Foil Gleanings After Many Years
Item
-
Title
-
Foil Gleanings After Many Years
-
Date
-
June 1941
-
volume
-
6
-
issue
-
3
-
page start
-
15
-
page end
-
16
-
list of authors
-
Ricard West
-
content
-
en
Foil Gleanings After Many Years
By RICARD WEST
Philadelphia Fencers Club
Foil lessons may at times seem purely mechanical. There is a reason for this. The repetition of complicated muscular actions encourages the coordination of thought and action. During the process of knitting several successive actions into flowing graceful movement, the mind as well as the muscles learn the sequence. These learned sequences or routines are stored away for immediate use when the occasion offers or demands in a bout. Other benefits to be derived from what may appear as mere mechanical lessons are a fine sense of balance, the gradual supplying of muscles, harmony of motion, independent arm action, strength of fingers and wrist and extreme controlled speed.
—
When the foil fencer realizes that the legs move the body backward or forward without lateral trunk sway or lurching, he has gained much.
When the forearm and upper arm muscles respond to quick forward thrusting for attack without tenseness or jerk and can be returned smoothly to the bent position for defensive lateral actions, point up or down, he has gained more.
—
When blade actions and footwork coordinate with speed and accuracy, a fencer may consider trying conclusions with other trained foil fencers. Not before. This is not as easy as it sounds. Many fencers, thinking they have reached this stage, start an attack well with the arm and blade only to freeze with their feet or worse still tangle them into knots. Others start well with the hand then bring their feet into action and neglect their arm to stiff oblivion. When either of these things happens to you, you must stop and admit that you are not quite a fencer yet.
—
Only by dint of good physical exercise in elementary and preparatory work of conventional nature can one lay the foundation of good fencing form. As in any game of skill where decision, precision and courage are necessities, the fencer must be so trained that to perceive is to act. It is the eye of the good fencer which places the foil button upon the opponent’s target. The eye saw the opportunity, the fingers, the wrist, the arm, the legs and the body coordinated without conscious effort to achieve the objective. When you find yourself able to make touches “on sight,” you have achieved the greatest pleasure afforded by any sport. If you cannot do this yet, fencing offers you many future thrills as you find yourself acquiring this additional fencing sense.
—
Foil play is an academic exercise in which style and effectiveness are synonymous.
—
The versatility of defense governs the attack. If the defender has no system of complicated defense, the attack is relegated to the simplicity of speed attacks which the defense is unable to match with equal speed. The timing of those attacks can overcome the embarrassment of equal or even greater speed in the defense. It is futile, however, to use anything beyond a two action attack with or without pressure or beat against the simple defender. Correct judgment of distance and accuracy of arm are every bit as important as speed. Some fencers are naturally fast but distance and accuracy must be learned by everyone.
Complicated defense requires much control against a determined attacker. It is apt to become wild and thereby provide the attacker with the opportunity he was seeking. Paradoxical though it may seem, a too complicated defense can cause you defeat as surely as no defense at all. A shrewd opponent, noticing a complicated defense, will feint to start your series of parries and hit you when you come up for air.
—
Some fencers, naturally fast in simple action, unfortunately gain the idea that that is all there is to fencing. With a few simple attacks up their sleeve, they saunter forth to beat the world. And what is more, they do so up to a certain point. One fine day they meet an experienced fencer whose lines seem always closing automatically to thwart these heretofore irresistible attacks. Our fast man becomes non-plussed and loses in his bewilderment. We only hope that he slinks back to his teacher and supplements his natural speed with more knowledge.
—
Since a fencer is permitted to manoeuvre upon a forty foot strip, the sport demands a high degree of leg activity. Even so, the hand of a defensive fencer can be so highly trained that footwork in his case becomes negligible. The most perfect form of fencing is to possess the ability to defend accurately and reply instantly with a return thrust before the attacker is able to withdraw his body to security or repel this return thrust with swordplay. To parry and riposte, as it is known, is the fencers’ perfect answer to any attack.
—
The slender blade, controlled by the fingers, either in attack or defense, can be taught to move with uncanny dexterity and control. Its speed in attack must be regulated by the speed of the defense. In fencing, therefore, one can be too soon or too late but never too quick.
—
Although simple actions are always the best, there soon develops an impasse between two fencers of equal ability. Their only recourse for victory lies in tactics. Tactics is the fine art of creating actions or feints of actions which compel an opponent to reveal some weakness or hesitation. The better tactician is he who capitalizes upon these weaknesses or hesitations first.
—
Since about 1820, foil fencing has been known as the “perfect science.” The French master, Lafaugere, computed 11,240 combinations in the art of fencing. Although brilliant tacticians have since tried to add to the number, they have been unable to do so.
