The Fencer's Lunge and the Promise of the Final Extension
I spent last Saturday morning in a drafty community hall, watching my niece at her first fencing tournament. I knew nothing of the sport, expecting a chaotic clash of steel. Instead, I witnessed a series of disciplined, almost minimalist conversations. What struck me most wasn't the speed, but the form. Specifically, the lunge.
A proper lunge is not a reckless leap. It begins from 'en garde,' a balanced, coiled readiness. The front leg extends, the back leg pushes, the body follows in a straight, aggressive line. But here’s the thing that transfixed me: the finish. A good lunge isn't complete when the tip touches the target. It is complete only when the arm is fully extended, the body is held in a perfect, stable line, and the fencer is momentarily, utterly committed. To pull back early, to hesitate in the extension, is to forfeit the point. The entire movement is a single, decisive thought translated into action.
I saw a junior fencer, again and again, make a beautiful approach, a swift advance, but then, at the critical moment, his arm would falter. A micro-second of doubt would creep in, his extension would be tentative, and his opponent would parry and riposte. The coach’s advice, shouted from the sidelines, was always the same: “Commit to the line! See it through!”
Driving home, I couldn't shake the analogy. How many of our own daily 'lunges' do we abort mid-extension? We draft an email, but let it sit unsent for hours, second-guessing the tone. We start a difficult section of a report, hit a complexity, and tab over to check the news. We make the plan, we do the preparation, but we falter at the moment of final, decisive execution. We fail to commit to the line.
The fencer’s lesson is that the value of the preparatory footwork is captured only by the finality of the extension. All the research, the outlining, the brainstorming—it’s the equivalent of the advance. It sets up the scoring action, but it isn't the score itself. The score is the touch. And the touch only happens with a committed, unwavering, and complete extension of intent into the world.
The Discipline of the Finished Motion
This isn't about working faster or longer. It's about the quality of the finishing motion. When you sit down to write that concluding paragraph, you must be like the fencer: push off from your research, extend your argument in a clean, straight line, and hold the position until the thought is complete. Send the email. Post the draft. Submit the proposal. The moment you feel the instinct to pull back, to 'check it one more time,' is the very moment you must, instead, push through.
The promise of the lunge is that clarity and reward lie at the end of a decisive action. The en garde position is necessary, but it is a state of potential. The lunge is the conversion of that potential into a result. Our workdays are often a series of elegant en garde positions, full of readiness and possibility, but devoid of points on the board. We need to lunge more. To trust our preparation enough to fully extend, and to find, in that moment of complete commitment, the sharp, clean satisfaction of a task not just worked on, but truly done.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: