Our guest is Damien Lehfeldt, known on Instagram and elsewhere as "The Fencing Coach" but also the strategy and data lead for the Team USA national epee team. We chatted with him about the analytics behind Team USA's drive for gold.
In this episode of First to 15, we're joined by "The Fencing Coach" himself, Damien Lehfeldt.
Damien has been writing The Fencing Coach blog since 2012. That’s the same year he helped coach Team USA’s Suzanne Stetinius to the London Olympics in Modern Pentathlon. He’s now a coach at Nova Fencing Club in Virginia.
Damien is a former epee fencer who had a successful career at Brandeis University, where he graduated in 2009, and he later won gold in the men’s epee team event at the 2012 North American Cup.
On top of all that, he’s the strategy and data lead for the Team USA national epee team. We’re going to talk about what that means and more in today’s episode.
EPISODE 11
[INTRO]
[00:00:01] BW: Hello, and welcome to First to 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. I'm your host, Bryan Wendell, and in this show you're going to hear from some of the most inspiring, interesting, and insanely talented people in the sport we all love. First to 15 is for anyone in the fencing community and even for those just checking out fencing to see what it's all about. So whether you're an Olympian or a Paralympian, a newcomer, a seasoned veteran, a fencing parent, a fan, or anyone else in this wonderful community, this podcast is for you. With that, let's get to today's episode. Enjoy.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:40] BW: You might know today's guest simply as The Fencing Coach. That's his handle on Instagram and at the website, thefencingcoach.com. His name is Damien Lehfeldt, and he's been writing The Fencing Coach blog since 2012. That's actually the same year he helped coach Team USA’s Suzanne Stettinius to the London Olympics and modern pentathlon. He's now a coach at Nova Fencing Club in Virginia.
Damien is also a former epee fencer who had a successful career at Brandeis University, where he graduated in ’09, and he also won gold in the men's epee team event at the 2012 North American Cup. On top of all that, he's also the strategy and data lead for the Team USA national epee team. So we're going to talk about what exactly that means and a whole bunch more in today's episode. Welcome to the podcast, Damien.
[00:01:29] DL: Bryan, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for that warm introduction.
[00:01:32] BW: Yeah. There's a lot that we can cover here, and I want to just dive right into it. Can you kind of tell us how you got into fencing in the first place, how you got started? Then I believe you grew up in Florida, so somehow you ended up in Boston to fence in college. So I'd love to hear how that happened too.
[00:01:47] DL: Yeah. So my best friend since kindergarten, a guy named Gustav Loanus, his dad was a champion level fencer in Sweden, and he got us into it when we were like eight years old. He brought us over to DC Fencers Club over in Silver Spring with Janusz Smolenski, who's still the head coach there and still at it, still very active. Just love at first sight, we got into it when we were young, just the idea of like swashbuckling and everything and hitting your friends with swords. So we started when we were really young, and I've been doing it since. Yeah.
I moved down to Tampa, like you said, towards the end of middle school, and I was working down there with the late great Jim Campoli and Boyko Krastevitch and, also Gromov. I did a visit to Brandeis, fell in love at first sight there, and had an opportunity to work with Bill Shipman, and he was just instrumental in progressing my fencing career. So yeah, proud Brandeis alum, and I hope we find a really great new head coach. It really stinks to lose Jennie.
[00:02:44] BW: Yeah, yeah. She's on to a really good opportunity, though. So when do you remember first being interested in the sport, beyond just the swashbuckling angle and having fun on the strip and really kind of like the strategy specifically behind epee? Was there a time when that switch was turned on?
[00:03:04] DL: I think even going back to high school, like I would take obsessive notes. My dad would record almost every single bout that I did, and I would take like obsessive notes about every touch, like what went right, what went wrong, opportunities for improvement. Was the action tight enough? Was it too big? So like I would be very, very like in the weeds, attention to detail about documenting every bout. I think that's a big part of the reason why now, with this methodology that we've come up with, it's kind of a continuation of that but in a little bit more professional and rigorous kind of way than what I was doing in a notebook and taking notes down that way.
[00:03:42] BW: Yeah, sure. You've taken that kind of into the new decade, right? I want to get into that in a second. But a lot of your observations and expertise has gone on to The Fencing Coach blog, which you mentioned in the intro, and also your presence on Instagram, where you give a lot of great tips into behind the scenes of fencing, specifically epee. But all of that aside, I was interested and kind of surprised to learn that coaching fencing and fencing itself isn't actually your day job. So how do you find time for all of this that you try to pack into your day?
[00:04:13] DL: Yeah. Like you said, I work over at Navy Federal Credit Union. That's my full-time job. I'm on our enterprise strategy and change team there. Really, the reason I'm able to find the time to do this is because it starts with my wife. She's just an amazing support figure. She enables me to fulfill all these dreams and chase all these goals. So she's always in my corner. It's really possible to do this because of her.
Also, just the work life balance that's enabled by my job. I have a wonderful team that enables me to pursue the things that I love outside of work. So I'm really, really fortunate just to have this amazing support system between my wife, my job, my manager. Shout out to Randy if he ever gets a hold of this. But, yeah, I'm in a really good place. I'm so fortunate to have these opportunities that I do.
[00:05:00] BW: That's awesome. So let's talk about The Fencing Coach on Instagram. We mentioned that you're @thefencingcoach. I think the account is – I would characterize it as kind of a mix of your personal life. There's some fitness in there and, of course, a bunch of fencing. One thing you've been doing is answering these anonymous questions from followers about fencing. Sometimes, they get very specific, very detailed, and I think you always present such good answers. Some are helpful. Some are like fun and a little bit snarky, which I like too. So what's been your approach to that account and interfacing with these fencing strangers out there?
[00:05:36] DL: Yeah. So I am really, really happy. I think the account is kind of a conduit of my honesty. I try to be just a straight shooter with every interaction that I have. If somebody is in a situation where they need to be told like, “Hey, you're in a kind of dire situation here with your fencing, like maybe this isn't working out with your club,” I like to be accessible to people. I like to be able to tell them like it is and everything. So I think it's just really an opportunity to get my straight shooter kind of personality out there.
But I like – My mission has always been with The Fencing Coach to take the complexity of fencing and make it accessible to people. So the videos are an opportunity for me to – Obviously, I'm not going to give the entire kind of conduit of what I'm watching with or the entire gamut of what I'm watching with international video. But if I see like a cool touch, then I'm like, “This could be an educational moment. I like to take that, and break it down and away with like really simple language that people understand.
Like you said, it's a combination of my personal life. It’s me being as honest as I can. I like to use social media. I think a lot of the time, we're only putting on there like our best selves. For me, I like to use The Fencing Coach to just be honest and be vulnerable, and let people know, and try to lead the way, and show them that like it's okay to not be okay. It's okay to be vulnerable.
So it's a little bit of everything, right? It's me. What you're reading there every day is me, Damien Lehfeldt. It's not me with a filter. It's me going in and just being as honest as I can be to the benefit of the community, I think.
[00:07:11] BW: Totally, yeah. I would say you're succeeding and to keep it up. So one thing that you, for good reason, can't get into too much detail about on Instagram is one of the main reasons we wanted to have you on, which is your role as the strategy and data lead for the Team USA epee team, as we said at the top. I think this is a job that some of our listeners might not even know existed. So can you tell us how you kind of secured this position and how you would characterize your role? So that's kind of a fancy way of saying that old line. What is it you do here?
[00:07:47] DL: Yeah, yeah. So I'll put it to you this way. I started this research project for my thesis with the US Fencing Coaches Association. Anytime you're going for the fencing master level, you have to do a thesis, where you're essentially adding something to the body of work for the coaching community. I kind of took a step back, and I was like, “We haven't won an Olympic medal individual. We won a team one, but we haven't won an individual Olympic or world medal since 1924 in epee.”
I started wondering myself, “What could that be like?” We have these incredible athletes. I mean, if you watch Kat Curtis, Anna, I mean I could – Yeisser. I could write off a whole list of names here. Incredible athletes and I love watching them fence. I'm looking at this talent that we have in relation to the rest of the world, and I'm like, “This should be our time to shine. Paris 2024 is our time to shine,” and it will be. Trust me. I'm like watching the progress and what the sensors are capable of. I firmly believe in my heart that these people are going to be ready to go and conquer Paris.
So I started this research project to ask the question, what is the rest of the international community doing that we're not? I started kind of documenting rigorously touch by touch and trying to understand every single touch. I capture about 26 fields of metadata that go into every single touch. The way that I originally transitioned this from a research project to becoming this official source of data was Dwight Smith, who was a dear friend of mine, going back to when we were in like cadets. He’s now traveling with the team a lot, coaching. He’s a wonderful coach, amazing guy.
He and I had been talking a lot about this project, and he went over to the Bern World Cup. Yeisser Ramirez was about to fence with Igor Reizlin, who – A Ukrainian guy. At the time of that tournament, he was number one in the world. Dwight was like, “Hey, I know you've been doing this research project. What is the data saying on Igor Reizlin? So I was like, “All right, this is how you want to approach every touch with him in the beginning when you don't have a lead. This is what you want to do when you maintain a lead based on the data. And so like here's the part of the strip that you want to be on and things like that.”
I remember like I just put it out there, and I was kind of like, “All right, this is going to be the first time that we're really using this in real time.” I got up. I think that was at like three in the morning, and I set an alarm. I'm like, “All right, I want to see what this is doing and how this is working.” I get up, and my wife is still sleeping. I'm watching this video, and I'm like, “He's doing this strategy that we talked about, like to a tee.”
Not only did he beat Reizlin. He like – It was 15-8, 15-9. Yeisser fenced amazingly. So from there, that was where I was like, “Hey, you know what? Maybe we should talk about doing this to a broader scale.” I started conversations with Natalie Dostert and Franco. They talked about bringing me on because I'd already done about 1,500, 2,000 touches at the time and had a lot of up-to-date data. We just started those conversations, and here we are now. It's been a really, really fun journey so far.
It's been – I think I started six months ago, and I think we're finding a lot of really cool creative ways to use the data. I think we're preparing our athletes really, really well. They go out there, and their opponents are like old familiar friends to them, by the time they fenced with them. So it's still very much in the early phases, but it's been a really cool journey, thus far, to see kind of how we're using this data and how we're readying our athletes.
[00:11:47] BW: I think that's fascinating, and I'm really interested in the technical side and as much as you're willing and able to share. You said there's these 26 different data points. So when you're watching a bout, is there any of this that's automated? Or is it all hand-catalogued? I'm thinking when I'm watching a baseball game, when that ball hits the bat, we immediately know the exit velocity of the home run, and the angle that it launched at. So obviously, that's all automated. But is any of what you're doing a formula or an automation? Or is this all manual?
[00:12:20] DL: So it started manual, right? I was literally in an Excel file going line by line every single touch, hitting pause on YouTube, coding this in manually in Excel, and then thank God. Kate Reisinger, I talked to her about this early on, and we made – I could share this part. We requested an investment for license in Dartfish. It's a common kind of sports analytics software. Franco had used that in Switzerland, when he was the head epee coach over in Switzerland.
Basically, Dartfish automates a lot of it, right? You set up what you call a tagging panel, and you put in all the different variables that you want to go into a touch, and then it's not all automated. It's like you click as you go, and it codes it in that way. But then, the really cool thing about Dartfish is that you can then take the analytics, and you put them up on the cloud. Basically, an athlete can click on any bout, and they're able to see kind of all of the different analytics that went into an individual bout.
We're making playlists now. So like if there's a particular opponent that somebody's going up against, we don't need to go to YouTube and manually watch every clip. Now, we can go into Dartfish and say, “Okay, we're fencing Sergey Bida,” as an example. Here's every touch that's ever been scored by Sergey Bida. Here’s every touch that's ever been scored against Sergey Bida. So it gives you both the analytics, and it also gives you these customized playlists based on the variables that you want to be watching.
[00:13:49] BW: That's really cool. So it strikes me that, sure, everyone's going to have tendencies that they probably don't even know about and techniques that they're going to turn to again and again. But at some point, people know that this data is out there about them. So how much of this is continuing to evolve at all points? You're getting a picture of this fencer from another country that Team USA is going to be going up against, but it could change because that person may change their strategy. So do you constantly feel like you're trying to like catch up?
[00:14:25] DL: I feel like we’ve gone – In the beginning, yes, I felt like we were playing catch up. I feel like we're at the point now where when a fencer starts to tactically shift what they're doing, we quickly are able to identify that in the data. A lot of fencers have made huge tactical shifts after Tokyo, right? They went into Tokyo with plan A, and plan A didn't work, and so they’ve made a shift. So we're able to now kind of look at that data and trends and what you're seeing.
Not getting too much into the weeds here on – I’m being potentially vague, but we are able to kind of proactively identify changes and tactics that we're seeing from a lot of our international opponents, and get ahead of them before they get ahead of us.
[00:15:04] BW: Sure. Are you using this to allow Team USA’s athletes to study themselves? In other words, figure out their own tendencies and maybe avoid those that aren't effective?
[00:15:15] DL: Yeah. No, that's a great question. So we're using Dartfish to do motion analysis too, right? So if we're seeing some kind of preparatory tendencies in our athletes or in our opponents as well that are like glaring, we're able to kind of – Like Dartfish has these really cool tagging annotation things that like will show you like the angle that they’re at, the distance between two objects.
So we're able to use that to kind of relay that to the coaches, if we see something and say, “Hey, so-and-so has this kind of preparation, and it's not working because they're opening up too much or something like that.” So they're able to use that really in the weeds, nitty-gritty detail to then take it back to the athlete and say, “Check this out. It’s something to be aware of when you're training.”
[00:16:04] BW: Where does the element of speed come in when it comes to getting this information into athletes’ hands? Because sometimes, I mean, yes, you can look at the tableau and see who your potential opponents will be. But you can't scout 60 people in an hour, let's say. So is there information that can be relayed in that short amount of time before the next round? Is it that sophisticated?
[00:16:29] DL: Yeah. So I'll put it this way. We now have data on 102 different fencers from around the world in both men's and women's. That's growing over time with every event, right? We've got this period now between worlds and the first World Cup of the season where we're collecting, collecting, collecting more data. So we have two ways or a couple of ways that we get this to the athletes really, right?
I talked about the playlists and the videos, but I'm a big NFL junkie, right? That's like my big passion. So I've been creating the scouting reports in coalition with coaches, where you aggregate the data, and you say, “Here's all the different things that you need to be aware of.” But then we also kind of put together like a list of things to be aware of and what they look like when they're setting up a touch and how their tendencies might change based on a lead or a deficit.
So we're making these like very rich scouting reports that if you pick one of these up, you're going to know how to fence whoever it is you're up against.
[00:17:34] BW: Do you get the sense that other countries are doing the same and to what level?
[00:17:39] DL: Yeah. So I think every country is doing some form of video capture/analytics. I'm willing to bet we are doing this to a level of detail that's probably deeper than a lot of the other countries. But like I know Franco was doing this in Switzerland before he came over. I know the Japanese team has some kind of like video analysis person like full-time doing that as well. So everybody's doing it. Everybody's doing some kind of film study. But I think the level of detail that we're capturing these analytics, I think we're kind of leading the way right there.
[00:18:13] BW: That's awesome. That's good to hear. What do you hear from the athletes? Because I imagine that they remember when they were a junior or cadet and trying to find videos on YouTube of their opponent and scrambling to like scrub on these tiny phone screens to see a touch again and again. Now, they have these detailed scouting reports, right? So have athletes reached out to you to express how they're enjoying this new potential advantage that they have?
[00:18:43] DL: So most of the communication, right? I like to stay in the shadows. I like to stay behind the scenes. The communication to the athletes is really going through Sergey, Franco, Natalie, Cedric. That being said, like there are some athletes on the team who I've had long standing relationships with like just you and I regularly have conversations about tactics and things like that.
Even former athletes like Jake Hoyle. He hasn't formally announced his retirement yet. But early on when I started this project, Jake was instrumental in being like, “Hey, Damien. This is something that your model has this, this, and this, but you might want to consider this too.” I would love to see this when I was fencing.
Ben Bratton, a former World Champ, another great example. He's been really – He gave me some great feedback on the model and things that I want to consider. But all in all, most of the communications to the athletes is going through the coaches as it should.
[00:19:35] BW: Yeah. That's really cool. You mentioned the example of getting up at 3:00 AM to watch Yeisser. What does it feel like for you when you see a bout and realize that the algorithm was perfect or as close to perfect as it can be and accurately predicted something that really might have turned the tide for a Team USA athlete?
[00:19:56] DL: I'll put it to you this way. I give them the breadcrumbs, right. At the end of the day, though, it's not the analytics that are driving the victories. It's their own strategy. It’s their grit. It’s their athleticism. So I see the analytics as almost like a cherry on top, but it is by no means what I'm researching that's driving these victories. It’s those athletes are working their tails off hundreds of hours a month and just – It’s really unknown. I think these are the bread crumbs that we're giving them, and we're giving them – I’ll put it to you this way. We're giving them a compass, right? We're not giving them a blueprint.
But that being said, it's rewarding to be a part of this process and see what they're able to do. I'm hopeful that the analytics has helped contribute to some victories or maybe another touch that they might not have gotten there, here and there. But at the end of the day, they are, I think, tertiary to the athlete’s own determination, the national coaches or personal coaches, right? I think the analytics are kind of just nice to have.
[00:20:57] BW: Yeah. You talked about how impressive our epee team is and how amazing these athletes are. So I can imagine that even if just to make up a number, even if we're giving them a 2% edge, you need every little edge with how close some of these bouts are. So like every little bit counts and helps.
[00:21:18] DL: Yeah. That’s exactly it. The scale margin between the best fencers in the world and your secondary fencers is really small. There's not like a huge gap in epee where the number one of the world is like dominant, and nobody's going to touch them, right? So like every little detail matters. If you like drop your handle a little bit too far in a preparation, that's something that we can take advantage of and figure out a way to work around that. If you're leading with your body on some touches, or you're bringing your feet together when you're coming forward in preparation. So like the really small in the weeds minutiae is super important in epee, and that can be the difference between victory and defeat at this level.
[00:21:58] BW: So I know you're epee, and you have so much experience with epee and are helping the national epee team. But is any of what you're doing, could it be translated to foil and sabre, like the model? Not necessarily the specifics but the model itself?
[00:22:13] DL: Yeah. I think there's like aspects of it that certainly could. But I, by no means, will claim to be a sabre or foil expert by any means. But I'd be really curious to sit down with Greg Massialas one day or [inaudible 00:22:27] and see. Everything that we're doing research wise, like is there any way that you'd be able to take this and replicate it in foil and sabre?
So I think there's aspects of it. I’ve created this kind of concept called, oh, no moments, if you will. PG for the kids out there, but I think a lot of those and kind of how you create that window of opportunity for touch. I think you would see some kind of overlap and foil and sabre. But all in all, I think to really create a model for those weapons, you would need to probably tweak it. Add a couple different fields.
[00:22:58] BW: So we've talked a lot about the senior team and the work that you're doing for them and the great athletes and the great coaches. But are there some ways that younger fencers might use the lessons that you've learned to kind of help their own game before they make the senior team? What would you recommend as to how they can do similar scouting and analytics, analysis of their own game and their opponents?
[00:23:25] DL: Yeah. So the advice that I would give it to that age group is – This is not really sharing too much the teas, not spilling the teas, not disclosing something as a secret. But the way that epee is moving now is in this direction called one tempo, which is a way that I would describe that to anybody listening who might not be aware of what that is, is like if you ever see Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? There's that scene where the guy is like twirling his sword, and he's getting ready, and he's like coming in like this all wild. Then Harrison Ford just takes out a pistol and shoots him, right?
So you got this guy going in with flash. He's like trying to do all these tricks and everything. Harrison Ford, you think about he hits someone with one tempo shot, right. That's the direction the game is moving. Like almost every touch, you watch it at this level. It's like they close a – They set it up with their feet. They close the distance. They finish with a single tempo action.
So anybody who's trying to think about how to take what we're doing and apply it day-to-day fencing, and they want to know how to really position themselves for the long run, when you're practicing, when you're bouting, try to set everything up with your feet, less with your hand. Finish with that one simple action. That's going to get you ready. If you have aspirations to go on to international level or Olympic level, the more one-tempo fencing you're doing, the more you're going to be positioned for success in the long run. So that's what I would say is like the best advice that I can give from a data learning’s perspective.
[00:24:55] BW: That's applicable, regardless of your opponent, especially at this age we're talking about.
[00:25:00] DL: It is, yeah. You certainly have fencers that are predominantly two-tempo that they're finding success still doing that. But when you look at the majority of the men and the women at the top, almost all of them are single-tempo fencers, one-hand motion, one-foot motion when they finish the action.
[00:25:18] BW: You’ve mentioned those fencers at the top. Obviously, you spend a lot of your time watching videos of them. Is that another way for a young fencer to improve their game is to find a fencer that they admire and want to emulate, or is that practice maybe not as effective?
[00:25:34] DL: Oh, no. It certainly is effective. I mean, I think the best way that kids can find creativity and inspiration is by watching the best fencers in the world and watch what they're doing. I would caution that doing that could backfire sometimes. You watch Max Heinzer, and he's going into these crazy backflips over the top and these jump lunges off the line, where he's covering like 30 feet. That's something that Max Heinzer can do, but it's not necessarily something that everybody can do.
So I'd say like yes and no. Find that inspiration, right? Find the fencers that you like, that you feel like you'd be able to replicate what they're doing. Don't just pick one. Pick a lot of them, right? Because I've been watching more than 100 fencers now, and I'm like, “This fencer has something to offer. This fencer has something to offer.” So I'm like seeing all these bits and pieces of what these guys are doing. Women are doing that. That's incredible. So you can find a little bit of something from everybody, and that's one of the best things about fencing.
[00:26:31] BW: There's no one secret formula that's guaranteed to win every time, right?
[00:26:35] DL: Yeah, yeah. There's no secret formula. There's no secret moves, right? It’s not a game of moves, right? So you might have a really good flash. You might have a really good lunge. But those things don't matter. It's how you set it up to enable that closing action. So this is a game of preparation. That's another thing that I would just say to the younger fencers that are listening to this, is think about your preparation and using that with your feet to create that window of opportunity because it's not about those closing actions. It's about how you enable them.
[00:27:06] BW: That's awesome. My final question kind of is a more broad-reaching one. Considering the work that you're able to do for Team USA and all this great behind the scenes expertise that you've been offering, what does success look like for you?
[00:27:22] DL: Success for me, I think, is just being here and being a part of this process. But I think I really desperately would love to see us get both a team and an individual medal in Paris. I firmly believe, with the coaching staff that we have right now, with the athletes that we have right now, that's going to be possible. It has been 100 years. It'll be 100 years when the Paris Olympics come. It was George Charles Calnan who won a bronze medal in the 1924 Olympics. I'm looking at the athletes that we have now. I'm looking at the coaches. I'm looking at where we're at relative to our peers, and I think these people are ready to go out there and really deliver and perform.
It's such an exciting time to be part of this team, Bryan, because we're there. We really are. It's just getting over that little hump, and we're there. We're going to be on the podium in Paris. I firmly believe that, both in team and individual.
[00:28:22] BW: That's awesome.
[00:28:22] DL: That's what I think success is going to look like.
[00:28:24] BW: Yeah. I love to hear that. It was really interesting to go kind of behind the scenes with you, and I know there's even more to come. So thank you to Damien Lehfeldt for joining us. If people want to see more from you and the amazing content that you've created or even ask you an anonymous question about fencing, they can follow you @thefencingcoach on Instagram and then thefencingcoach.com. Damien, thanks so much for joining us.
[00:28:47] DL: Thank you, Bryan. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:28:50] BW: Thanks for listening to First to 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. If you liked this podcast, please help us grow and reach more people by leaving us a rating or review. Until next time, I'm Bryan Wendell, and I hope to see you real soon out on the Strip. Bye.
[END]