There will be a series of talks on Strength & Conditioning training for fencing, Rules and Refereeing, Isolating Equipment Faults, and Competitions at Yeronga on Saturday 15th Feb. These are part of the Level 1 coaching course being run by the QFA, however these talks are open to any interested members or parents for a small fee, as they may be helpful to anyone involved in fencing. Please register if you wish to attend.

At 9am, Gareth MacLean will present a lecture about Strength & Conditioning training for fencing. Gareth is a Level 2 strength and conditioning coach, and was the S&C coach for both the QFA and the AFF for a number of years. He will talk about the way body produces energy to allow us to fence, and how we can improve this, with a focus on exercises which can be done easily at home or club.

At 10am, Michael Nelson will talk about the fencing rules and refereeing. Michael is an internationally-qualified referee, and one of the AFF's senior referees, responsible for the training and development of Australian referees. The focus will be on understanding the rules and their application so that we can understand why referees at competitions might award points the way they do, and what they are looking for to make those judgements. There will also be some discussion of the various offences and penalties.

At 11am, David McFadyen will discuss the isolation of faults in fencing equipment - the art of quickly and simply trying to determine which piece of equipment should be replaced when something isn't working.

Finally, at midday, there will be a presentation covering the way a fencing competition is run. This will look at the processes used to take results from pools to draw up the DE tableau, and then the results of the DE bouts to determine the final ranking of all competitors. This will be followed by a discussion of how to coach at competitions, which is aimed at the coaching course candidates, however others are welcome to stay for this as well.