How can you defeat an opponent? How can an opponent defeat you? There are a number of possibilities: (1) be faster, (2) be stronger, (3) be better known (yes, your reputation is worth touches in tight situations), (4) be taller, (5) have longer arms, (6) be more flexible, (7) know…
Recently a colleague (Chuck Alexander, a Prevot and very accomplished epee fencer) sent me a slide deck to review and comment on. As I read through the slides, I realized that it was perhaps important to review in this blog some thoughts on tempo and distance. First let me postulate…
So to start thinking about these three actions, our first question is what are they? The textbook definitions are: RIPOSTE – a riposte is the attack delivered by a fencer who has been attacked and successfully parries. I would add to this that the parry may be by blade or…
The parry is a complex activity that can be described in a number of ways. Barbasetti defined the parry conceptually as an action which is aimed to defeat the opponent’s attack. That has come to be interpreted as a specific family of blade actions – blade contact by the blade…
(18) Question – what does the parry prepare? ANSWER – the riposte.
Question – from the referee’s perspective what is the difference between a beat and a parry?Answer – a beat is an offensive action that strikes the opponent’s blade on the outer two-thirds of its length from the guard. A parry is an action that defeats the opponent’s by interposing the inner one-third…
QUESTION – what is an invitation? ANSWER – a movement to create an apparent, but false, opportunity to draw an opponent’s attack or counterattack.
QUESTION – what is a first intention action? ANSWER – an attack or riposte executed to hit the opponent in one or multiple tempos of continuous attacking action.
QUESTION – what is preparation? ANSWER – any actions taken to create the conditions for a successful final action of an attack or counterattack
I have addressed distance a number of times over the years in this blog. Today I am going to summarize my current thinking and suggest how distance interfaces with tactics. First – distance is often defined in terms of how far one fencer is from another on the piste. The…