Fencing

[Gibonius]

Originally Posted by jagmqt

Good stuff...Thanks. Is experience the only way to determine which best suits a person, or are there certain tendencies or physical characteristics a person might have that would make them more suited to one style over another?

jag

Height is almost always an advantage in every weapon. Being left handed helps at the beginner to intermediate level, people get used to it eventually. Long arms are a tremendous advantage in epee. Saber forces aggression and you cannot be the slightest bit indecisive. Foil gives you the most options I think.

Unless you're planning on training for National/international level competition, don't worry about what your body is built for, just play around and find whichever one is most fun for you.

The biggest consideration at many smaller clubs is simply the available population. I switched from epee to foil in grad school for a bit simply there weren't enough decent epeeist to compete against. It's no fun having to compete against the same few people every week.

 

[Gibonius]

Originally Posted by BP348

So back in the day, like during the French Revolution (think three musketeers) time frame was that a saber they used?

What type of sword was used?

Saber is vaguely based on cavalry weapons. As others stated, epee is the most like a dueling rapier but it's a superficial resemblance.


Fencing doesn't resemble dueling, it's just a sport. The rules are artificial, designed for sport, not for training for combat. There's SOME basis on real weapon training, but it's so abstracted these days as to be meaningless. Epee, I can hit someone in the hand 1/10th of a second before they hit me in the forehead...and I get the touch. Suicidal in real life, great fun in the sport. One big technique these days involved sort of whipping the blade ("flicking") to bring the point down against the target, would never work with a real weapon but can provide interesting options in sport.

People who get too rigidly fixated on the dueling origin usually end up doing SCA "fencing" and spend half their time reading 17th century manuals. I'm not a fan....

 

[scarphe]

Originally Posted by ArteEtLabore14

When dueling? A rapier, which in modern fencing an epee most closely resembles.

that is nto exactly accurate and you know it, also if you goign to use the french name use accent marks.

ÉpÃ

e represents a particualr type of dueling that developed late in the hsitory of it. classically foil was training people to kill where as Ã

pÃ

e developed from the noble art of only going after first blood.

 

[Gibonius]

Originally Posted by scarphe

also if you goign to use the french name use accent marks.

What other name would anybody use? That's what the weapon is called in English too, and most of us aren't going to bust out the ACSII codes to throw in accent marks. Kind of pedantic there.

 

[Pilot]

Originally Posted by Gibonius

People who get too rigidly fixated on the dueling origin usually end up doing SCA "fencing" and spend half their time reading 17th century manuals. I'm not a fan....

*Cough*

Originally Posted by scarphe

ÉpÃ

e represents a particualr type of dueling that developed late in the hsitory of it. classically foil was training people to kill where as Ã

pÃ

e developed from the noble art of only going after first blood.

 

[scarphe]

Originally Posted by Gibonius

What other name would anybody use? That's what the weapon is called in English too, and most of us aren't going to bust out the ACSII codes to throw in accent marks. Kind of pedantic there.
i am guessing english just takes the french name so it needs accent marks.... and what sort of horrible keyboard do you have? i can write ¨ó ò ñ or ç without busting out any ACSII codes. both italian and spanish simply call the sword, roughly translated.

 

[Gibonius]

Originally Posted by scarphe

i am guessing english just takes the french name so it needs accent marks.... and what sort of horrible keyboard do you have? i can write ¨ó ò ñ or ç without busting out any ACSII codes. both italian and spanish simply call the sword, roughly translated.
I have a standard English language keyboard, which has no accent marks. One rarely sees the accents on epee added in any English language context when typed. I assume other languages have words to distinguish between the three weapons. Can't very well call them all "sword."

 

[CDFS]

Originally Posted by scarphe

that is nto exactly accurate and you know it, also if you goign to use the french name use accent marks.

ÉpÃ

e represents a particualr type of dueling that developed late in the hsitory of it. classically foil was training people to kill where as Ã

pÃ

e developed from the noble art of only going after first blood.

Dear Scarphe,

I enjoyed this. Please keep it up!

Sincerely,

CDFS

 

[jagmqt]

Originally Posted by Gibonius

Height is almost always an advantage in every weapon. Being left handed helps at the beginner to intermediate level, people get used to it eventually. Long arms are a tremendous advantage in epee. Saber forces aggression and you cannot be the slightest bit indecisive. Foil gives you the most options I think.

Unless you're planning on training for National/international level competition, don't worry about what your body is built for, just play around and find whichever one is most fun for you.

The biggest consideration at many smaller clubs is simply the available population. I switched from epee to foil in grad school for a bit simply there weren't enough decent epeeist to compete against. It's no fun having to compete against the same few people every week.

Thanks for the insight. I'm just over the average height of an NBA player, so if I can use that to my advangage more with an epee, I'll most likely begin there.

jag