Home | Articles | Workshops | About | Updates

The purpose of a movement or technique in fencing is to solve a problem - for example, a thrust to the chest from the opponent. This might be a complete solution (a counter thrust with opposition to cover and score) or a partial one (a parry with a small step back, preventing their action). It might be a better solution (a tight controlled parry allowing an easy riposte) or a worse one (a wild beat that leaves the fencer far out of position). Critically, these questions - is this complete or does more need doing, is this better or worse - can only be evaluated in the context of that problem. Without the problem to act as a scale, the correctness of a movement or technique cannot be evaluated.

Similarly, the precise execution of a movement will depend both on the situation it is being used in and on the fencers themselves. As each fencer's body is slightly different, their 'correct' versions of even the simplest fencing positions (like how they come en garde) will correspondingly vary. See The Footwork from Sydney Sabre. Relative features of both fencers, like their height and strength, provide further adjustments to the ideal way to perform actions - a tall fencer may need to bring the hand lower to thrust with opposition against a shorter opponent.

It is certainly true some movements are wrong. This occurs when performing the movement is actively injurious, such as a lunge with poor foot alignment or a cut with a broken wrist structure. In these situations, the instructor does owe a responsibility to their students to correct the mistake for their safety. But this is a relatively small set of cases when compared to the overall number of possible actions & executions of those actions.

Most fencing actions must instead be judged contextually, in reference to the particular problem they are addressing. For example, consider beginning an exchange with “feint high, cut to leg”. Whether this action is good depends on the particular opponent - someone who grounds themselves and commits to the parry will be very vulnerable to it, while someone who counterattacks in the high line with a retreat will make it a very bad idea. Or for another example, consider the classic question of “what footwork should you accompany a parry with?” For a tall fencer, stepping backwards on the parry can give an extra margin of safety. For a short fencer, they may need to come forwards with their parry in order to effectively riposte. The question of which is “correct” will therefore depend on who the fencer is - and how their height compares to that of their opponent.

In HEMA, of course, just scoring touches is not the end of the activity. Understanding and reconstructing historical treatises is key to the point of why we do this, and these can impose additional constraints on the actions of a fencer. The simplest way to handle this is by directly imposing additional requirements into the problem. Examples might include forbidding crossing the hands when fencing with longswords, or requiring every sabre parry in the high line to be accompanied by a leg slip. This often fails when the rule becomes treated as purely a stylistic requirement - if the student doesn’t have a functional reason to play by this game, then they might do it in training under lower pressure, but it will probably fall away from their fencing during higher pressure situations.

A more robust approach is to design the problems you give students to encourage these stylistic constraints. See Problem-solving, Fiore style from Chapitre des Armes. By teaching the high-low feint as a core move, for example, students will be much more likely to remember the leg slip with their high line parries. Now the leg slip is not just stylistic, but also functional - it is acting to solve a fencing problem. Corrections or improvements to the leg slip will be much more likely to be taken on board, since they (should) give a direct benefit to helping the student solve this problem.

One of the most useful ways to apply this in teaching is simple: when you find a student doing something particularly strange, ask what they’re trying to do. What is the problem they are trying to solve? If you don’t ask and guess the wrong problem, then you risk giving ‘advice’ that won’t help. So ask, then you can evaluate their actions in the context of that problem and provide useful advice for improvement.

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

tea at fechtlehre dot org