Striking Paths - Fencing Tutorial (Foil, Epee)

Okay, so you can see here a fencer. It's important to note that we exist in a three-dimensional plane. You're actually starting to see a lot more lateral movement, but that's not exactly the point of this video. We just wanted to highlight how someone will actually view their opponent in terms of what targets present themselves, how there's several different targets that they really have access to. Now this is a bit of a simplification because when an opponent Depending on different body posture or arm position, you'll actually have a bunch of different targets you can hit and you can see those same targets might change in size or availability over the course of a match and that's really what our preparations and our feints and all of our movement is about. It's about opening up and getting close to certain targets. Now this diagram shows what we can actually see as a fencer sort of from side view or three-quarters view. So each of these boxes represent those same targets that an attacker can realistically hit. This will generally be based on what they've been learning in lessons or in practice. This is like when the repetitions come to play. How reliably can they hit a specific place in the room? You'll see with more practice those fields begin to expand so they could hit something even when it gets closer or it gets further. Things like that. You'll notice as well sometimes there might be different shapes that they can actually reach and you can see like this yellow path once this fencer gets started they're able to hit anything along that path. Now if you're outside that path who knows what happens when you get closer or further but it doesn't seem like you're in any danger. So this is the type of fencing that you might see at let's say the cadet or junior level where people have some pretty reliable paths that if they start their preparation like their attack and they get in those field and the opponent remains within those fields they can successfully get a hit or an off target which is risk-free to them. What separates let's say pro level fencers or like senior level fencers is they might be able to hit anything within this field, this large green area. So this becomes less about like oh hey if I'm fencing this guy I can hopefully contort my way out of getting hit like no you're if they get in their range like you're probably gonna get hit you need to actually stop their attack. But what separates the top level fencers is you'll see that this field actually extends behind them as well and this is like the ultimate goal of target practice and private lessons and like drilling with partners like can you actually hit anywhere around you