Home | Articles | Workshops | About | Updates

When trying to give feedback to a student, it’s important to focus your efforts on the underlying problem. This might be quite different to the most obvious problem that you saw. For example, imagine a student who does a little jump while taking a parry, then leans over hugely to try and reach with their riposte. The obvious problem is the lean, but the underlying problem is the jump - because they’re in the air, they are unable to close distance with their feet, so they have to lean to compensate.

I normally describe these as fundamental and consequential. A fundamental problem is one with no other direct causes - the problem is independent and must be resolved directly. A consequential problem is caused by another problem (which may in turn be consequential or fundamental) - when that problem is fixed, this problem will likely also be fixed (or at least changed). It is extremely difficult to fix a consequential problem without fixing the fundamental problem which leads to it - without that, the best outcome is normally just a new problem popping up as the first one is ‘fixed’. Note that the same problem may be fundamental or consequential for different fencers (or even for the same fencer at different times).

When I’m not sure which of the various problems I can see in a fencer is fundamental, I use a rule of thumb of “start from the ground up”, as summarised in the following list. Generally, I find that the earlier on this list the problem appears and the more of their actions it appears in, the more likely it is to be the fundamental cause.

1. Decision. What was the fencer trying to do, and is it a tactically useful action? Do they have an idea about what might be useful to do next?
2. Distance. How far away is the fencer from their opponent, and does that line up with the action they’re trying to make? Do they have momentum constraining their options for distance?
3. Timing. When are they trying to act? Is their attempted action late (meaning the opponent has been able to put in place a countermeasure) or early (meaning the opponent can deceive or bypass it)?
4. Feet. What footwork action are they using? Does that fit with their plan and the distance of the exchange? Is the footwork action executed efficiently?
5. Body. Are they appropriately balanced? Is there an effective power chain providing sufficient strength to perform the action desired? Is the upper body working appropriately with the feet?
6. Arms. Are these extended or shortened where appropriate? Are they aligned well with the body? Are the muscles excessively tense, or the shoulders rolled out of position?
7. Hands. Are they death-gripping the sword? Is their blade aligned and pointed correctly, with the guard well placed for defence? Are the wrists stable or weak?

At HEMAC Dijon 2018, Michel Rensen shared a great drill to help build skill with identifying problems. You need four people - two will fence, and two will act as coaches. Each fencer secretly decides for themselves on a mistake they will make consistently throughout the upcoming bout, like fencing with the wrong foot forward or never extending the arms. The fencers then fence for a few minutes, after which time each of their coaches has to try to explain what the fundamental problem was for their fencer. Someone who is never extending the arms will often need to lean excessively, but the fundamental problem is the shortened arm positions. This is a great way for the coach to practice untangling which problems are fundamental and which are consequential. As a fencer, since you’re deliberately making a specific mistake it’s psychologically easier to have your fencing watched and criticised in this way.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning explicitly that everyone has multiple fundamental problems in their fencing. However, the same approach of starting from the ground up is useful here as well. A fencer who has poor hand position in two parries and bad distance in all actions will be helped a lot more by fixing their distance than by fixing the hand position in those two parries. Once their distance is generally correct, the exact execution of parries might then become the limiting factor on their fencing, making it worthy of further attention.

I welcome questions, comments or feedback on this article. You can reach me by email:

tea at fechtlehre dot org