Critical of Sport Fencing

[Mike Cartier]

I find linear movment to be a cardinal sin no matter what martial art i'm doing. In general ifind that combining defensive actions with a movement straight back does not work as well as a traverse backwards. Stands to reason that moving offline is wise whether you are boxing, kicking , cutting or thrusting.

[Steven Engelbach]

That's nice, but I wonder why none of the Italian masters advocate it. Apparently, Fabris and Capo Ferro didn't have your depth of experience when they devised their systems.

Steve

I find linear movment to be a cardinal sin no matter what martial art i'm doing. In general ifind that combining defensive actions with a movement straight back does not work as well as a traverse backwards. Stands to reason that moving offline is wise whether you are boxing, kicking , cutting or thrusting.

[Shane Smith]

Keep it scholarly and non-personal gentlemen.

[John_Clements]

In fighting the closer you are to your opponent, the larger any traversing step must be to move around them and use leverage. With the rapier, as a quick long-reaching foyning weapon, linear movement made great sense ---in terms of a thrusting attack ---but its footwork still involved diagonal steps, though often not very large since the distance from the opponent is generally considerable. Make sense?

[Mike Cartier]

Yes that makes sense.

[Jaron Bernstein]

Hmmm. You are way ahead of me here. You reference rapier works I have only read the titles to. I can figure out a bit of what you are saying though.

[James_Knowles]

the closer you are to your opponent, the larger any traversing step must be to move around them and use leverage

Forgive me if I'm a little slow here. To me this sounds counter-intuitive, but I'm trying to understand. Something in my brain says "this is important basic information." So...

Is "use leverage" along the lines of deflecting/trapping/etc. the opponent's blade? That makes sense to my simple mind.

I'm not figuring out the "move around them" part, though. (I've only tried rapier once. Pretty wild stuff!)

I find it's easier to void when further away because it takes longer for an opponent's weapon to cover the distance, and gives a tiny amount of extra time for the brain to analyse and formulate a reaction. When I'm close it's usually just *bam* *ouch*. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Is this related to what you're saying?

[Craig Peters]

James,

John's discussion on the traversing step is analagous to a goalie coming out to "play the angle" in hockey. The farther you are out of the net, (within reason), the easier it is to reduce the area available to the opposing player trying to score.

But back to swordsmanship...

If you are standing next to a person, a traversing step is going to have to be quite wide, (and nearly completely horizontal), in order to move you around that person, due to the fact that the person is a physical obstacle to your movement. If however, you take a few steps back and make a traversing step, you'll find that you need to move much less distance horizontally to get around them. The fact that the person is not immediately in the way means that you can traverse around behind them, rather than simply steping horizontally to try and get out of the way of their body. You can do a little experiment with another person if that will be more clear than my description.

Make sense?

[Jason Donahue]

I'm hesitant to resurrect such an old thread (especially as the one I choose to delurk to), but, by any chance, were matters with "Sean" ever resolved in person, or did he simply disappear after his account was disabled?

[Ryan Ricks]

he pretty much dissappeared after his account was disabled

ryan

[JeffGentry]

Hi guy's

Just thought i would make this an even 100 reply's, i like to watch sport fencing it is just not for me as a participant, there we have an even 100 reply's.


Jeff <img src="/forum/images/icons/laugh.gif" alt="" />

[Jack Lynn]

Hey, I'm neither a sports fencer, or a disciple of the historical rapier, but I am a competative debator, and I noticed something that I thought I should point out. Sean, if you're still reading, you mentioned that only about 2,000 out of 16,000 sport fencers are serious about their fencing and and then you went on to say that John Clements was generalizing too much when he criticized sports fencers. I don't know if your numbers are correct or not, but if they are, and only one out of eight sport fencers should be considered serious practictioners of a martial art, then John Clements has every right to generalize.

[Jack Lynn]

----"Don't do something obviously illegal, like punching your opponent. It's a sword fight, not UFC." ---
Sean, I wanted to respond to, i.e. viciously attack this comment of yours as well because it directly contradicts the point you’re trying to make. Having anything within your martial art that is "obviously illegal" damages its credibility, in my mind at least. Why is punching not legal? In a real fight a man will kick, punch, knee, bite, and do whatever else it takes to preserve his own life. Where you can put restrictions on practices for reasons of safety, you yourself pointed out the type of injuries that can be inflicted in sports rapier competitions. Is punching more dangerous in some way? Does it somehow cause more grievous injury?
The UFC showcases remarkably pure unarmed combat. ARMA does the same for the arts of medieval and Renaissance combat. From what I can tell from my admittedly limited study that sports fencing is roughly to ARMA what boxing is to ultimate fighting .
Recently, I was watching movies on the ARMA website and I saw a man take what looked like a very hard kick to a very sensitive region. This caused him to fall down, curl up, and make no further attempt to defend himself. His opponent would have had no trouble in finishing him off had he been so inclined. The effectiveness of this attack is obvious, yet it would be illegal in sports fencing. Where I hope for its members’ sake ARMA doesn’t encourage this type of blow it certainly accepts them as part of the martial art and they are not “illegal moves” in the sense they are in sports fencing.

[John_Clements]

Yes, he never answered the questions about the discrepancies in his claims or about his identity.

JC