Why do fencers hate Nick Evangelista?

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Written by Craig Harkins

Monday, 23 July 2007

Inner game of fencing Nearly every fencer has, at some point, read at least part of one of Nick Evangelista's books on fencing. Also, at some point, every competitive fencer learns to take Evangelista's writings with a very large grain of salt.

Looking at his writings, there are several areas where he is just out of touch with the fencing world and modern sports science. Oftentimes his assertions on what constitutes proper form are variations of the "we've always done it that way" arguement.

One thing to his credit, he does love fencing and wants to promote it.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to do something that most modern competitive fencers wouldn't - I'm going to read at least one of Nick Evangelista's books and comment on it, chapter by chapter.

I'm sure that there is a lot in there that I'll be objecting to, but there should also be some nuggets of truth in there and areas where we all agree. Rather than continue to pile on to the mountain of negative commentary on the books out there, I'm going to comb through them to tease out the good and separate it from the bad or unfounded.

The main question is - which book? There are two under consideration, The Inner Game of Fencing and The Art and Science of Fencing.