Cream City Calculation
Three friends talking about data and how it impacts our lives and the lives of others.
Cream City Calculation
Winning Edge: Data’s Role in Olympic Fencing
Podcast Notes:
****Sorry for the sound quality. We had technical difficulties, which should be much improved at our next show!****
Hosts:
Colleen, Frankie, and Sal
Guest:
Abbas Fadel, Olympic fencing coach and three-time Olympian
The Data Pulse:
- Can AI Compete with Human Data Scientists?
OpenAI’s new benchmarking tool, MLE-bench, puts AI capabilities to the test against 75 real-world data science competitions from Kaggle. The tool evaluates AI on more than computational ability, focusing on its capacity for planning, troubleshooting, and innovation in machine learning engineering. With the support of specialized scaffolding, OpenAI’s model achieved medal-worthy performance in 16.9% of cases, although adaptability and creative problem-solving remain challenging for AI.
(Source: VentureBeat) - Meta’s AI Model that Evaluates Other Models
Meta introduces a "Self-Taught Evaluator" AI model that can assess the performance of other models. Using a large language model (LLM-as-a-Judge), it identifies improvement opportunities through an iterative self-improvement scheme. This approach not only refines model accuracy but offers a glimpse into autonomous AI systems that could learn from their own mistakes.
(Source: MSN) - YouTube Creators Could Earn from AI Training Data
Calliope Networks, an AI content licensing startup, proposes a “License to Scrape” program that allows YouTube creators to license their content for AI training. By negotiating a blanket license for large volumes of YouTube content, Calliope aims to make generative AI training more ethical and financially rewarding for creators. If enough creators participate, this could transform the way AI companies access and compensate for training data.
(Source: Wired.com)
Podcast Description:
In this episode of Cream City Calculations, the hosts welcome Olympic fencing coach Abbas Fadel, who shares how data analytics is transforming the sport of fencing. Coach Fadel, a three-time Olympian, discusses how he uses data-driven insights to analyze competitors' strengths, track movement patterns, and optimize his athletes' training strategies. From identifying critical fencing metrics to customizing strategies for each opponent, he highlights how data provides a winning edge on the Olympic stage.
Tune in to learn how data is not only changing sports but also empowering athletes to perform at their peak!
to the Cream City Calculations Podcast. We're three colleagues and friends that love data and to talk about how data is impacting our lives. I'm Colleen.
Frankie Chalupsky:I'm Frankie. And
Sal Fadel:I'm Sal
Frankie Chalupsky:Welcome to the Data Pulse, your quick hit source for this month's most impactful data news. The first article I wanted to touch on is called, Can AI really compete with human data scientists? So this is super interesting, because OpenAI has introduced a new tool. It's going to measure artificial intelligence capabilities in machine learning engineering. It's benchmarking your AI against what their new benchmark is going to be, which is MLEBench. And it's challenging AI systems with 75 real world data science competitions from Kaggle. So they're trying to see, can AI actually meet the expectations of data scientists?
Sal Fadel:I thought this was super interesting, both being a data scientist and also liking AI in some of the aspects. I like that the article talked about it's not a solution yet, or they're not even close to it, but I think it was like 16. 9%. It meddled in 16. 9 percent of the competitions, which is not a ton, but I guarantee a lot of those data scientists that were probably doing these competitions might be using AI to accelerate some of this as well.
Colleen:It definitely seems like an area that you could automate some of the processes by using AI, don't you think?
Sal Fadel:Absolutely. From a code development side. Absolutely. I think the fundamentals of data science and really how to understand a business and how to implement it. I don't know if you can replace it fully or ever fully replace that. I think there's gonna be big need there. But I don't know if we need data scientists to do all the development. Right. So
Colleen:to physically write the code. Yeah.
Sal Fadel:They say 80 percent of data scientists time is spent developing or. Getting data correct or pulling in stuff. So, that can help streamline all that. And then the data scientists can really do more of the advanced analytics or data, where they're doing more of the modeling. They can actually take multiple models, test them against each other. You know, like, that becomes so much more efficient for them and they can get more insights for sure.
Colleen:Right. Sorry. Sorry, Frankie. I think you're going to need that human person to decide which. data science tactics to apply, have to write them
Frankie Chalupsky:very interesting that they said to that the AI models often were successful in applying those standard techniques and doing the actual data science work, but it was struggling when there was creative problem solving. So that's where we really still need that data scientists to come in and be able to help out with coming up with creative solutions and being more thoughtful. Whereas like, I can do the coding itself.
Sal Fadel:I completely agree. I think that's a huge part, on a daily basis. I use it for a lot of little things, even as a data scientist, but I won't let it develop the end state code or any like what it's really good at just building the fundamentals or like the base. And then you take the base from there. You're not taking the three to five hours that you are just like pulling in data, cleaning up data, changing it around, putting your feature, you're doing your feature engineering, even though you're doing feature engineering, like I do a lot of that myself, but more of the feature engineering around, all right, Let's pull in all the models. Let's select it. Let's look at variants within fields. These are all things that, I think AI could absolutely do and clear up a ton of time. And then data scientists can then take it over from there.
Frankie Chalupsky:For sure.
Sal Fadel:Sorry, I probably a little too technical on this.
Frankie Chalupsky:No, that's great. The next article is called Meta introduces AI model that can review the work of other models. Um, Find this one fascinating because it seems odd to me that there's a model that's reviewing models. And I am wondering about how accurate that is. And I'm sure that, this is the first release. So there's probably issues with it and I'm sure there will be issues throughout time as well. But it's a self taught evaluator approach that generates contrasting model outputs and trains a large language model, called a LLM as a judge to produce reasoning traces for evaluation and final judgments with an iterative self improvement scheme. Um, that's a direct quote from the article and it's, very wordy, but basically it's, a model just looking for, ways to improve the other model. If it finds improvement opportunities, it's going to submit that to the user.
Colleen:On the one hand, this could kind of sound scary, like it's becoming self aware, but on the other, it's really just more of the same. It's sort of the same as the last article we were talking about, in that we're just using this model to sort of look at data that happens to be another model.
Sal Fadel:Yeah, and honestly, This is actually not really new. It's actually called zero shot. And so a lot of times in the past, what you would do is you would build models to build that would train other models right on synthetic data or something like that. So they're just taking these principles, and really bringing them into AI, and generative AI, and saying, all right, now build me out the prompts, build me out additional data sets, dummy data sets, that where did. Incorporate information that is very specific to, let's say, health care, right? Because health care has a lot of, acronyms and different things like that. This, these systems are really good at building out synthetic, data there, and building out text so that these machine models can learn on stuff that they don't have ability to have access to, and so I think it's quite impressive, what they're doing with it. I know I usually am skeptical on this stuff, but this stuff is actually like pretty cool.
Frankie Chalupsky:Sally, you're pretty passionate, I can tell. Nerding out a little bit.
Colleen:He is our data science friend.
Sal Fadel:Yes.
Frankie Chalupsky:Okay, and then the final article that I want to talk about is there's a startup that wants YouTube creators to get paid for AI training data. This is also a very hot topic right now where AI companies are training their models, using any data that they can find, throughout the web, and so they've historically used all of YouTube's, videos, captions, content, everything without permission, and this AI focused content licensing startup called Calliope Networks is hoping to change that with a license to scrape program, that allows YouTube stars to get paid for AI models using their data.
Colleen:Yeah, it's interesting. It goes on to say that, YouTube creators who want to license their data will enter into a contract with this company called Calliope, which then sub licenses their work out for training generative AI training. Models. I like the idea of putting that control in the hands of the creators. But I do think there's some really questionable content on YouTube that, could be used and included in these models that could skew them quite a bit. What do you guys think?
Sal Fadel:Oh, absolutely. I think for, especially YouTube is like anybody can put it on, where I feel like music industries or movies or similar, You're going through some kind of governance a little bit to make sure that the information or videos or stuff that is coming out of this is relatively good, where literally anybody can put anything on YouTube. And I think there definitely has to be some kind of structure and how that these models get trained and used we're just going to have a lot of, crazy, things that go on with these models as they start to bring out and play, and create, new YouTube videos.
Colleen:You can have a model that does nothing but expect people to open packages all day. I know there's those unboxing videos. Those were big for a while.
Sal Fadel:I was a little nervous. I was like, man, are we just going to get kids like the streaming on, baby shark or whatever? Cause that's
Colleen:what
Sal Fadel:you watch at your house. Just how much it is. Is it, am I just going to get all these, Synthetic versions of that same thing, like baby bear, baby, this massive difference. What's actually really interesting is this article is really timely. Cause I also read another, article on, how the music industry is actually using AI and, to build blockers so that these AI systems can't pull in the music. And so they're putting a gap, and I wonder if that's going to start to happen with creators, right, really on YouTube and these other, platforms, like whether or not they're going to start building in a, I don't like, even though to put it onto, this site, I might have to say, yes, you can use it, but can I put anything on my end to really. Give it, so that I own it, right? It's almost like, and I own that.
Frankie Chalupsky:I'm very surprised that YouTube doesn't have a blocker built out for their creators. That seems a little bit, behind on the times.
Sal Fadel:I agree. I feel like, maybe just how they, their system they don't want to overburden. I guess and that were over restrict things and creation. So, maybe that's part of their principles. But yeah, I completely agree. I'm surprised they don't protect their creators a little bit more in that aspect. Today's podcast is called the winning edge and we are talking about data's role in Olympic fencing. We have a very special guest today, an Olympic coach, a scientist, a business owner, and my father, Abbas Fadel. Welcome. Hello. Hello.
Abbas Fadel:Good morning.
Sal Fadel:Thanks for coming. I know a ton about you, but I'd love to share it with our viewers and Colleen and Frankie to learn a little bit about, your background before getting into fencing and how you got into it, where it took you in life. I'd love to hear it.
Abbas Fadel:So, uh, my name is Abbas Fadel and I was born in Cairo, Egypt. And, I left. Egypt when I was maybe 19, 20 years old. I went to England, get my education there and I'm a chemist and I run my own company I've been here for nearly 50 years and so a lot of, a lot of years been, so technically I'm an American. I got involved in fencing. I'll talk about my business right now. It's like mostly we have a chemical business. I'm a producer. I produce chemical for many, many different sectors, agriculture, mining, even car wash, you name it, we make it. we have employees who they actually work, work very hard for us and happy. my happy is fencing. I'm a three time Olympian. I've been to the game for a long time. I got into the game when I was 14 years old. I was technically playing soccer and I see fencing and I thought that was interesting. And so I got involved in fencing and, the rest is history. I get picked up, to be part of the national team when I was 14 years old. they select only five people in the whole country. I was fortunate enough to be one of those. they focus on you and they try to give you a different type of aspect how to become an athlete. A really an elite athlete, not just a normal athlete. And then, I get into national team traveling all over the world and, competing World Cups and Olympics And it become like a really good. Meanwhile, you do study, then I met a girl I met her in England and she decided to get a souvenir from there, that was me, and we moved to Wisconsin and we've been here since. Wow. I have four boys. I'm very proud of my four boys. God bless them, they're very successful. They all have their own children now and, It's just been an amazing life. I cannot trade it for the world. America is one of the best countries in the world. many moons ago, I get selected to become the Olympic coach. you don't get selected just because, your resume is good You have to actually have results. lucky enough, we have good athletes. They made good results in the world. every two weeks, we traveled somewhere like in 10 days, we're going to be in Doha, to compete in the World Cup. And, coming back, another two weeks, we'll go to Barcelona. Then it's just moving on and on and on and different things. I'm not only a fencing coach, but also I'm one of the head referee in the country, which we understand the game very well. And so we teach, how to become an official and I, I'm, I licensed people and, I give seminars and I do things. So in the morning I do my work and in the evening I do the fencing, this is a little bit quickly about the history of who I am. That's amazing.
Colleen Hayes:How many people do you coach currently?
Abbas Fadel:Well, right now we have 168 people in my club.
Colleen Hayes:Oh,
Abbas Fadel:okay. but national team, they average between four, depends on the type of tournament. To twelve. Wow.
Sal Fadel:you should see his office. he has his main office in one section, and then he has, uh, A bunch of strips for fencing strips and like a massive room where they can fence and have all the athletes in there.
Frankie Chalupsky:Wow.
Sal Fadel:It's pretty cool.
Frankie Chalupsky:It sounds like you were kind of a natural at fencing when you started up and you were only 14 and you pretty much picked it up and made the national team. How did you get recognized?
Abbas Fadel:I
Frankie Chalupsky:think
Abbas Fadel:in fencing you gotta win. You don't win, you're nobody.
Yeah.
Abbas Fadel:But I used to have a really good ability of physical fitness, like my physical fitness was amazing. And I think that compliment, my game, you know, because I can lunge at you and you don't see me coming. and so I was blessed to have that physical ability and I become well known in the world for be careful. He's like a monster at you, you know? So, yeah. and it's nice today I travel around the world and normally most of the head coaches around the world, either they are younger than me for maybe a couple of years or maybe a little bit older than me, but we see each other now. We used to compete against each other. Now our kids competing each other against each other. so when we go to World Cup, we don't go just to perform, but also to see old friends. So it becomes like a really nice, nice things.
Sal Fadel:To give you a little background on his athletic ability. he had a move named after him and it was, he would jump up higher than their head and touch them in the back.
Abbas Fadel:So then they call, I have like six or seven moves called under my name.
Okay.
Abbas Fadel:I wrote a book and, it's called Let's Fence. it's not yet published, but it's already done.
Okay. A
Abbas Fadel:so we try to describe some of this move and people say, well, this is his move.
And now
Abbas Fadel:we teach our kids to do it.
Mm hmm.
Abbas Fadel:Funny, I have a 10 years old who just started learning how to do it. his mother texted me yesterday from Cleveland in a big national tournament and my son got first place. Thank you so much. And that's the reward actually, so 10 years old compete against 12 and 14 years old. but he have that tricky move and that's what we do,
Frankie Chalupsky:Cool. So what was it like competing? was it very intense, or did you just have fun?
Abbas Fadel:today is like business. when you watch Green Bay or basketball, the Milwaukee Bucks it's all about business we used to have fun. Like every day it's like, we don't know about competition, we just go there and win. when I went to. The gym where the competitions holds, we compete against 300 people. And I look at the venue, I look at the area, and said, This is mine. my mindset was incredible. today, we teach mindset. And in the olden days, we have the mindset. Which is like, it's a different today. Kids go through a lot of different, problems and success and failure. what they don't understand, this is what make you the champion. You know, like you cannot just be winning all the time. you have to have a little defeat to spice that. one day somebody ask me a very simple question, say, how do I win? I answer very simple because that's how I've been taught. Winning is not your friend. Losing is not your friend. But if you work hard, winning will come to you and say, can I be your friend? that's a different philosophy, but different mindset. and again, we're going to talk about data and how important it is to us today. we grew up different. We grew up just like, let's go. Now we say, wait, we need to understand what you guys do, because that's so important to me. And it made my life a little easier. to show the proof we can say to them Oh, you know, I see you do this Oh coach Maybe I'm not but when you start seeing data numbers and you go Wow Yeah, then they start really double the convincing.
Yeah
Abbas Fadel:so yeah, I start and it's simple boy from Egypt And I'll become, all the scholarship in the world. fencing will give you a very decent scholarship. I never paid for my education. A lot of my kids today, they don't pay for their education. school will take them and give them scholarship.
Sal Fadel:Thanks for the easy transition, by the way. how have you seen data influence, your coaching, both for your athletes or even how you've seen other, competitors use data to take a competitive advantage over the last couple of years?
Abbas Fadel:So to answer that question, honestly, when I start the game, everything done through based on your talent as a coach, what you see, what the people do, how they do things. And so it's all about your memory and how you see things. But today it is a must, like almost crucial, like physical fitness, to have your data. If you don't have data. You're going in blind and it's better to know the players who's your competitors going to be. What are you going to do about them? And I brought today some stuff so you can see invisibly what you guys do to us in terms of education. I have a very good ability. to see the fencers and to see what's going to happen before it happened. And I really can see that like I can tell you the way I have to do is my refree ability. I used to refree a lot of fencers. So you see that patterns, how they do things. Then I realized, you know, I can actually put those into numbers, what they do and how they do things and I find out you cannot actually coach today without it. I'm one of the head coaches and, a mentor. They call it like it. So I have a three master in coaching and I've been coaching your nice in United States to coach another people coaching the world as well, and the very important to me is to coach also the metrics, you know, how do you see things? How do you do it? And without really data is impossible. So I would say today is so crucial to our game. And it's funny, sometimes I watch Green Bay, which is a completely different game from mine, but I understand those metrics so well, and I go, why they do this and it is wrong, wrong, wrong, nothing. And I can see it right away. And the result exactly it's carbon copy. What I'm thinking, this is with a disaster to do. most of those people just watch. Frame by frame, they watch the video, they watch this, but how do you put the package together? We need you. We need, you guys are, you analyze things, and that, data is so incredible to me.
Colleen Hayes:You need somebody to interpret the data.
Abbas Fadel:Yeah. Exactly. speaking of data, so if I take a video and analyze that video and ask the people who work for me, I need you to analyze those data for me. And they say, well, what do we do? We don't know. So I wrote about the footwork. I wrote, the position, like where you are because we're fencing a strip.
Yeah.
Abbas Fadel:And people have habits. So hypothetically, if I study you and I find out you're fencing, In this part of the strip, and you score 80 percent of your score in this part of the strip, why do I ask my fencer to fence with you in those parts of the strip? I want to take you somewhere else where you're actually losing 80 percent in another part of the strip. And without the data, it's impossible to achieve
Sal Fadel:How are you collecting it? Is it just like, you have people going and watching video and being like, Are you tracking it manually or are you using a technology to kind of look at the videos?
Abbas Fadel:I have my own technology. I got you some stuff here for you to review. it shows, two fences. Italy and, Korea. I put in, nationality, type of weapons, right handed, left handed, type of video. this is very, very important data because to understand the schooling where they come from and how they do things. we find out, okay, how many touches she score in the body? How many touches score in the hand? How many touches score in the foot? And I put them into a data and I ask the data. Follow the numbers, you can see everything in a spreadsheet. Now, to normal people, don't understand what is the spreadsheet. All is just number. For me, it's money in the bank. And we know exactly what's going on. So, for example, in her Bladeworks song, The Korean, she will have 9%. body work, meaning she's scoring in the body. in the arm, she's 72%. So why do you give her the arm if she does 72%?
Yeah.
Abbas Fadel:and so I put the number together and it showed me very clearly if my fins are fins against song, this is what you need to be watching for.
Yeah.
Abbas Fadel:So we have a certain thing, what she does, how she do it. And, what you watch for, here's your defense, here's your offense, it's all data. and again, I brought some, and maybe after the protest we can show you, then you go, wow.
Yeah, this
Abbas Fadel:is amazing, you know?
be great.
Abbas Fadel:and you see like here it's all numbers.
Mm-Hmm.
Sal Fadel:that is awesome. if you're not familiar with fencing, fencing has three weapons, epee, saber, and foil. foil is anywhere in the chest region that you can hit with the point of your sword. saber is. what you consider like whipping action or like you can hit it on any part of the blade, and it's anywhere in the upper body. Epee, which my father, coaches, is anywhere, with the tip of your sword. anywhere on the body. So you can see that it's a lot more of a challenge because there's a lot more space to protect. and so it's the only weapon that you can get touched on the toe and lose
Abbas Fadel:the whole body. I mean, you got to touch every place in the body and not only touch, but be aware you don't get touched. the computer will give you when you touch only 20 per second. So you have to be faster than another guy, 20 of a second. Otherwise, you're too slow and, they can actually, even you make an attack, but you still can get hit.
Colleen Hayes:So is this similar to what you did to prepare for the Olympics this year?
Abbas Fadel:A hundred percent. And like I said, I have a data to my fencers by probably the top 200 people in the world. And to give you some idea to qualify for the Olympic is not like, you know, Hey, I'm good. I'm going to qualify for the Olympics. Not really. to study how to qualify for the Olympics, it is so complicated. And we need those metrics. Yeah. Because it's not how you, for example, if you are in the top three in the world, doesn't mean you qualify for the Olympics. So you have to have certain winning during the year. So you're going to build them up and you can, you're going to figure it out. Okay. And lucky we have four girls qualified from our country countries like, Germany, France qualified four, Italy qualified four, but the rest of the world, nobody qualified. it's just only 34 people to compete. it requires so much calculation and so many, it, it would take more than just talent or good athlete, or it's required also the management part of that lead itself. So when, you know, what's important, what's not important, you
know. Yeah.
Sal Fadel:How, is it pretty challenging for you to take the analytics and take your knowledge and kind of translate it into the athlete? I feel like it takes a lot on the athlete to be like, Oh, I understand what you're trying to get after, like, Oh, keep my body in, keep my body in, in certain movements, right? How do you, I guess, translate the analytics? and data and everything you have into coaching.
Abbas Fadel:It's number one, athlete will either trust you or not trust you. are you together? Like husband and wife? If you don't, if you trust your husband, you trust his division, his, if you trust your wife, you trust whatever. The relationship between athlete and coaches, it's like that. There's gonna be undevoted trust. And how do you get there is to show your decision. You're making the right decision at all time. No negativity, no shouting. It's more about how do I convince you this is the right thing for you? So when I have the data, they will say, how do I know it's right or wrong? Well, let's sit down together and do it. when they sit down together and do it, then it work when you go to the strip and it work, they win. It's impossible to win with this person, but when they see the data and how valuable this data to them and they start winning, then they go, Whoa, there's something about this. And that's how you convince the athlete is like, what's good for you and it's have to be convinced because otherwise they're not going to make the move. That's how you earn their trust. You have to have that. you don't just talk. You gotta actually, present the case. And, they believe in it. if they believe in it, they believe in themselves. And if they believe in themselves, anything can happen, you know. That make sense? Yeah, absolutely.
Colleen Hayes:I'm trying to convince my teenage son to trust his coach in volleyball these days.
Abbas Fadel:And if you don't, it's a
Colleen Hayes:tough thing.
Abbas Fadel:And, and the coach have to actually earn the trust, you know, it's not just like, you know, and, and today people are busy in different things. but the most important is you have to have a fair play Meaning, you get treated equally instead of like, okay, I know you, I'm going to prefer you than this person, wait, you know, then, then you damage somebody else's, his mental and, you know, and I think it's so, so incredibly balanced. You have to have that. And lucky I have good trust with my athlete.
Frankie Chalupsky:That's great. So I played golf in high school and college. So it's very much a mental game. How much of fencing is really your mentality and all of that?
Abbas Fadel:In the level with fins, Olympics, World Cups, that level, I would say a hundred percent mental because the level is the same. You know, when you take a swing,
like
Abbas Fadel:I played the game once or twice, being an eight handicapped, so I know exactly what's going on. You need to think about it before you make the shots.
The
Abbas Fadel:wind condition, the way you address the ball. It's the same thing with fencing. You have to have that mental. You wake up in the morning and you say, I got this. now you got to prepare the way you're going to eat breakfast. You come to the venue and you take a lesson before the competition you try to work out and see how you feel, how do you actually score? And if you, if anything missing, you're doubting yourself in the pool. And my job as a coach is to ensure that you got this, You know, we, we go together and my job to also watch the fencing sometimes they go in the wrong direction. And my job is to pull them back in the right direction. One of the most important thing about fencing is only either five touches or 15 touches. But you can, within one minute, you can lose six, seven touches and all of a sudden is very difficult to recover. So it's very important to manage the game. we manage the game slowly. When they feel they are managing, they're controlling, and that's where is the mental part of it. So if you have it, because if you don't have it, your tip is too far away. It's almost like the ball. And, and you really need to be aware there is a relationship between the tip and your movement. that's my job as a coach to try to give them the control of their tip at all time. That make sense? Absolutely.
Good.
Sal Fadel:Kind of getting back to the data side of it and how you coach, it seems like you have all this data, your competitors probably also have a lot of data, right? And so they know their own movements. How do you counter like 72 percent of the time that person likes to hit on the arm, right? They know it, you know it. And then how, that kind of balance of like, are they going to do it on that day?
Abbas Fadel:So, I'm fencing with Sal. fencing is like live chess. You make a move, they make a move. my job is to make a move to Sal, make him believe I'm going to do something. I think that's a challenge. and Sal fall for this. And when he fall for this, I do another move on Sal to score. That make sense to you? Absolutely. So Sal and I, we're going to fence right now. I'm going to trick Sal.
Yeah.
Abbas Fadel:All right. So you can relax this is your shoulder. Don't move your shoulder. But I'm gonna make him move the shoulder without touching him.
Okay,
Abbas Fadel:and that's the trick So Sal, don't move your shoulder. I'm gonna make you move your shoulder. You ready? Mm hmm. All right. I'm gonna see how strong you are first So, please do not move your shoulder I will not touch you again I swear to God ready I mean it ready little harder this time
He moved it. And
Abbas Fadel:that move is money to me.
So
Abbas Fadel:I try to teach my fencer, even you know what they're going to do, but you need to have a little bit of what they call provoking. You've got to provoke the players to try to get them to react. When he reacts, you do it. So there's a balance
Colleen Hayes:isn't it? A very mental thing. If you can keep your composure and get somebody else to break theirs, then you've got your opening.
Abbas Fadel:That's the difference between first place and 15th place.
Colleen Hayes:When
Abbas Fadel:you wake up in the morning and my job is really to prepare them for this. I know where they're coming from, how they're going to get that. even if they have weakness, We know we still have to get over the challenge, and that's the difference between good coaches and bad coaches.
Colleen Hayes:I like the demonstration,
Sal Fadel:have an unfair advantage so you guys should probably move.
Abbas Fadel:Even many people, they know it. Yeah. But they don't believe You're
Colleen Hayes:right.
Abbas Fadel:Then my job is to make you believe I'm going to push you and the first time I touched Sal, I touched him with authority.
huh.
Abbas Fadel:people don't like to be touched with authority. So when you touch with authority, meaning you push with authority, they don't like to be pushed.
So
Abbas Fadel:now you fake the push. Then they remove. And when they remove, you come in with the speed, you know. So it's like a complication of different things, but there's a lot of tricks. We do it for the kids, we do it for the higher athlete,
Yeah.
Abbas Fadel:And a little luck will help us.
Colleen Hayes:do you have any specific instances where, you were talking about this person from Korea and sort of the way that she most often scored her points. Do you have any other, examples of, how you would help your athletes improve when looking at some of those numbers? I think Sal started to allude to that in his last question as well.
Abbas Fadel:Remember, data is not everything, but they also have to be prepared. It's almost like you learn how to write beautiful and they continuously you write, you write, say your letter. So all your handwriting, you become legible to read. Yeah. And I teach that to the athletes with a sword. be sure they have the right movement, the consistent. So if you give me your, your ability, your time, I'm going to get you muscle to remember 80 percent of the move by repetition. You keep repeating the movement all the time. When it comes to reality, when you have an itch, you know exactly what it is and it's natural. So the muscle memory, so my job as a coach is to get you muscle to remember the perfect move. And 20 percent I leave it up to you to decide what you move. But in the middle of the move, if there is a reaction you need to react to it without actually thinking about it, which is the muscle just take over. So my job in the training in my facility, I teach that repetition. Continuously repetition and the technique and when you come to reality, in the match itself, then they execute correctly. Yeah. That makes sense.
Frankie Chalupsky:Yeah. it does.
Sal Fadel:It's like your golf swing.
Frankie Chalupsky:I was just thinking through so many similarities with
Colleen Hayes:fencing and golf, but I think in all sports, muscle memory is always a thing. The mental game is always a thing. even just your stamina, who can keep performing at that level longer than anybody else?
Abbas Fadel:that's the difference between number one and number 15. Absolutely.
Colleen Hayes:My son had a tournament this last weekend and they were undefeated going into the finals. the other team could just keep their game a little tighter for that one. Fifth game, then his team put, and that was the difference,
you
Colleen Hayes:I'm like, you're not being beat because they're that much better than you. They're just not messing up their serves. They're getting their hits over the net instead of into the net, it's all these little tiny things.
Abbas Fadel:do you know what they call that in sports? Zone.
Colleen Hayes:Yeah.
Abbas Fadel:You are in the zone. If the team, and this is something we watch. So I take my athlete, they compete against 300 people. My job also not to watch my athlete, but watch who's hot, who's actually in the zone, and how do we prepare to knock them. And sometimes they go through a big match, and they win that big match, and they're almost like you have a big balloon, and they get inflated.
Colleen Hayes:That's a very good point because if you can understand that about your opponent, I'm thinking again about this team that he lost to on Saturday, they play them again next week in their regionals. They're going to go into this thinking, well, we got this, it's locked down, we've already beat them. And that can be an advantage to them as well. If you can find a way to even just sort of get into their heads and make them doubt themselves in some small way, that's an advantage.
Abbas Fadel:I agree. This is all good. this all today coaching, it's like, it's not like, because they all performance is good.
Colleen Hayes:The
Abbas Fadel:question is how do you become the best, like the difference
Colleen Hayes:between being very good and being the best, is very small, but it's very significant.
Frankie Chalupsky:Oh Yeah. That's funny. it just reminds me of this really funny story from playing college golf. I was playing with a girl. And I had my hair back in a ponytail and then braided down I had really long hair at the time. I remember her saying at the end of the round that she was really intimidated by me. And playing with me because of the way I had my hair done. I thought that was really funny the smallest thing can intimidate your opponent. You never know what it's going to be, but you can try to predict what that might be. Maybe face paint. Do you know what it is?
Abbas Fadel:a lot of good athletes have a habit. The way they tie their shoes The way they eat breakfast What kind of dinner they have they have a very consistent, systematic way of eating, dressing, getting the right, right clothes and, and our job as, as coaches is to observe and remind them because that gives them the little, oh yeah, I'm, that's my comfortable zone. I, I got this. And so little things like, like, you know. So, it can make a difference
Frankie Chalupsky:When I was watching the Olympics this year, there was a rain delay and they were talking about how much that timing can really throw off an athlete. they were saying if they were following the routine, they should be at a certain point in their routine right before they're about to run the race. when the rain delay hits. they have to restart their routine and get back through and follow that again, it can impact them drastically.
Abbas Fadel:Interesting. Part of your questionnaires talked about visual reality, which is something in the future. the Olympic Committee asked me, how do we do that now? I mean, what is the visual there? You put something and you fence with another person? No, I think is better. And that's to answer the rain in Paris. You have a visual reality of the venue, the people. So now you're not going to be there for first time. So when you enter this venue in the first time, there is a little fear, a little confusion, a lot of, and it happened to us in Paris this time. Because this it was never be like this normally you have a gym and you're going in and you do your work but if we can get the visual event so you can have like the six seven Olympics and you watch them you watch him by yourself like you're going in and you watch the visual reality. Then you get familiar. Now you're not, you're not, you're not rookie anymore. You're not new anymore. You actually familiar with that venue. What does it look like? What is that you've been there already? So when they come in and compete, Oh yeah, I got this. You know? That makes sense. Interesting, huh?
Sal Fadel:Yeah. I did go to the Olympics with you, and watch it, it's a completely different experience. I've fenced in the past and it's usually in a gym, with no one watching or parents watching, then you get to this, it's in the Grand Palace, it's a massive building, beautiful building, and 500 people watching or a thousand people watching 20, 000 people all the way up into the stands and you have four matches going at once. You have France. just people going crazy. you have U. S. going in and competing, and they're all going at the exact same time. So you're hearing a lot of cross sound. even I had anxiety. I was sweating. the setup for the Olympics is different than, Other tournaments where you have pool play five rounds and then you get seated into a pool This is right into a pool. So you only get one match if you lose and it's up to 15
Abbas Fadel:if you lose you snooze. That's it.
Sal Fadel:If you snooze you lose Yeah, so you can see that like Knowing the venue knowing how it's going to feel you can take that element out and then You
Colleen Hayes:that gives a big advantage to the home country who can go down the block or across town to see what that venue looks like or might feel like with that many people in it before the rest of the athletes get there.
Abbas Fadel:I think France have really advantaged this time the team talked to me many, many times. They trained there. We was not allowed to train there. But they train there and, so they have a little comfortable zone like, okay, I got this. I've been there. You know, I know that chair is sitting up there that, you know, they, you get kind of, you're focusing in what's important. And if you've been there, then nothing really important. Like my first time in your office, I looked around, you know, my observe everything. But now after three, four times. You even working for six months here, you don't notice a lot of things. You're just like, what you do is what you do and that's how it goes,
Frankie Chalupsky:sure.
Abbas Fadel:Do
Frankie Chalupsky:Is designing your stadium in a way that fits your team and your culture?
Abbas Fadel:I think Paris have a lot to do with that. The team was not that hot, but before they did really well. They got second in all events. And the reason for that is like what you just mentioned. And, I know that for a fact,
Colleen Hayes:How did the U. S. team do this year?
Abbas Fadel:We did four, two gold medal, one silver and one bronze.
Colleen Hayes:We
Abbas Fadel:expect eight. not all our athletes performed the way they supposed to be. As a matter of fact, the superstar of our game didn't perform well. the people who have really nothing to lose, they performed well.
Colleen Hayes:Which
Abbas Fadel:I don't understand this.
Colleen Hayes:Just like you say, if you've nothing to lose, you're just going to go in there and be real scrappy and be able to pull off points that you might not have otherwise.
Abbas Fadel:what are we, and the superstar, like Bibu won six, seven World Cup this year. They didn't replace top eight, top nine, it's not correct.
Colleen Hayes:four medals in youth, there were four athletes that went.
Abbas Fadel:there are four in each weapon.
Colleen Hayes:Okay.
Abbas Fadel:we have 20 at least.
Colleen Hayes:Okay.
Abbas Fadel:it was okay, but I think we expect for sure to get an eight.
Sal Fadel:So kind of thinking through with data and understanding your competitive landscape. fencing has both individual and team sports, and so you have two different events that go on. But with that understanding data, how do you think positioning your athlete against maybe someone that is going hot or how do you like, sure, it Olympics is a little hard cause you don't know that first round, or how it's going to get structured, but well in advance of that, you're qualifying for it. You're getting your seating within that. Like, do you play that game within the seeds to be like, all right, we definitely don't want to take them cause they, for the last year they've been real hot. Sure.
Abbas Fadel:So what happened is, In the Olympic format or otherwise the world format. we are rated number 15 in the world. And we know if the Olympic have 16, we know who's going to meet in either. We're going to be meeting Poland or Korea. So two weeks before the tournaments, we train for Korea and we train for Poland. So either players we receive. We will, we, you know, we know what to do with them. So my job as, as a coach to study the metrics, and I'm going to show you, our preparation for that. so this is Poland. And everything about each player in Poland, in that team, a lot of notes, what to do, how to do it. prior, two weeks before, we go to a camp and we will have fencers look like the Polish team.
Colleen Hayes:Okay.
Abbas Fadel:Height, technique, righty or lefty, and we teach them how to imitate those people. And so now our girls will go in or our boys will go in and fence the Polish team. Every day, morning, evening, every day they go fence. And now when they go meet them in the competition, okay, we familiar with that. And Poland was very, very good. And we were so close to beat Poland and we did some kind of small mistakes. But. we went there a hundred percent prepared for them. So we did also the Korean the same day, then after that, whatever, who's qualified. So, but we know what the Korean is. We know the French, we, we was prepared for everything all the way to the final.
So
Abbas Fadel:we trained for two weeks. We went to South France and we trained there and we brought some international players who they're not qualified for the Olympics. But they, we invite him to come to be in our camp and we train with them because they have the same style, some of those players. So it would be no stranger for us.
Colleen Hayes:Wow. That's very interesting.
Sal Fadel:So you coached in Tokyo or as an alternate coach, and then you've coached in Paris kind of thinking forward and thinking through what you want to do next with, 2028 in LA. How are you starting to plan out that if you can continue going,
Abbas Fadel:Right.
Sal Fadel:So
Abbas Fadel:US Fencing asked me to put a program for the next four years. everything we do is 100 percent writing, we have week by week. Month by month for the next four years.
Frankie Chalupsky:Wow.
Abbas Fadel:I was just going to say you go here. I got so many notes, but, yes, we do have everything to the tee. what we're going to do from now till four years from now. It's all planned day by day. week by week, what they do, what we need to work on, who's going to be working. And of course, the unknown now is to figure out who's going to qualify or not. So we would do just the preparation itself, in terms of, how, you know, what is our phase, and it's all laid down day by day, you know, so before I, I don't like to go and just go, let's go fence it's more complicated than that. Especially in the high level, you need to have everything organized correctly. even the nutrition part, things in men versus women. You name it, we just have to be aware of what's happening so we be sensitive to what they need that make sense?
Colleen Hayes:Absolutely.
Abbas Fadel:It's really
Colleen Hayes:if you're going to be at the Olympic level, you have to plan to that level.
Abbas Fadel:Everything is calculated. It's not like, just like, let's show up Right. And interesting enough, when we talk to pros. even valuable. We can give them advice or they can come and spend a day with us in our club and see how we do things. And we go spend a day with them to see how they do things. And it's all professional sports. sometimes also we go to countries like China, what China is doing, what Russia doing, What the French doing, what the Italian doing. We get invite all the time and co, you know, exchange the data with friendly country. Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. So they say, Ava, your view is very important, but can you tell us what you do with this people? Well, I'm willing to give you this. If you give me this,
Colleen Hayes:data exchange.
Abbas Fadel:you know how I see things versus how they see things and they will come to me, right away and say. Oh, beat this girl. How she beat her? Now she have to meet one of his players. Then I said, well, this is the game plan and when the match is over, he goes like, Hey, thank you so much. And we do the same,
Colleen Hayes:can you tell us coming back to data again, how do you see that data side of the sport evolving in the future?
Abbas Fadel:having the data and the intelligent part of it, how do you actually navigate? and it's got to be really good and managed because, you really need to have the training eye of a coach and you combine it with data. You cannot have one versus another. Like if you go and just do it yourself, And you don't understand what's happening within the in, in of the sports. So it would be difficult to really implement. So I think you have to do having the data, having the intelligence, and the experienced coach to see what do you need to teach because. You cannot take quality out of that, that equation, the quality of the fencers or the player have to be, have to be on like volleyball. If you talk about volleyball or golf, you need to have the quality to play, to play correctly, to play good. Now the winning and losing, that's where the data come from,
you know,
Abbas Fadel:but you have to have performance. Your performance have to be a hundred percent. So our job as coaches, we teach performance. Your job is to, put the data together and combine as a team. Where are we with?
Frankie Chalupsky:Is there anything you'd like to share?
Abbas Fadel:first of all, I would like to thank you so much for inviting me here today. Oh, we thank you. Thank you. This is very interesting. it's a very, nice group. And, thank you so, so much for just to make me a part of your day today.