Saber foot work

Nothing is more important that foot work in Saber. If you can't move you are dead. If you slow down at the wrong time you are toast. If you can't catch your opponent, well things could be worse. You could be fencing Div 3 Foil.

When you work on your saber footwork concentrate on making steps the appropriate size. So about the length of your own foot. You can also make small advances which are about half of normal size.

Next is to work on changing between small and regular advances without hesitating or stopping.

Now for speed. Your normal speed is your normal speed......Ok. Half your normal speed is slow and twice your normal speed is fast. Now practice changing between slow, normal speed and fast. The important thing is to do it without stopping or hesitating. Hesitation is death in saber.

For retreats it is important to maintain distance with your opponent. But you must be ready to accelerate out of there if your opponent decides to attack. So to practice this change speed with your foot work on a regular basis. Also practise breaking: which is a fast passe back and withdrawal of the weapon arm. Then start going forward again.

None of this speed practice is going to do you any good unless you sit down in your guard. You are a race car and you must have a wide stance (slightly bigger than shoulder wide) and be low to the ground. If you stay low and wide you will be able to change direction and explode forward or backward when necessary.

How Fencing is like Racing

Fencing is like racing

Saber is like Drag Racing: It is really fast, it is over before you know it and If someone screws up you know it almost immediately.

Epee is like NASCAR: It takes all day, It is kinda boring to watch but doing it is very intense and exciting.

Foil is like Le Mons: It is fast at times, slow at times, hard to follow and has very tempermental machines.

Epee Tactics 101

You can only be doing 4 things in fencing: Attacking, Defending, Counter-Attacking and Preparing to do one of the previous three. The question is when how and why should you do any of these.

1. Counter-Attacking: this is the primary method of scoring in Epee. It requires patience, good distance and point control. A good counter-attacker can be very frustrating to fence as it seems nothing you do can make it through without you getting tagged on the way in. It works best when you are ahead and your opponent starts becoming impatient and rushes his attacks in order to catchup before time runs out. Stay cool and don't let your opponent have your blade, keep your actions small and the tip on the target.

Mix up your counters: angulation and displacement (squats, slides and spin-outs) so your opponent isn't sure what to expect and therefore cannot plan effectively. If your opponent is another counter-attacker use opening to lure out the attack, once you are ahead they are forced to come to you.

If you are ahead in points by 2 or 3 then counter into their attacks and "double-out."

2. Attacking: Be patient and look for the opening, create the opening or use speed and surprise.

Attacks to the hand and wrist are attacks of opportunity and are the most frequent opening you will see.

Create and opening by using short attacks to draw out the counter the take their blade and finish. You can also create openings when your opponent likes to parry. Just make a short attack, avoid the parry (you may need to avoid multiple times) and finish. Another option is to feint and attack somewhere else then hit you target unexpectedly.

Use the fleche or a fast lunge to the foot/thigh when surprise and speed warrant it. Use this especially if your opponent is slower than you are or seem weak against the fleche/ foot shots. Keep good distance and use feints to hit the foot (feint high / hit low). Fleches work really well after your opponent has made a probing attack or a failed attack with a lunge. Hit them as they are recovering.

Attacking is usually used when the score is tied or you are down and need to catch up.

3. Defending: Defend when you have an aggressive opponent or you need to control the blade. Parries can be powerful in epee if you do them well. It requires speed and power. Lure them into attacking then take their blade out of the way and hit them. You CANNOT LET GO of the blade. control the blade all the way in. Use either speed or take the opponent's blade into a different quadrant and while maintaining pressure against the opponent's blade launch your riposte. Use this when you absolutely cannot let them hit you

Defending is best used when you are tied or when you are able to control the opponent's blade better than they can release off.

Well I hope this little Tactica helps..... comment away.

Epee camp day 4

I think today we will work on Binds and taking the blade in different lines. Bind in 6 and 2 and pressing with the 4. In epee it is important to control your opponents blade. Get them to commit to an attack then take the blade so that it is no longer a threat to you. While you have the blade make your own attack making sure to stay in contact with your opponent's blade. If they release off they will probably hit you with a counter-attack or take your own attack into a bind and hit you. If your can control the distance and their blade you control the bout.

Epee training at home.....

ok so you can only got to class one night a week for whatever reason but you still wanna train and you have no one nearby to train with? What can you do? Well the simple answer is to work on your footwork. As long as you have a flat long area accessible to you you should be fine. Something like a driveway, sidewalk, deck, hallway or a good sized patio should be fine. What should you work on? for epee oriented fencers bouncing, smooth transitions forward and backward while bouncing, advances, retreats, passe forward and back, lunges and fleches from the bounce without "winding up" are all key. Footwork and point control are the foundations of your game. You have to feel as comfortable doing any of these and you would walking or running...... or for some of you sitting on the counch excercising your thumbs.

Point control is alittle more tricky but not much. You need a dangly ball to vent your frustrations on. Get an 8 ft piece of string and knot it every 8 - 12 inches in such a manner as it leaves a loop so that you can hang your ball at different hieghts. These represent the different areas of the body you often try to hit. So it should hang at shoulder hieght, arm (in Guard) height, thigh and just off the ground (representing the foot). In the picture above you can see balls hung at different heights.

But how should you practice with the ball? Start out with just arm extensions while you are in guard, then move to extending while sitting down in guard (sorta half squat to represent height change during a lunge), then lunging remebering to lead with the arm, then fleching at the ball. Once you feel comfortable with those and can hit fairly consistantly try making an avoidance or a beat before extending, lunging, fleching. You could also try leaving the blade out and "stopping the ball on the return swing (assuming you hit it). This builds a good habit to start and end your action with your blade extended.

If you can think of any good solo epee exercises post a comment.

Epee camp day 3

Ok so yesterday we worked on our fleches and defending against the fleche. Today we are gonna work on counter-attacks: squat, slide, spin out and angulation. Yesterday the 7 yo wore out poor Harrison, we will see if he can keep up today.

Tuesday Night Class

Hey the Canadian guy was back, glad to see we didn't scare him off after introducing him to competitive Olympic style fencing ( he had 4 months of classical training). Sarah, Harrison and Stephanie are back from summer excursions and we are glad to see them again. Everyone is getting geared back up for school and the new fencing season... it should be a great season.

This morning's Physical Training

The boys are growing to loathe the 52 card PT deck. todays exercises: 8count body builders, Jumps, Jumping jacks, and mountain climbers.

The PT Deck workout:
associate a suit of cards to an exercise
Hearts - Bodybuilders
Clubs - Mountain climbers
Spades - Jumping Jacks
Diamonds - Jumps

shuffle the deck and do the number of reps for the suit you flip over. When you get to an Ace take a break for 1-2 minutes. Face cards are ten reps each. Its a pretty good workout and you can change up the exercises daily so it doesn't get boring.

Harrison got pown'd by the seven year old Christopher this morning. I don't know where the youngins get all of that energy. Goal for the week : tire out the little kid.

Epee Camp is here!!!

Hey everyone just wanted to drop a line and say that epee camp went well today. Trying this new blog thing out and see if we can get more connected than we already are here in M-town.

Lots of people still out for summer but Hickory Day School is already lining up for another year of after school programs on Mondays. This year hopefully will be seeing the addition of some YMCA's in the area and maybe some more private schools. So if you want a fencing program at your school drop me a line.

I might also be interested in trying to build a home school program here in Morganton so if you are a home-schooler or parent of a home-schooler give me a call or email.