for this guy, obviously. Or else he wouldn't have risen so high. Period. But it was just that little bit of like, "Hey, let me just get a little bit of something that can help me out in staying calm, staying focused, whatever it may be." That was really, really awesome. Of course, who wouldn't love that?
The other example, though, is completely different. This is a younger fencer who was struggling a little bit with some stress, some nerves on the strip, and just feeling some anxiety. So, we worked together for some months, and his fencing, I think, got better, and his comfort there got better. More importantly to me was the email his mother sent me, where she said he went to the doctor to get a shot, and he's scared of needles. Using the techniques I taught him, he was able to calm down, ask for, I think, it was some ice to just like numb the spot on his arm, and then get the shots and sit calmly for them. And what she said was, "No one else has been able to empower him to take control of his anxiety this way before." And that was the email that I read and just about started crying. Because, ultimately, we're here for fencing, but I'm here for what goes beyond the strip.
[0:31:17] BW: Yeah. Because we love this sport, and we know that it's a super valuable part of someone's life beyond fencing. But ultimately, it is a game. And so if you win the game or you lose the game, at the end of the day, no one died, right? You can look at it from that perspective. But what you're doing is so cool because it is giving them skills that they can use beyond fencing. And you could say the physical side of the sport is also skills you can use beyond fencing, but the mental side is, too. And it's something that they can take with them into life, school, career, etc., etc. I really love that.
And Corwin, as we wrap up, I've got five more quick questions that we like to end the episode with. So, kind of a lightning round. So, whatever comes to mind here. And question one, we've talked a lot about your career now as a mental coach, but how about from your own fencing career? What's your favorite memory? When you play back that highlight reel in your head, what's your favorite memory from your own fencing career, which I know you're still fencing, but looking back on what you've done so far?
[0:32:24] CD: Yeah, probably be top four at a div 1 NAC in Denver, Colorado, in 2008 in December. It was just a long day of hard fencing. I was down 14-9 in one bout and came back. That was to get in top eight to get into the top four. I beat now Olympian, Jason Pryor, who is not yet an Olympian at that point. Back then, I was better than him. That is no longer the case by any means. But yeah, it was just a phenomenal day of fencing.
[0:32:56] BW: I love that. Question two. I know a lot of fencers, as part of their pregame routine, have a song or a playlist they listen to you. Do you do music at all, or is all of the – Okay. So, do you have like a favorite playlist, or song, or artist that helps you get ready for a bout?
[0:33:15] CD: Probably the most for me was Enya. There were times I was like, "I want to listen to intense pump-up music." Didn't work for me. It had to be like a little more lowkey. There was also the song Relax, Take It Easy by MIKA, which was relatively new when I was listening to it a lot, 2009, 2010. That was a good one.
[0:33:41] BW: I love that. And then how about after a competition? How do you like to celebrate? Is it a meal? Is it some time by yourself? Spending time with friends? If you have a result you're proud of, what do you do post-event?
[0:33:57] CD: Yeah, I mean, immediately after the event, if I'm done well, then I'm excited, and I'm hungry. So, go to dinner, get something to eat. But my philosophy, if you win a medal that you're proud of, wear it when you go to dinner. You're never going to wear it again.
[0:34:12] BW: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:34:12] CD: So, wear it that night.
[0:34:14] BW: I love that. That's really good. And then do you have a favorite quote or mantra, or maybe it's something that you've even come up with yourself that you tell yourself that you like to live by or that inspires you day-to-day?
[0:34:27] CD: There's so many quotes that I love, but the one that's coming to mind right now is something I just quoted to somebody, I think, yesterday, which I believe is a quote from Janusz Bednarski, coach for some time, and it's just "the answer is on the strip". And I take it to mean all the preparation you're going to do, all the planning you're going to do, you're not going to find how to beat somebody. You're not going to figure it all out. All the planning they're going to do. Ultimately, get on the strip and fence. And that's where you're going to find your answer.
[0:34:56] BW: I love that. And then finally, when you're not coaching or fencing, how do you like to relax or unwind? Or you're talking about fencing all day, you're training, but then I imagine there's some times when you're like, "Get me away from fencing for a few hours."
[0:35:11] CD: Absolutely. Yeah. These days, Dungeons and Dragons and ice hockey are two of the big things that I've been putting time into. Both a lot of fun in completely different ways.
[0:35:21] BW: Yeah. Seriously. Well, Corwin, this has been really great. I appreciate your insights. And it's been really eye-opening to think that there are these strategies that can help you with the mental side, just like you would go to the gym to work on your body and work with your coach on your technique and footwork.
If you want to learn more about Corwin and the great work that he's doing, be sure to check out sharpermindtraining.com. And we're also going to put that website in the show notes here. You can see some resources and some of those testimonials that you've been talking about as well, and many more of how you've helped build mental skills in fencers. Corwin, any final words for people? And thank you so much. That's my final word to you.
[0:36:04] CD: Can I put in a quick plug for something, actually?
[0:36:07] BW: Please. Yes, absolutely.
[0:36:09] CD: Shameless self-promotion. I recently put together, and then at the beginning of the year launched, a pre-competition workshop or a competition prep workshop. And it's 20 minutes. A lot of busy fencers can still fit that in. And it's just a few more perspectives on specifically and concretely how to approach getting ready for a competition. You can get that on my website. You'll see a banner, whatever. Go there if you want to check that out. It's 26 bucks, so it won't break the bank. And hopefully, that will help.
[0:36:40] BW: Yeah, that's great. Well, this has definitely helped. And then, like you said, there's many more resources. Corwin, thank you. And to everybody listening, thank you for tuning in. And I say keep practicing. Stay sharp mentally. And happy fencing, everybody. Thanks, Corwin. We'll see you at the next one.
[0:36:55] CD: Thank you so much.
[0:36:56] BW: Thanks for listening to First of 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. We'll be back with our next conversation in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can stay up-to-date on all the latest fencing news by following us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And if you like this podcast, please help us grow and reach more people by leaving us a rating or a review. Until next time, I'm Bryan Wendell. And I hope to see you real soon out on the strip. Bye.
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