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The goal of a preparation is to induce your opponent to commit to an action which you will be able to exploit. Some of those actions are obviously good for you, such as a badly chosen parry or an unwise step forwards. Some are apparently neutral, such as a change of guard or a small step backwards preserving the relative distance. Some are less obviously good for you, such as an incoming attack or a well-planned parry/riposte. One form of committed action which is often missed from categorisations like this is hesitation, or more generally ‘commitment to inaction’.

First we need talk about what commitment actually is. Often this is equated with making a big movement, like a long step or running forward. And in some senses, these are committed actions: when someone does something like this in a bout, they are going to close distance and have to act from that new position before they can escape again. But they still have choices and flexibility. Even someone in mid-air is not fully committed — their hand is still available to move in various ways. An alternative way to understand commitment is to look at it mentally as the decision to make an action. Once a decision has been made, it takes a certain (small) amount of time to make a new decision and carry out that action. During this cycle, a person is committed to their action.

So a moment of inaction is ‘simple’ — when someone chooses not to act, they will be committed to not acting for a moment. If you can recognise these moments when they happen (or even better, when they are about to happen), you can simply make your action during that moment and the opponent will be unable to respond to it. Of course, ’simple’ and ‘easy’ are definitely not the same thing.

Why would someone in a fencing bout ever decide not to act? There’s a few possible reasons. One of the most obvious is hesitation — the person knows roughly what they want to do, but they just want a little more information or a slightly better position before they actually do it. Perhaps they enter a bind and pause for a moment to feel pressure, or they try to take just one more step into measure before launching their attack. Recognising when the opponent is about to hesitate (or even better, encouraging them to hesitate through your own actions) allows you to easily execute a direct action in that moment.

A second common cause is indecision. This is most often seen when a fencer knows what they want to do, but isn’t confident enough to try and execute it. For example, a strong attacking fencer who is good at parrying while advancing can often reach very close distance without drawing an attempted stop-hit from the opponent. Their opponent knows that a stop-hit would be a theoretically good action in this situation, but expects that if they try to attempt it they will be parried and hit. So instead they try to work out the perfect line & timing — which allows the attacker to take over and simply hit first instead.

It can also be worth looking for moments of partial inaction. A classic example of this is someone with light agile footwork, very difficult to pin down — until they’re concentrating on making a parry, when the weight sinks down and they stop moving their feet for a moment. By encouraging them to focus on their hand, you can create a situation where their feet are ‘glued to the floor’ and set up an easy hit to the leg. This can of course be applied in reverse as well: by making someone concentrate on their feet and footwork, you can often get them to leave their hands floating in space as an easy target. Both of these work in the same way: a person actively making decisions about one part of their body is often implicitly making a decision to not change what another part of their body is doing.

Finally, it's worth mentioning the role of distance. At a long distance, there might be no attack available which can get to the opponent during a moment of inaction See Time to Target. - in this case, a fencer will be unable to directly exploit this brief commitment to inaction. However they may still be able to gain an indirect advantage from it, where a feint or threat might be particularly surprising and so draw an unusually strong response. At closer distances, the opportunity instead exists to hit directly into these openings.

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

tea at fechtlehre dot org