Fencing Geeking

First, you go to the store and pick what kind of fence you want. When your doing this, there are some key things you want to keep in mind.

• What is the fence for?
• How much money do you want to spend?
• Do you care if it looks ugly.

I sugest a nice wood pannel fence. Good for keeping people out but they also look nice. But if money is a problem, then one of those chain link fences with the strips of wood woven in work really well.

But if you're going for scurity, you need to do something totally difrent. I say start with a 6 foot high concreet wall. On top of that, put coils of barbed wire. If you're really feeling insecure, run the electricity through the barbed wire and mount some security camras on the fence, too. Add some guard dogs and some steel bear traps and you will be totally safe! -The LHF

You evil bastard, you know what I meant when I posted this. Gra! BenS.

Ok, mostly when I talk about fencing, I'm doing it in person. Writing something up is totally diffent. But I'll take a wack at it!

The History of Fencing!

Fencing evoled from, you guessed it, sword fighting. In the Renisance, rich people would get mad and chalange each other to duels. Generaly to the death. (Not to the Pain.) In these fights, they used foils. Foils were desinged to go into your body, pokes hole is one important part or anouter and kill you. One of the kings didn't like all his nobles killing each other, so me made it ileagel to kill a men in a dual.

So the dualed to the first blood instead. They used swords called eepes, desinged to hit your opponetes opponents hand, wrist or arm, making them bleed and giving you the win. Now, if these wounds became infected and your oppent died, it wasn't your foult! They just blamed what ever superstion that belived. (They didn't have the best docters back then.)

Over time, Fencing slowly evolved into the sport we know today. Padded jakets and strong helmet were added to make it safer. The foil was brought back as a weapon (it was made safer first). And the sabre was added. And now...

Some important Fencing terms!

• Off Target and On Target: Two weapons (foil and sabre) have rules about what part of the body is good traget. If you hit the good target, (on target) you get a point. If you hit somewhere you not suposed to, (off target) you don't get a point.
• Right of way: In Foil and Sabre, there is the Right of Way rule. Simply put, this means that when you attack, you try to get right of way so your attack has counts you get the point. (Real life example: Two cars are at a stop sing. The green on got there before the red one, so the green one gets to go first, thus scoring a point on the road of life.)
• would you explain the right of way more specifically? I just started fencing (foil) and we're doing bouts for the first time, and I'm not sure whether I'm playing dirty or not.
• I would ask your coach. It's a lot easyer to show then to talk about. There's also a fair number of small but confusing rules about right of way. And if I talk about those, I know I'll forgot some. -Victor
• Your basic right of way is pretty simple though. Just, basically, if you extend the blade, you get the right of way. So, if you attack, and your blade is extended, and the other person makes an attack, in the middle of yours, even if they hit, you still get the point, cause your blade was extended first. Another basic rule is that if you extend your blade and are about to make an attack with right-of-way, if the other person taps your blade, I.E Parry or Beat, the original attacks loses right-of-way. That's your basic explination.
• Touch: Basicly, it's a point. If you hit someone, it's a touch. If you'er fencing a 5 touch bout, the first person to hit the other person 5 times wins.

The Fencing Weapons!

Eepé: Eepé, is the slowest weapon. But that dosn't mean it's bad. Eepé gives you time to judge you opponets reactions. There's lost of moving up and down the strip, planing what your going to do. And when you fianly do it, it looks really cool. Eepé is defenitly the thinking persons weapon. Eepé has a thick blade with a large bell guard to protect your hand. You can hit anywhere on the body and there's no right of way rules. Touches only count if you hit the other person with the point. If both people hit at the same time, both people get points. (Any thing you want to add, Neal? You fencing eepe, I think.)

• Well... I wouldn't mind adding accents over the "e" in Eepé [1]:-)

~~~~ Neal's mom here - You have the right number of "e"s but in the wrong order, and I just saw an ad which had two(count 'em!) accents so it was épeé. I would have thought there would be one accent on the first e after the p, but my French is très rusty, eh?

• I think you've summed it up pretty well... It's always fun to note that shoelaces are valid target in Eepé, and the floor right next to them is not... so unless you are fencing on a regulation strip (grounded, so the buzzer won't go off when you hit the floor), the shoelaces are not worth going for... Not that they'd really be worth it anyway.

Sabre: Sabre is fast. Very fast. Amazingly fast. The second the director says "fence!" both fencers are rusing down the strip, trying to get right of way and hit the other person. To fence sabre, you need to be able to think on your feet. There's lots of back and forth moves. If you don't know much about fencing, it looks totally random. But it's not. It's just very fast. When fencing sabre, you can hit with the edge of the blade. The guard looks really weird and is hard to describe. *grins* Sabre uses right of way rules, making it even more confusing. Also, you can only hit above the waist. Any hits blow that are off target.

Foil: Foil is almost always the weapon you will learn first. Some places are diffrent, but there just weird. Foil is a mix of sabre and eepe. It's not overly fast, giving you time to think about what your going to do before you do it. But it's not as slow as eepe. Foil has the skinniest blade of the three weapons with a farly small guard becasue the hand and arm are off target. When fencing foil, you can hit anywhere on the torso, with the point only. Arms, legs and heads are off target. Foil also uses right of way rules.

So that's the basics of it all. I think I got everything. If you have any questions, just ask. And if you ever stop by my house for a bit, I could easly give you a basic leason. I would just need to talk my fencing teacher into letting me use some of his equpment. I think he wouls say yes. And I love teaching people fencing! In fact, soon I might get paid to teach kids how to fence. And that's mucho cool! Now I'm sleep and need to stop typing. Good night! -The LHF

Hi! I'm Katherine's (the Muffin Queen's) mother. She pointed out this page and, because I used to fence, suggested that I might add to it. Some other fencing terms you might have heard:

parry: to defend against an attack. Very important in foil and saber to take the right of way away from your opponent. If it also keeps you from being skewered, so much the better.

riposte: a counter attack made after a parry. You often hear about a verbal ripostethat's where the term comes from.

touche (which should have the little accent mark over the e, but I don't know how to do that, and good grief, who cares): "I am touched!" You got me. Uttered by the one who is, obviously, touched.

Random thoughts: Unless they've changed the rules since I quit fencing (about a decade ago), epee is the only game in which two people can compete and both can lose. Weird, huh? If the score is tied at 4 touches apiece (in a five touch bout) and both score on the last action, the score becomes 5-5, and both lose. If it's a direct elimination tournament, of course, they have to break the tie, but otherwise it stands as a double loss.

Saber: my weapon of choice. The saber (or sabre, if you prefer) was a cavalry weapon. The object was to kill a rider on horseback, not his horse (who could be appropriated for your side), so that's why the rules specify that only hits (touches) above the top of the hip count.

One cool thing about fencing: men and women can compete with each other, even occasionally in tournaments. Brains and quickness are much more important than brawn here.

Thanks for bearing with meI still love fencing, though I don't do it anymore. There's nothing like it. -Lisa

• Ooh, thanks! I forgot that bit about the history of sabre. And I think they changed the rules in epee. I've never heard of both peoplr losing. But then, I've never fenced in a tournament. I will soon though! -The LHF (Also known as Victor)

Footnotes

[1] That is done, in Windows, but holding down the ALT key and pressing 0233 on the numeric keypad, and I apoligise to those of you who are using a slightly different charicter set, and have é show up as somthing other then an e and a ' over top of it