One of the most dangerous situations in a phrase (a series of blade exchanges with or without footwork in one continuous action) is when you enter into a series of attack-parry-riposte-parry-1st counterriposte-parry- 2nd counterriposte-etc. The distance often shortens; in fact it may convert from an identifiable distance to infighting at…
Max placed 3rd in Cadet Men’s Foil at the Richmond Regional Junior and Cadet Circuit tournament on Saturday 26 January. Well done in a field with 2 Cs, 1 D, and 3 Es.
In last week’s blog we reviewed the framework for the parry-riposte as preparation and offense. After reading that post, one could come to the conclusion that, after doing all the work to make the preparation successful, the riposte has to be able to do its job. And one would be…
Note that the title of this post is Parry-Riposte, not Parry then Riposte or Parry and Riposte. Readers of the blog will be familiar with the concept that defense by itself does not win bouts, except in the limited range of cases where it is preserving a lead in the…
Congratulations to Mark, Silver Medal in Veterans Men’s Epee, and Max, Silver Medal in Cadet Men’s Foil at the St. James RJCC and Veterans tournament on 12 January. Mark’s only loss was to an Olympian in a field in which he was the only D, and D was the lowest…
What is an attack? In simple terms it is an offensive action in which the blade is extended with the point or cutting edge threatening the opponent’s target area. When the attack starts is specified by the rules for foil and sabre. Regardless of what the rules say, the attack…
A critical part of executing any technique on the strip or in drills is to simply get all of the parts moving in the right order at the right time. The need to do this applies to even the simplest of actions. When techniques are sequenced correctly, they can be…
Each year in December the Salle runs its Anniversary Tournament to celebrate our opening in a permanent location on 4 December 2004. The results from this year’s event are: FOIL – 12 December 1st – Max Kobal 2nd – Aaron Seal 3rd – Leopold Kobal 4th – Kapil Iyer 5th…
In previous blog posts we have discussed the concept of distance in some depth. In today’s post I am going to review those quickly, and then focus on the questions about distance you need to ask yourself when you are fencing. So, to quickly review: (1) Traditionally there were three…
As part of our series on fundamentals, this week we will look at the parry. In previous blog posts I have emphasized certain truths about the parry. These are worth restating to establish the context of this technique: Parries are defensive actions. They do not result in a touch being…