Written: June 26 2022

Hello reader,

For this blog, I did a bit of surveying with questions concerning my topic and I wanted to share my observations. As a disclaimer, I do want to mention that the conclusions from this data are not 100% proven and are pure speculation. In order to make conclusions that are certain, I would have to survey people on a larger scale. Even surveying is not a 100% accurate method of collecting useful data as people have their own egos and bias in response to my questions.

Nevertheless, I was in a fencing camp with a large group of fencers, leading me to see what observations I could make. I surveyed a total of 6 people including; 4 16 year olds, a 27 year-old, and an 81-year-old. All fencers I asked agreed to participate. To be more precise, I made sure that all of the participants fenced for a minimum of 4 years. I asked fencers to respond to each question on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the greatest/highest ability.

The first question I asked was, “Rate your control of motion from 1-10.” Control of motion refers to one’s ability to be accurate and control muscle contractions and motion. My intent in asking this question was to see how precise each fencer thought they were at controlling their actions. The second question I asked was, “From 1-10 rate your speed of action from start to finish.” This question purely refers to the speed of response when fencing a bout. The final question I asked was, “From 1-10 rate your ability to decide when to go/not go.” Go and no- go actions as you may recall from my previous post are when one must choose whether to “go” or “not go” when performing an action. These three questions summarize what I intend to test in further research; accuracy, speed, and decision-making ability.

All of the participants were 16-year-olds, so I averaged the results for each of the categories. After asking all six of the participants these were the results:

All of the younger participants were 16-year-olds, so I averaged the results for each of the categories. When plotting these results on a bar graph it was quite difficult to see a clear trend as age progressed.

In each respective category, the 27-year-old had the highest results. This chart would imply that control of motion, speed, and go/no-go ability will increase up to a certain point and then decrease with age (though not dramatically). In the future, I would incorporate many more people for the older category of fencers to tell if this trend is true. Though there is quite a large difference between 27 and 81, there may be a point at which all of these factors peak and then naturally decline with age.

Following this, I averaged the 27-year-old and 81-year-old’s data to come up with a mean for each category. The average age of 27 and 81 is 54 years old.

When plotting the 16-year-old (younger) category and the 54-year-old (average of older), my hypothesis was supported. Control of motion and ability to go and not go were increased from the younger to the older group. However, speed decreased which can be explained by the increase in age. Though this survey would have to be done on a larger scale in order to get more “accurate” results, there were some clear trends that I observed. Expanding on the topics from my article about Coach Yuri, it is clear that consistent training over time will increase the numbers in each category. Control of motion, speed, and go/no go ability increase with age but the question is, at what point (if any) is there a slight decrease?

See you in the next article,

Zaky