If you ask the average beginner or intermediate fencer what the purpose of a parry is, the standard reply is “to prevent the opponent’s attack landing as a hit.” From time to time you will hear “so I will get the right of way.” At various times in my life,…
Nothing is simpler than the straight thrust, right? You just stick you arm out and hit the other fencer. No great thought, no sophistication, you go fast at the right moment and you are a touch richer and closer to being a fencing hero (with apologies to the YouTube series…
Every fencer is at some point taught that there are three distances (we teach that there are at least 5 in foil, more in sabre, and even more in epee). When our attack falls short we know that it is because the distance was not right. If we are a…
Okay, sometimes I take a different view of fencing from the traditional understanding of strategy, tactics, and technique. But what does fencing have to do with a stovepipe? To answer that question we have to answer another: what is a stovepipe? I am not talking about the relatively narrow metal…
Compound attacks are commonly defined as multiple tempo blade actions, the last of which is the final attack and all previous of which are feints. As a practical matter a compound attack is actually a prepared attack (attacks which work by using preparatory actions to create opening lines through which…
So there you are, the perfect attack into the opening line and all is well with the world because the next touch will be yours. And then you feel it – blade contact. You know what that means – parry – and that a riposte is on its way. What…
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…
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…
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…