Fencing training

The whole class in a line facing the maître d'armes, without weapons. The maître d'armes steps back and calls the cadence: 'eeeeeh — one'. On 'eeeeeh' the front foot advances slowly and lands on the HEEL; on 'one' the rear foot comes up fast. The maître d'armes sometimes reverses mid-step: the line converts the half-advance into a retreat.

Key points: Slow and smooth, never fast — 'momentum is the fencer's enemy'. The fencer must be able to start a step, see a change and reverse without losing balance.

As the cadence line, without weapons. The maître d'armes leads slow advances; when he 'attacks', the line escapes with several fast retreats, then, on the signal, TAKES OVER the initiative and advances while the maître d'armes retreats. The maître d'armes finishes with a counter-attack (the line ends in a lunge) or a random parry (the line disengages into the open line).

Key points: The switch from defense to taking over the initiative IS the point of the drill.

In pairs, in kit, at advance-lunge distance. The attacker advances slowly. The defender chooses: (a) stay still → the attacker lunges and hits; (b) retreat → the attacker links a second, more aggressive advance 'onto' the retreat, provokes an early parry and disengages into the lunge; (c) retreat widely → the attacker finishes with a deliberately short lunge, invites the renewal, returns to guard and parry-ripostes.

Key points: No deep or visible feint: the 'feint' comes from the SUDDENNESS of the second advance. This is an attack carried entirely by the footwork.

Find the distance at which the student hits with a simple direct attack, then step back one pace ('preparation distance'); mark the position on the floor. The student engages with an advance. The maître d'armes either stays still (the student must finish and lunge without hesitating) or retreats on the first movement (the student cancels and rebalances).

Key points: The decision is taken 'at the latest as the front foot lands'. No leaning of the trunk. The lunge accelerates from the whole rear leg, without 'kicking' the front foot.

Part 1: the student advances; the maître d'armes stays still (lunge) or retreats at the first sign of the front foot (cancel). Blocked until about 80% of the reads are right, then random. Part 2: add a slow blade sweep → four situations. Part 3: the maître d'armes' retreat comes later and later, forcing a feint-disengage. Part 4: the student sets up a rhythm then breaks it with a half-retreat into a lunge to steal the tempo.

Key points: The maître d'armes must move EXACTLY on the front-foot movement, never late. Watch for the 'Pavlovian lunge': the student who reacts to the blade cue and ignores the distance cue.

For a right-hander, steps to the left are initiated by the front foot, steps to the right by the rear foot. Work the lateral step to gain an angle on the target, make a parry easier, avoid corps-à-corps or disturb the opponent.

Key points: Staying square to the opponent and holding the line of combat remains the rule; lateral movement is a useful exception, not a habit.

Teach the balestra THEN the lunge as SEPARATE actions; then advance THEN lunge; then balestra → advance → lunge; and only then merge them into balestra-lunge / advance-lunge.

Key points: The compound unit must be 'technically pre-committed but tactically undetermined': the decision on what follows is taken while the preparation is still running.

From advance-lunge distance, the student starts the advance with the front foot and beats the maître d'armes' blade EXACTLY as the rear foot lands, then lunges.

Key points: All the value is in the beat / rear-foot synchronisation. A beat on the FRONT foot forces an initial disengage in the attack that follows; on the REAR foot, a simple attack still gets through.

S1: the student attacks the hand, the maître d'armes answers with the blade alone (without retreating), the student closes back in and hits a deep target with a second action. S2: the maître d'armes retreats exactly as the hit arrives, the student re-attacks the advanced target that stayed close. S3: the student attacks the close target while retreating, retreats again to reopen the space and re-attacks when the maître d'armes closes back in. S4: the maître d'armes closes in on the answer, the student hits the deep target that has become close.

Key points: Vary the footwork endings (balestra-lunge, gliding lunge, advance-flèche) and the deep targets (thigh, flank — not only the chest). The situations pair up 1+2 and 3+4.

Two fencers of markedly different heights, on guard. Both extend the arm; the taller one places the point on an easy target, the shorter one notes how far his own point reaches. Then, arms relaxed and on the move, the shorter one NEVER attacks deeper than that marker; the taller one attacks or counter-attacks as soon as he judges the other has come too close.

Key points: The danger zone is defined physically, not verbally. Any action towards a deep target must be compound, or carried while controlling the blade (bind, croisé, envelopment).

Four cues, four responses. R1: if the arm is open, hit it. R2: if it opens, hit into the line that opens. R3: if it is not open, create the opening with a beat. R4: if it is extended towards you, take the blade and hit the body.

Key points: Serves as a framework lesson for a great many other techniques. A very good introduction to épée for a foilist.

The maître d'armes presents an extended arm (extension, attack or riposte). The student engages then envelops (circular transport) or binds (diagonal transport) repeatedly, seeking to control the blade for as much fencing time as possible, in particular during the maître d'armes' return to guard and retreat.

Key points: Designed for facing a taller opponent. Unlike the press or the beat, which are riskier: the opponent can simply replace the point.

The student CLOSES THEIR EYES; the maître d'armes engages the blade. The student names the line of engagement, or answers with a disengage, on the feel of the fingers alone. Then in situation: the student attacks, the maître d'armes parries, the student derobes the parry by feel and hits with a renewal. Second use: the student presses; the maître d'armes returns the pressure or does not; the student answers with a direct thrust (no resistance) or a disengage (resistance).

Key points: Touch 'can be as important as sight'. Looking is not allowed.

A single simple attack chosen for the whole lesson. Start from a standstill: the maître d'armes gives the cue, the student hits easily. Then add the footwork, the maître d'armes stopping in order to cue. Then cue ON THE MOVE, but only when the student is balanced and at the right distance. Finally, cues given at INAPPROPRIATE moments: the student must attack only if the time and the distance are right.

Key points: This lesson teaches WHEN to attack, not what to do.

The student attacks; the maître d'armes answers in three ways: (a) does not react and is hit; (b) parry-ripostes, forcing a renewal or a parry-counter-riposte; (c) counter-attacks, forcing counter-time.

Key points: Key mechanic: the maître d'armes' answer is DETERMINED BY THE QUALITY of the attack — extended arm and right distance → the hit lands; distance or timing slightly wrong → parry; bent arm with no surprise → counter-attack. The student must understand WHY the maître d'armes reacts that way.

The student produces each category deliberately. First intention: fast, explosive, without telegraphing, timed on the maître d'armes' advance. Feint: advance with 90% extension (too little invites a counter-attack), moderate speed, timed on the retreat; the maître d'armes parries, the student deceives it and accelerates. Second intention: slower attack, arm extended, point deliberately not deep enough; the maître d'armes parry-ripostes, the student parries with opposition or with a ceding parry and counter-ripostes. Counter-time: attack with a bent arm, the maître d'armes counter-attacks, the student cancels and parry-ripostes.

Key points: The aim: that the student CONTROLS the maître d'armes' reactions.

In pairs at advance-lunge distance; A leads the distance, B follows. Foot tempo: B lunges into an open line at the instant A starts the advance, before A's front foot lands. Taking over the initiative: A attacks and returns to guard; B retreats out of distance instead of parrying, then advance-lunges during the recovery. Accelerated attack: when B retreats too slowly, A accelerates the rear foot to finish with advance and lunge.

Key points: Littell recommends teaching the DISTANCE-ONLY versions first, with no hand action at all, even with experienced fencers. Passive actions are harder to train than active ones: you have to stay open to every possibility until the exact instant.

The federal taxonomy of supervised bouts: THEMED bouts (only targeted behaviours are counted) · DIRECTED / applied bouts · FREE, warm-up bouts · COMPETITIVE bouts. The maître d'armes sets the theme; the structure is federal.

Key points: This is the source taxonomy for conditioned bouts — the precise themes remain the maître d'armes' choice.

Defense by distance: the maître d'armes advance-lunges; the student retreats and parry-ripostes, OR retreats twice to escape and ripostes on the loss of momentum. Bait-and-expand: the maître d'armes advances slightly out of distance; the student double-retreats then stops; the maître d'armes takes the stop as a trigger and accelerates; the student retreats again and parry-ripostes.

Key points: False parries and false counter-attacks are timed on a PAUSE in the retreat, weight kept on the front foot, to allow a second, genuine parry. Never open the space indefinitely: 'never too far, never too close'.

Whole hall, one fencing glove per pair, no weapons. In pairs, throw the glove to each other while moving through the space — running, walking, going backwards. 3 minutes.

Key points: The opening activation of the very first session: it uses fencing kit as the toy, so the equipment stops being intimidating before a blade is ever held.

Barefoot, no apparatus. From a stretched standing position with arms overhead, lower the trunk slowly forward — never jerkily — breathing out evenly. Knees stay extended. Hold the end position at least 3 seconds.

Key points: Scored 0-3: floor not reached / fingertips / closed fist / flat palms. The two printed faults are jerky swinging execution and failing to hold the end position for the full 3 seconds.

Two lines 10 m apart marked by cones, with an audio shuttle-run app. Fencers line up at least 1 m apart and run back and forth, pace set by the beeps. The line must be reached as the tone sounds, and touched at every change of direction.

Key points: The federation restricts this test to U15 and above — it is NOT run at U11 or U13. Spacing of at least 1 m is part of the protocol, not a convenience.

Three lines at 0 m, 2 m and 4 m. Completed using fencing footwork with the fencer facing forward at all times. Both feet return behind the 0 m line after each shuttle, and part of the lead foot must cross the 2 m and 4 m lines.

Key points: Facing forward throughout is what makes this fencing-specific rather than a generic shuttle. Published per-weapon and per-sex prescriptions exist, but the sabre and female foil/sabre rows are explicitly HYPOTHESISED by the authors, not measured — do not present those as tested.

Full beginner kit — jacket, glove, mask, foil. Free improvised bouts with no special rules, so the coach can read the group before teaching anything. 10 minutes.

Key points: The printed coaching point is heightened supervision and monitoring of behaviour. This is a diagnostic block, not a competitive one — the rules get layered on afterwards.

In pairs: perform the inverse displacement of your opponent to keep the distance constant. If they step forward, I step back, and the other way round. 10 minutes.

Key points: The decision is continuous rather than cued: the fencer reads the partner and responds, which is the first real decision-making load in the J+S progression.

What J+S publishes here is a rule-set, not a drill. The children stand about 2 m apart, each behind their own rear line, masks on the head, and salute. Commands: « En garde » — « Êtes-vous prêts ? » — « Allez ! ». The WHOLE body surface is valid target, the bout halts on every touch, and the first to touch scores. Announce the score target before starting — 4, 5, 8, 10, 12 or 15 touches; J+S prints in the same breath that the number is « pas important ». The fencers always face each other and never cross, and neither may cross their own rear line with both feet. Children may referee each other.

Key points: Say the safety framing to the children the way J+S wrote it: the point of the weapon is always turned down during explanations and the mask stays on the head, « les enfants ont en effet tendance à vouloir imiter rapidement Zorro ou d'Artagnan » — and, immediately after, « ne pas considérer pour autant que l'escrime est un sport dangereux. Ce n'est pas le cas ! ». THE FEDERATIONS DISAGREE about what belongs in a young child's hand, and this is a real disagreement, not a nuance: J+S puts a beginner foil, mask and cotton jacket into the hands of a 6-year-old in lesson 1 and lets them bout freely in that same session, while the FFE's primary-school route chooses the SABRE, targets CE2-CM2 (≈8-11), and restricts the first touches to the mask. Follow whichever your own federation and your insurer follow; neither is the consensus.

FFE primary-school cycle, sabre. Mark two « cabanes » on the piste — invulnerability zones bounded by two orange tape lines 4.50 m apart. The rule the children are given is « j'attaque en me fendant et je défends en rompant ». The bouts are SILENT: the blade is never used to beat the opponent's blade, neither to attack nor to defend. A fencer standing inside a cabane cannot be hit.

Key points: The printed expected outcome is « on voit apparaître des fentes ; les déplacements sont rapides et efficaces ». The cabanes exist so that an apprehensive child always has somewhere safe to stand — that is the stated purpose, not a scoring device, and it is worth telling the group so. Mask compulsory the moment a weapon is in hand, and the feet must never cross. Note the FFE prints French school-class markers (CE2, CM2) and never ages; the years below are a reading of the école élémentaire, not a federation statement.

The FFE's conditioned-bout format. The bout runs normally, but only ONE designated behaviour scores — only direct attacks, say, or only ripostes. Everything else may still be fenced; it simply does not count. The coach sets the theme; the format is federal.

Key points: The FFE names four bout types BY PURPOSE and they are not interchangeable: assauts À THÈME (this one), assauts DIRIGÉS or d'application, assauts LIBRES / d'échauffement, and assauts COMPÉTITIFS. Say out loud which one is running — a themed bout scored like a free bout teaches the opposite of what it was set up for. The Recueil publishes the taxonomy and the categories and never named games, so the theme itself is yours to choose and nothing here should be quoted as an FFE exercise.

The FFE's séance de déplacements, delivered « sous formes jouées ». Published material: plots, lattes, cordes à sauter, balles de tennis, balles de tennis de table, cerceaux. Published content types: general exercises for the muscular qualities of footwork and balance; specific exercises and sequences; combined arm-and-leg exercises; and opposition without a weapon. Every one of them can be run eyes open, eyes closed, with the fencers' laterality swapped, in opposition or in cooperation — those four levers are the federation's own.

Key points: « Privilégier les formes jouées plutôt que les jeux » — prefer task-constrained play-forms to free games. It is a distinction, not a slogan, and THE TWO LIVE-MARKET FEDERATIONS DO NOT AGREE ON IT: the J+S published aim at 5-10 is « Erlernen der Grundlagen des Fechtsports auf spielerische Art », and its lessons really do contain free games — cops and robbers, treasure hunt, grandmother's footsteps. Both are federation positions; what they disagree about is the age at which free play stops being the vehicle. The FFE also prints what this session is FOR: coordination, balance, speed, change of rhythm, explosivity and mobility, and at the same time decision-making, concentration, observation and management of distance.

FOIL AND SABRE ONLY. A specific position — sword arm straight, point continually threatening valid target — that reverses the burden of priority: the attacker must first deflect the blade. Épée has no line rule at all (its conventions, t.90-95, contain none): the position is tactically real there, but it confers NO priority, and the content below must not be rendered for an épée session.

Key points: t.15 defines the position: « the fencer’s sword arm is kept straight and the point of his weapon continually threatens his opponent’s valid target ». Arm straight AND threatening — a straight arm pointing at nothing is not a line. t.84.1: « If the attack is initiated when the opponent is point in line, the attacker must, first, deflect the opponent’s blade. Referees must ensure that a mere contact of the blades is not considered as sufficient to deflect the opponent’s blade. » That second sentence is addressed to referees inside the rulebook itself, which makes it the single best coaching line available: teach the attacker what a real deflection feels like. t.84.2: if the attacker, attempting to deflect, fails to find the blade — dérobement — the right of attack passes to the opponent. Sabre is t.102, the same construction. Failure mode, t.89.4.e: having been beaten or taken, re-establishing the line instead of parrying loses the phrase. Note that « prise de fer » and « dérobement » are used UNTRANSLATED inside the English rulebook — rules vocabulary, not coaching slang.

FOIL AND SABRE ONLY. An attack prepared by striking the opponent’s blade — and the rules attach a hard, checkable threshold to WHERE on the blade it lands. There is no épée equivalent: the foible/forte priority rule does not exist there.

Key points: t.85.1: the attack « is correctly carried out and retains its priority when the beat is made on the foible of the opponent’s blade i.e. the two-thirds of the blade furthest from the guard ». t.85.2: made on the forte — « the one-third of the blade nearest the guard » — « the attack is badly executed and the beat gives the opponent the right to an immediate riposte ». Sabre is t.104, near-identical text. So a beat and lunge landing on the wrong third of the blade TRANSFERS RIGHT-OF-WAY TO THE DEFENDER. That is not a style point, and because the beat is usually taught with no threshold attached, most club fencers have never been told the rule exists. Crisp and short: the beat is a strike, not a push. FRAMING, AND THE TWO SOURCES DIFFER: British Fencing calls the beat a PREPARATION, the FIE treats it as part of a correctly-executed ATTACK. Both are primary, so say which one you are refereeing by.

All three weapons. The three ways of renewing an attack after it has been parried or avoided — and the one place in this batch where the FIE and a national federation define the same words by different tests.

Key points: FIE t.13.1, the remise: « A simple and immediate offensive action which follows the original attack, without withdrawing the arm, after the opponent has parried or retreated, when the latter has either quitted contact with the blade without riposting or has made a riposte which is delayed, indirect or compound. » t.13.2, the redoublement: « A new action, either simple or compound, made against an opponent who has parried without riposting or who has merely avoided the first action by retreating or displacing the target. » t.13.3, the reprise: « A new attack executed immediately after a return to the on-guard position. » The arm is the clearest physical marker: in a remise it does NOT withdraw. The reprise is the only one of the three requiring a return to the on-guard position. TWO PRIMARY SOURCES DISAGREE, AND THE DISAGREEMENT IS THE TEACHING CONTENT: the FIE discriminates by the opponent’s behaviour and the action’s complexity; British Fencing discriminates by LINE — « REMISE: replacing the point on the target in the line of the original action », « REDOUBLEMENT: in a different line ». A simple renewal into the SAME line is therefore a redoublement under the FIE and a remise under British Fencing. Teach both: a fencer who knows only one will be surprised by a referee who uses the other. Why the FIE can afford the looser taxonomy — t.89.4.c treats all three as one family for right-of-way, « a momentary pause which gives his opponent the right to renew the attack (redoublement, remise or reprise) ».

Scatter gloves, foils and masks across the floor. Jump over them — on one leg, on two legs, forwards, around, backwards. The source prints a safety constraint: racing or jumping BETWEEN the weapons and other objects is to be avoided or prevented.

Key points: The published safety line is the coaching point: children jump OVER the kit, never between it. Vary the jump form before varying the speed.

Squatting in a lateral lunge, transfer the trunk from one support leg to the other. The printed constraint: the feet stay in place — it is the trunk that moves.

Key points: Printed target tissues: adductors and hamstrings in stretch, plus hip-joint mobilisation — exactly the tissue set the fencing lunge loads.

Three cones in a T plus a start line 50 cm back. Sprint to the middle cone and touch it; side-step without crossing the legs to one arm cone, touch; side-step across to the far cone, touch; back to the middle, touch; then run backwards to the start. The shoulder axis stays parallel to the T-line throughout. Right-handers run one way, left-handers the mirrored course — the battery's explicit nod to fencing laterality.

Key points: Printed error list: legs crossing in the side-steps, shoulder axis turning, a cone not touched by hand. One practice run plus two timed attempts, at least 60 s rest between them.

Forearm plank, upper arms vertical, head and hands touching a wall, shoulder, hip and ankle in one line. Lift the feet alternately 2–5 cm off the floor in an even one-second rhythm, knees extended. Terminated when the hip rises or sags for more than 2 s, the trunk rotates, or the arms shift — after three warnings. May be stopped at 3:30.

Key points: The published instruction is the whole point: maintain the start position while the legs alternate. During the test, no verbal encouragement and no time information are to be given.

The published session templates: four strength pairings (back squat + bent-over row; split squat + stiff-leg deadlift; bench press + pull-ups; deadlift + Nordics — 4 sets of 4 at 4–5RM) and four power sessions (power cleans at 60–80% then above 80% 1RM, split snatch, jump squats — 4 sets of 3). After strength work: medicine-ball slams and throws. After power work: plyometrics including single-leg and lateral versions, then 2-4-2 shuttles in REVERSE stance.

Key points: Adult, international-level prescriptions — the authors themselves say to treat them with caution, and nothing here may be lifted into youth bands. Train both sides: do not always land dominant leg forward. The paper explicitly warns against long slow distance running as counterproductive for fencing. The only federation position on load remains the DFB criterion: clean squat technique before load.