How to Improve Your Fencing

Take private lessons constantly. One per week is the bare minimum during training and fencing season. Group lessons are helpful, but after a certain point in a fencer's development should be supplemented with private lessons, preferably from the same coach.

Practice point control, or, for saberists, blade control. Get a wall pad or a pillow, something that you can hit repeatedly without risking damage to it, and tape an X on it. Spend some time each day of practice lunging, extending, jump lunging, advance lunging, step-up lunging (also known as "gain lunging"), and, for foilist and epeeist, fletching against your target. Keep on going until you hit the center of the X five or six times in a row.

Saberists should learn point work (and apply it in Step 2). Point attacks in saber can give you a huge edge over your opponent. When you double-disengage lunge and catch them in the center of the chest, nine times out of ten, they'll give you a look that says "What in the world was that?" Note: With the "new" timing in electric saber, this action leaves the attacker especially open to a stop-hit to the arm/wrist if performed incorrectly. Against more advanced fencers great care must be taken to ensure that the arm cannot be reached by the opponent until the end of the action during the final acceleration of the point towards target.

Make your disengage beautiful. Disengage and counter parry are the cornerstones of any foilists' or epeeists' repertoire. Try to practice with another person, rather than a target. Have them make lateral parries while you try to make the smallest disengages possible, all during a short action, like an advance lunge. Then reverse roles, making them attack you. Make the smallest counter parry you can, and train yourself to an instant riposte. When you disengage be sure to do so from your fingers, do not make the mistake of starting this movement with your shoulder or your arm, this will alter your point control and is improper form. Disengages should always be the smallest possible movement made with your fingers!

Gather up enough people (six or more), try the drill "The Ring Of Death". To explain this, we will label our fencers A, B, C, D, E, and F. A starts out in the center, with the rest surrounding him (in alphabetical order). First, B attacks A, who responds by parrying (or attempting to) with a riposte, or counterattacking. Immediately after this, A turns to C, who attacks, with A reacting again. In this way, A goes on turning until he reaches E. After the action between A and E, E and A switch places. The process begins again with A attacking E. In this way, everyone exchanges two actions (one attack and one reaction) with everyone else. If everyone is familiar with the drill, six people can finish in about 1.5 minutes. By doing this drill often, you will increase your reaction speeds, so that in a bout, no attack will catch you flat-footed.

Go to summer programs. Many colleges host camps, but there are also major programs in France, Italy, Poland, England - all over Europe really. Inside of the USA, the selection is fair, but you're best off going overseas if you're serious about the sport. If you don't have enough time, or simply don't want to go into a foreign country to train, smaller programs are available all over the planet.

Watch your Footwork. In the words of Tim Morehouse, "Footwork is 70% of fencing." You cannot make your footwork good enough. Do drills, entire bouts even, with a friend, fencing on the edge of the strip. Make sure that you stay on that line. Make advancing and retreating patterns (Advance-Advance-Retreat, Retreat-Retreat-Advance, Advance-Advance-Advance-Retreat-Retreat, etc.) and perform these sequences on the edge of the strip. Ensure that your lunge is straight, again, using the edge of the strip. Practice switching direction. Try advancing full tilt, then switching to retreats. Until you can do this switch (and its reverse), practice it regularly. Avoid leaning and rocking. Leaning forward presents target and keeps you craning your neck to see your opponent, leaning backwards, while it can be used to parry with distance, should be avoided, as it makes it difficult to move, and inhibits your ability to parry. Rocking both presents target, and makes it difficult to parry. When you are advancing and retreating, the only movement should be taking place below your waist. To improve your transition speed while switching from a retreat to an advance or an advance to a retreat, it's important to drop in your legs with the final retreat or final advance. This drops your center of gravity making it easier to overcome your backwards momentum and gets a great deal of compression in the legs which in turn speeds up your motion in the opposite direction.

Create an explosive lunge. Your lunge should come to your opponent as a bolt from the blue. The only real way to achieve this is to continue fencing for a long time, but working on leg strength can improve this somewhat also. Still, you can watch yourself for nasty habits that signal to your opponent that a lunge is coming. 1) Tensing up your back leg. 2) Extending too soon. Make sure your extension comes less than half a second before your lunge (if not at the same time, or delayed with the intent of deceiving a parry). 3) Continued advances at high speed. 4) Moving your blade into a preferred position. Some fencers like to lunge from a certain position. Primarily these are Sixte, and Octave, but starting every lunge in Septime will be a dead giveaway. A useful method for practicing a lunge is using a tennis ball on a hard floor, throwing with your sword hand, bounce the ball out in front of you, for beginners the ball should come up to hand level about 2–3 feet (0.6–0.9 m) in front of you, then lunge and extend your arm to grab the ball with your sword hand, this helps with hand-eye coordination and can help visualize lunging distance, and with a group it's more fun than typical drills. The distance of the bounce can also be increased to practice a flèche.

Learn to fence with "Absence De Fer". This applies primarily to foil. Many beginners will be at a loss for what to do when you simply pull your blade out of the high line. A common trick is to extend, provoking a parry, then, rather than deceiving that parry normally, pulling the blade away. The one who does a parry will sometimes A) Freeze up, giving you a free touche OR B) Extend, which you should be prepared for, parrying and riposting. Other responses, such as distance parrying, will often render this action useless, but if you're prepared to take that parry mid-attack, you're safe.

Get comfortable in all lines. 60% of all fencing takes place in the high line. As a result, many fencers have weaker Septime and Octave parries. Getting used to attacking to the low line will only increase your chances of winning.

Learn to hold your blade in between lines. Most coaches teach that the blade should be held in the line of Sixte, closing out that side of the fencer entirely. While this is certainly most comfortable for beginners, you shouldn't feel limited to fencing in Sixte. By placing your blade between two lines, while you expose both of them, you also make parrying in either quicker than the parry you originally would have had to make. Note: This only works well against beginning and intermediate fencers. Due to the fact that no line is completely defended, an advanced fencer using a well timed feint disengage or feint 1-2 will have no difficulty deceiving your attempts to parry.

Learn to flick. But do so at your own risk. This only applies to foil and épée. While flicks to the back are now much more difficult and therefore less effective, it is still effective to flick aiming for the flank, shoulder, and chest. This is just another tool that should be at your disposal. In épée, you can use your opponent's bell guard to help make your blade flick down, into their wrist. In the case of foil, because of the lightness of the blade, flicks are considerably easier. Learning how to flick, combined with absence de fer, can win many bouts in foil. The real part of the flick that makes its use advantageous is its ability to evade a parry. While a straight extension merely needs to be gently pressed aside, a flick requires an exaggerated parry that, once deceived, gives you an opening for many different attacks. Note: many coaches despise the flick! Not only is it seen as being illegal (some, though not all, directors will see it as such)it is considered to be a "cheap shot". Take care that if you choose to add this move that you find out where your club and coaches stand, as this is controversial subject. Clubs that teach purely classical foil and épée will shun this more than a 2.0 minded salle would.

Ask the winner. When someone beats you consistently, go to them to try to find out what they're catching you on. Sometimes they'll be rude and turn you away, but more often than not they'll tell you (perhaps in incomprehensible language) what's happening. Even just "I can see when you're going to lunge" is a huge help. This sort of feedback on your fencing lets you focus on your weaker points.

Ask yourself. You can't always rely on someone else to tell you what you did wrong. Learn to identify errors yourself. Work on improving the problem areas you identify.

Get your coach to watch your bouts. If a coach never sees you fence, how are they supposed to help you improve?