Glossary of Modern Fencing Terms

If you need a basic glossary of modern fencing terms for yourself or your class, here it is! Feel free to reprint it, but please include the copyright info. (There's a downloadable PDF attached to the end of this post).

Basic Fencing Terminology

Footwork
En Guarde –the “On Guard” stance
Advance –A step forward
Retreat –A step back
Lunge –A “long,” explosive forward action. The principle attacking action
Balestra –A hop forward, with both feet landing on the ground at the same time
Fleche –An “Arrow.” A rapid, flying attack made by pitching the body weight forward leg and launching off the front leg. No longer legal in saber

Bladework
Thrust –A forceful extension of the arm from en guarde to full extension
Cut –The principal attack in Saber. An attack with the edge of the sword
Parry –A “blocking” action against an attack
     Lateral Parry –Blocking an attack by moving the blade from one line to the other
     Circular Parry –Blocking an attack by a circular blade action
     Beat parry –“Tapping” the blade out of the way
Riposte –A return thrust after a parry. Every attack leave the attacker open, a riposte takes advantage of that
Engagement –When the blades meet. It may be a feeling action, or a parry, or the start of a Pris du Fer
Disengage –To escape an engagement by shifting your point to the other side of the opponent’s blade
Coupe –“Cutover” to escape an engagement by cutting over the opponent’s blade
Beat –A versatile “tapping” action against the oppt’s blade. It may be used as a parry, an attack or a feint
Feint –A “False” action designed to get the opponent to open his guard
Invitation –To open your guard to “invite an attack”
Simple Attack –An attack using a simple action in a single tempo of fencing time
Compound Attack –An attack made up of several actions. These include the Doublé and the One-Two
Preparation –The initial actions of a compound attack
Stop-hit –To attack into the opponent’s preparation
Remise –To attempt  to hit your opponent a second time without withdrawing after failing the first time. A remise does not have Right of Way
Pris De Fer –“Taking of the blade.” Any of several kinds of binding controlling actions that move the opponent’s blade. Pris de Fer include the bind, croisé, envelopment, thrust with opposition, etc.

Concepts
Right of Way –A set of rules used in Foil and Saber. The essence of ROW is that you may not attack an opponent at the when he is attacking you, or leave yourself vulnerable while trying to hit him. If your opponent attacks, you must parry or nullify that attack before hitting back. Epee does not follow right of way. An attack without ROW may occasionally be successful
Tempo –The flexible unit of time that fencing is measured in. A tempo is the time it takes to perform a single, simple action
Lines of Attack –Foil and Epee acknowledge 8 lines of attack, by dividing the torso into quarters, with two lines of attack in each quarter, and two parries in each quarter.
Sentiment De Fer –“Sensitivity for the steel.” A sense of touch with the blade, sensing what the opponent is planning
Distance –Also called Fencing Measure. There is a particular distance from your opponent at which you are best positioned to both attack and defend. It is cultivated through practice. Additionally, some blade actions may require slightly longer distances than others.
Displacement –Moving the torso out of the way of the attack. Usually a retreat, but can be to the side as well.

The Weapons
All weapons have a few parts in common:
The Blade –The part you hit with. Epee and Foil hit exclusively with the point, while saber allows you to cut with the leading edge and upper part of the back edge. The Epee blade is heavier and thicker.
The Guard –The part that protects the hand. The Epee guard is larger than the foil guard (both are round). The Saber guard includes knuckle protection.
The Handle –Also called the “grip.” There are a few different types. Sabers use a straight handle. French foils also use a fairly straight handle. “Orthopedic” handles are more common now for foil and epee, as they give a better grip. There are different types, depending on personal preference. The most common are Belgian, Russian, German and Visconti. Occasionally, you may see an Italian foil, featuring a short handle and two rings, but they are no longer common.
Pommel –The weight at the rear end of the sword. It counterbalances the weapon, and also holds all the parts together. Most orthopedic handles do not have a pommel, but a nut inside the handle to hold it all together.

There Are Three Weapons Used in Modern Fencing:
The Foil –The most common fencing weapon. Used for thrusting attacks only. Follows the rules of Right of Way. The target is the torso (including groin). Originally a training weapon for the epee, but developed into an art of its own.
The Epee –“The Dueling Sword” Also used only for thrusting attacks. No Right of Way is followed, and the entire body is target. The blade has the same dimensions at those used for duels in the 19^th century.
The Saber –Fashioned after the cavalry cutting weapon, it allows attacks with the entire leading edge and upper part of the back edge of the blade.  It follows the rules of right of way, and the target area is all of the body above the waist, including arms and head.

©Jeff Sauber 2017          www.cavalierattitude.com          www.facebook.com/CavalierAttitude/

No Matter How Bad Your Opponent's Guard Is...

No matter how bad an opponent's en guarde stance is, you're not going to be able to hit him if he's mentally prepared.  Likewise, no matter how good the stance is, he wont be able to defend against your attack if he's not mentally prepared.

I always remind people that stances exist in 4 dimensions-- they are relative to the opponent's attacks, but also to the distance of the combatants as well as the defender's reaction speed.

Time is the 4th dimension

T shirts are Back, plus, New Merchandise!

Thanks to popular demand, we've reintroduced our popular line of T-shirts! As you may remember we used to offer Tees with some of the most dramatic illustrations from some of the most important fencing manuals. Our old printshop went out of business a few years ago, and we never reintroduced the shirts. Until now!

Currently, we have tees in white, black and navy blue, but we'll be introducing about 30 more colors soon. An we've also added coffee mugs! So if you can't wait until your fencing practice to start thinking about swordsmanship, you can fire up your imagination first thing in the morning. Plus it's a fun to bring it to work and wait for someone to ask about it and then, oh, so casually, mention that you happen to be an historical swordsman.

We'll be adding new designs and products from time to time, so if there's something you wish you were seeing in our store, but it's not there, like hats or hoodies or ..anything, send me an email and i'll see if we can't add it to the line.

Oh, one more thing.. You've probably seen our website, and maybe wondered if these guys are really still in business (dammit, Jim, I'm a fencer, not a web designer!). Yes we are, and we're going to be revamping the site soon. In the mean time, it still works, but we're also exploring the Etsy.com platform, and we've created a CavalierAttitude store there. You can order fencing bags and all the other merchandise all in one place.

Check it out now:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/CavalierAttitude

Hold it Like a Little Bird... (The Importance of "Sensitivity")

"Hold it like a little bird, not so tightly you crush is, but not so loosely that it escapes your hand."
This was one of the first things I learned from my first fencing master. Hold the sword carefully. (One famous Hungarian master my friend studied with had his own spin on this, saying: "hold your sword like you hold your d**k!" 'Nuff said).

 

We're all taught not to hold the weapon in a deathgrip, and we all take it to heart, but how often do we ever stop to think about why? The reasons are few and very practical:

• Expending too much energy clamping down on the hilt of your sword will tire your hand out too fast.
• Holding too tightly will make it very difficult to move the weapon flexibly and fluidly,
• Concomitant to the above, it actually can make it easier to be disarmed in certain situations.

And perhaps even more importantly, a gentle grip lets you know where the business end of your sword is, and, when blade-on-blade actions occur, it lets you know what to do next.

The masters frequently talk about "Sentiment du fer" the "feeling of the steel," or sometimes just "sensitivity" and make it sound like some magic power, but it's actually very practical and important for a swordsman to develop.

For the attack, the balance of the blade will tell you where the striking part of your sword is. In the case of a thrusting weapon, it tells you where the point of your weapon is, something like the way a gun sight can help a marksman hit the target, IF the sight is lined up properly. If the balance of a sword changes, a swordsman can find his point off by inches or missing the target completely.  The fencer's sense of touch lets him put the point right where he wants it.
In the case of a cutting weapon, broadsword, saber, etc., the optimal place on the edge of the sword to hit with for maximum effect is called the "center of percussion." Having a good feel of your weapon lets you know where this is at all times. When actually cutting something, this becomes immediately obvious. Even for a modern sport saberist, who may prefer to hit with the very tip of the sword, the sense of touch still lets you know where the tip of the sword is.

In the case of blade-on-blade exchanges feeling how the opponent's blade makes contact with yours will tell you where to go next. If you engage his blade, you are likely to feel three things:
1) No resistance. This tells you he is unprepared, and you can continue through directly or with a bind.
2) Strong resistance. A lot of tightness tells you the opponent might be nervous, and will almost certainly be responding a tempo behind your lead.
3) Moderate, sensitive resistance. This tells you the opponent is aware of you, too. Offering enough resistance to feel you out (literally). In this case, DON'T close or engage with this opponent without a plan.

Even in the case of a parry,when the opponent attacks and you catch it on your blade, you can feel the quality of his attack and what to do next if you're careful to be aware of what you're feeling. A light, snappy attack may signal an opponent already thinking of his next move and may call for a rapid riposte, while an attack with full, heavy physical commitment will tell you that the opponent may be slower to respond, maybe more likely to be taken in a throw or disarm, if you use grappling in your system.

From the neurological point of view, it's also important to be aware that one's neurology responds faster kinesthetically (physically) when responding to other kinesthetic cues than to visual cues. Which is to say, you tend to respond with your body faster to things that you feel than things you see. A visual cue, like the sight of a sword coming at you, has to be converted in the brain to a series of physical actions to get a response. Th visual-to-kinesthetic conversion only takes a few thousandths of a second, but considering that a straight attack delivered in distance takes about one one hundredth of a second to arrive, those few thousandths make a difference.

It's not uncommon for an advanced fencing student to be given a blindfolded fencing lesson at some point. At one level this may seem very mysterious, and the stuff of kung-fu-movies, but it's actually very practical training for fast physical awareness.

Back-and-forth drills are a great way to develop one's sensitivity, since you're limited to a few, preset actions that you repeat back and forth with a partner. The trick is to repeat the drill a bit longer that you might think is necessary, till the action becomes internalized and you can begin to turn your attention to what you are feeling.

In Tai Chi, they call the development of the touch "listening" and it's a very apt way to put it--listen to what your sword is telling you!

A new source for great Spanish fencing swords!

From time to time I like to share information about sources for great fencing equipment (more often on our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/CavalierAttitude). Today, I wanted to share this link with you. they are located in Spain and offer some amazing reproduction swords for fencers, and run by people who really know about swords and fencing. Please check em out--you won't be dissapointed!
http://Espaderoartesano.blogspot.com/

Occam’s Razor

William of Ockham must have been a swordsman. 700 years ago, he penned the following, which stands today as one of the most common sense standards of scientific method. It’s also one of the best possible pieces of advice a fencer can take to heart:

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

which translates to:
entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity

and in practice means:
The simplest solution is usually the most correct one.

In science, when a researcher is experimenting to prove a point, or laboring under an overriding belief system, it’s not uncommon for a researcher to overlook the most apparent solution to a situation. For example, when Lister, the 19th century doctor, suggested that doctors might actually be spreading disease between patients, and could stop this by simply washing their hands after each examination, the medical establishment was outraged, and Lister was drummed out. After all, patients got sick because of their lifestyles, or evil humors, or other possibilities that science could not then account for. But the idea that germs could be passed from hand to hand? Outrageous! Childishly simplistic!

And, as history has proven, correct.

One of the wonderful things about fencing are the amazing number of combinations and finesse of blade-work, and we work very hard to master those. But I’m always surprised to see how often good fencers will exercise poor choices when it comes to crossing swords, by applying overly complex or poorly practiced techniques.

In fact, the evolution of fencing is one of continually distilling and refining. The correct solution to any situation was the simplest. If you study the history of the art, you can see that the weapon and the way it was used was continually refined, and old methods and swords left behind to history.

I’m not a great fencer, but I have been lucky enough to train with some of the best in the world, and while they all had different styles, one thing that was abundantly clear, after learning the gross motions, the true art was in continually simplifying, distilling, every move. Sometimes the simplest was as easy as a thrust, sometimes the simplest was a beat-feint-coupe with a ballestra-fleche. But it was always the purest, most direct that won the day.

Some more theatrical teachers may poo poo this idea as a modern concept, something like “that’s just trying to score quickly,” but if you think about it, you can see the value in a real life and death situation: The more time you spend fencing with an opponent, the more you give him to use against you. In bullfighting, the fights don’t last longer than 10 minutes because if it continues longer than that, the bull will have figured out the toreador, and the man has little chance defeating the bull. How much faster can another swordsman do the same? In a real fight, you don’t want your opponent to know any more about your ability.

Once, in college, I had the opportunity to lose brilliantly against a high ranking Polish fencer who had years developing his basics, and nothing I could do could get me past his simple beat attack or parry riposte. No doubt he had more complicated attacks, but I wasn’t good enough ever to find out. It was a good lesson.

Several years ago, at a rapier event, I was free-fencing with a guy who seemed to be quite good, yet never protected his arms. I landed two hits to his wrist and was surprised that he didn’t even try to defend. The rapier I was using was a pretty heavy 4 foot Del Tin, and I felt a little bad, since even with a moderate hit, I could feel it impact with bone. Finally, I stopped and suggested that he might want to displace his arm to avoid the touch. He just shrugged: “My teacher says hitting the hand is dishonorable, and so we don’t deal with it.” Dishonorable? Fencing, as at least one renaissance master said, “is the art of deception.” It’s arguable how much is really honorable in meeting someone for a game of murder with big knives. It’s not arguable that a cut to the wrist of an armed assailant can save your life, and if honor is in question, win the duel whilst sparing the life of your opponent.

Nuts and bolts: Simplify! Drill the bits and pieces until they’re “airtight.” If you’re doing a beat attack, drill that until you know with 99% certainty that as soon as you’ve made contact with the opponent’s blade, he’s hit. If you’re doing a disengage or a coupe, practice it until it’s as reliable as humanly possible, or more.

Try this: Pick one simple attach and one simple defense, and use only those for a night, or a week, even if it means you get hit a lot. After a while, you will find you get hit a lot less.

Think about your fencing—you can be your own best coach—analyze it for anyplace you can simplify and purify. Never give the opponent a stronger dose of your skill than it takes to defeat him. Leave him wondering.

Compound attacks are comprised of these simple pieces all put together, anyway, and the better your “alphabet” of simple techniques, the better your “dialog of the blade will be.”

Good stuff coming!!

I've been neglecting the blog a bit, but there is some very good stuff on the way! In honor of our new mailing list setup, I've put together a report about reaction speed, what it is, why it's important to everyone who picks up a sword, and how you can improve yours. It's so good, in my humble opinion, I think it would make a good and saleable product on it's own, but I want to give it to my customers and subscribers. It's getting the final proofing now, I'll let you know when it's done.

In the meantime, sign on for occasional updates and interesting news:

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New Website is up!

After promising for WAAAY too long, we finally got the durned thing up'n running. It's not quite finished yet, but it fits the bill better than the old one. In addition to the Rapier bag, and some info about our little company, We've got a line of cool fencing-related t-shirts, with more on the way, and we'll be offering a great little book of exercises for rapier fencers (and other martial artists, too!), and we ought to have some more products coming soon (but I won't say anything more about that right now).



Now, those of us who have done business with us in the past through our old site knew that there was a glitch in the site that prevented it from calculating shipping cost. To light a fire under us to replace it with a new site, we decided to let it slide and fix it on the new site. Guess what? The new site still has the glitch! It's seems to be a Paypal thing. So the unintentional "tech issue" discount--free shipping==is still in effect, until we work it out. can't say how long that will be, but not long.

A priceless fencing lesson, for a quarter!

One of the neatest training aids for a fencer is a simple quarter! Here are two great uses I know...do you have others? (For our European readers, any coin about 1.5-2cm in diameter and fairly thin, will do).

The twenty-five cent lunge lesson
Back in the 70s, I studies with a venerable old German fencing master. His style of fence was certainly early 20th century, and may even have been older than that. I don't know what his age was when I studied with him, but he did mention his first exposure to fencing occurred before World War I. Suffice to say he was old, and yet with a sword in hand, he moved like lightening! In fact, I remember his lunges striking the target like rifleshots! Despite his power, and the fact he wore heavy looking old leather shoes and not sneakers., his lunges were very quiet. "Zee lunge shouldt be qviet, like A kat!" he would tell us.

Several years later, at college, I was exposed to a training tool that taught that kind of cat-like speed and fierceness, while training us to lunge in a way that was safe for our knees, too.

The tool was a simple quarter.

But first, lets take a quick look at the lunge. On of the most common mistakes a beginning fencer makes is to execute the lunge by stepping forward into it, as if it were a static pose one moves into. Now, an effective lunge covers the distance of two steps in the time of one, so obviously, it has to be faster than a single advance step to be effective, otherwise, two advance steps would do fine. The second mistake you often see, even by high-level fencers, is to launch the lunge forcefully off the back foot (which is fine) but ignore the front leg. As such, the lunge causes the fencer's body to "fly" up and they come down hard on their front leg, which is usually fairly relaxed in that moment, and unprepared of the kind of shock it will receive on landing. This kind of flying lunge can eventually wreak havoc on the sensitive knee joint of the front leg.

In fact, a good and safe lunge employs both legs, not just the rear leg. After extending the weapon-arm, a wise fencer kicks forward the front leg, and thrusts forward from the rear-leg (classical fencers launch off the rear heel, competitive fencers like to use the ball of the rear foot). The front leg forward-kick begins a fraction of a second before launching off the rear leg, so that , at end of the lunge, the forward momentum of the body neutralized by a rolling motion of the front foot, similar an ordinary heel-toe step (land on the heel not the toe! Only a ballaestra lands on the toes, and that's a hop!)

Done right, no matter how powerful a lunge is, it lands fairly quietly. Like a cat.

So a good finish to the lunge depends on how prepared the front foot is. In order to function effectively, the front leg has to kick forward to be ahead of the lunging body.

To train this, simply put a quarter under the heel of the front foot when you practice your lunge (if wearing rounded-heel sneakers, you may want to put the coin under the ball of the heel). Now practice your lunge: extend your arm as you normally do, kick forward your lead leg while thrusting off the rear leg. The forward kick should propel the coin straight forward ahead of you.

If you've fallen into the bad habit of lifting your body during the lunge, the quarter won't move, and you'll step over it. However, if you kick spontaneously while lunging, and without raising your body it'll work brilliantly (hint--relax the rest of your body! There may even be a feeling of your body dropping slightly during the lunge).

You might also notice that this exercise prevents you from "flying" which is to say, your body, and so your sword, will move in a straight line towards your intended target, and with more force, rather than upwards. You become more powerful, more direct and more accurate.

If you've been experiencing front-knee trouble, give this exercise a try--you may be very relieved!

Safer hand parries
If you practice an historical style like rapier or smallsword you know it's important to keep the thumb and fingers tightly together. It's good form, and in actual practice, helps keep your fingers from getting tangled up with your opponent's blade when things get messy. In an actual encounter with sharp weapons, this could keep you from having your thumb or finger cut off!

When you practice, try holding a quarter sandwiched between your thumb and hand. It'll remind you to keep those fingers together!