I took my first fencing class and thought I might share my experiance as it relates to what we discused before. As John said it is indeed a sport of finess with no grapling. Over 3 hours I was able to make the transition from Longsword to saber pretty good I think. I won 2 bouts against other students that had taken more clases then me. I lost more then I won that is for sure. The instructure remarked on ability to spring forward and back very effectivly and we discused it further. She said it was in fact a direct result of the legtraining. I opened a discusion with her regaurding if weigth training is advisable for fencers. She said that many champion fencers do weight training but many don't. She said it was her personal opinion that weight training and particularly leg traing in favorable. She did say that she personaly does not enjoy training with weights and does not do it now, but did it when she was competing state wide.
As for how the fencing might imporve my Longsword, I think mostly in the distance and timing. The fencing saber is lighter and faster, so it is harder to follow. When I go back to the Longsword, it should be easier. I don't quite see how the footwork relates to Longsword. Longsword is more of a wider stand that moves back and forth in solid steps with the feet passing in front of one another. In saber its more shuffel front and back. The feet do not cross one anther. Perhaps someone can clear this up. Perhaps this shuffel motion is also used in Longswrd and I am not aware of it.
I found that one of the other students was interested in longsword. I spent about half an hour after class talking to him about it. I showed him the four guards of Licheneur, the 5 master strikes, winding, halfswording and a few grapling moves. We practiced some drills and aggreed to do so every week.
Not bad for a first class.
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) but I think that for me and my continued health and performance, I would be better off doing sets of 50 squats with zero weight several times than sets of 5.
