Lightning fast footwork

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

Regretful edit!

[bjacobs]

How do you think? Do a lot of footwork. Do a lot of fast footwork, making a serious effort to keep good form. Do a lot of sprinting. Repeat.

[Phoenix]

Try doing everything neat first and then do exercies of going slow, medium, fast over and over without stopping. and do some footwork of going fast, then slow then fast. Very good hint to fake someone out because they never know where your going to be ^_~

[The0ne]

If I ever get fast footwork, I'll tell you.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

If you have ever watched flessel fence, that Is the kind of footwork I am going for. That and good bladework. Anyone know how to improve hand eye coordination and eye speed?

[Phoenix]

If you have ever watched flessel fence, that Is the kind of footwork I am going for. That and good bladework. Anyone know how to improve hand eye coordination and eye speed?

Video games

[Cerian]

If you have ever watched flessel fence, that Is the kind of footwork I am going for. That and good bladework. Anyone know how to improve hand eye coordination and eye speed?

Juggling?

[The0ne]

flessel. . . What's his/her full name? If it's an epeeist don't bother, I don't know most of the world famous epeeists. . .

[pkt]

Question guys and girls, how do I develop faster footwork?

I wish people would state which weapon they do...

PK

[Tireur]

When you're practicing it fast, do it as fast as you can, while doing it correctly.

They are two different things.

And keep doing it over and over and over and over. When you think you can't do it anymore, do it some more.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

I'm an epeeist, non rated, only for a year, 14 years old, six feet tall, my favorite color is clear, my favorite shape is a line, I enjoy chasing rocks... when I grow up, I wanna be a butterfly.\

Seriously, I want to have the lighting fast, perfect form yet loose footwork that is exhibited by all the pros.

[Phoenix]

I fence sabre.....

Do some leg excercises like suicides. Just keep on working on it will help. That is really all I can tell you. go bike riding might help too.

[neevel]

Not to come off too simplistic, but get everything right going slow, and you'll have little trouble speeding it up. If your footwork really breaks down at speed, it's usually because you've got one or more flaws that may not seem so bad when you're going slowly but get magnified by moving fast. One biggie is making your steps too large. Your default step size needs to be fairly small, so you can control distance with precision and react to what your opponent does. Aside from that, you've got the usual checklist for footwork: feet and knees at the right angle, weight mainly on the ball of the foot, weight not overly biased to the front or rear leg, hips not turned too far to the side, not stepping too high, propelling yourself rather than just stepping.

Also keep in mind that changes of speed are more important than absolute speed. When you see a good fencer catch another good fencer by surprise with a footwork action, what's typically happening is that the final action was preceeded by one or more slower tempo movements (which prime the opponent to react at that slower tempo), and then executed with an accelerating tempo. The speed of that finishing action doesn't need to be all that great, as long as it's faster than the set-up.

-Dave

[nahouw]

Absolutely agree with Dave -- take his advice. Can't even say it better.

[Artisan]

Absolutely agree with Dave -- take his advice. Can't even say it better.

Indeed...
Tempo, Tempo, Tempo.
At our salle, beginners are frequently reminded "What makes music? The silence between the notes. "

[prototoast]

Juggling?

Well, there are some benefits, but they are not universal. Aside from being a fencer, I'm also a semi-professional juggler. I'm not world-class at either, but I'm a decent fencer and I'm a better juggler than I am a fencer. Overall, juggling helps a few things, such as my counter-parries, but not much else. More importantly is the techniques learned to become a good juggler that translate well--practice, practice, practice. One doesn't need to practice fast, the key is to practice doing the right thing over, and over, and over--it's also important to be relaxed. If you are relaxed and have repeated the right motions again and again, your body will take over with natural responses faster than your mind can consciously process.

[Cerian]

Interesting about the juggling.

On a more serious note, I would think that the most basic aspect of speeding up footwork would be controlling your direction and balance. It's not that hard to go forwards or backwards really quickly, it's being able to reverse and stop and maintain balance while quickly moving. I have everything but perfect, pro level footwork, but I'd think that the problem of having quicker footwork isn't so much speeding up as exercising control. How one develops that, I dunno, but I'd guess it's the area that you'd have to work on.

[wflaschka]

Laura Flessel-Colovic? Some of her fencing is in the clips at fencingfootage.com. She has stunning speed and great point control -- it's largely the work of a lifetime, I imagine. Good flexibility, good strength, and then years and years of doing lunges while holding the "perfect lunge" in her mind. I'll bet she maxed out on body mechanics by 17 years of age... everything since then is mental. When you can't move your body any faster, the only way to improve your lunge is to think about it in a different way.

Visualizations:
(1) "Move move move, then convert to light. The tip becomes a beam of light that spears through the opponent's target so quickly they might as well be standing still." The lunge is incredibly fast.

(2) "Move move move, then you're an arrow off the bow." The lunge is not squeezed out with muscles, it's released.

(3) "Move move move, then see an opening and go. The opening may or may not be there, but the sort of seeing you're doing, the opening will come to exist." The lunge is delivered not when there's an opening, but before.

What works for Flessel-Colovic is not just great footwork, it's change in footwork. Slow/fast, back/forward. To get the footwork, the advice in the other postings can't be beat. While working the feet, blast music in your walkman. Watch inspirational sports movies with long musical montages of people working out. "Vision Quest" is good... Matt Modine? Staple of many fencers.

Flessel-Colovic, in one of the video clips, crosses the strip with an advance lunge of impossible length. She's pommeling her epee. The opponent is fleeing, blade flying through the air. Flessel-Colovic nails her on the wrist.

Her sort of mind-body thing is not intellectual. After you get solid technical, then your best bet is to focus on feeling. Intuit things, go "Great Spirit," go "Vision Quest," feel the waterfall pushing you forward. This all only works after solid technical skills; you gotta learn your scales before you can play Debussy.

I learned up on Flessel-Colovic for this short article: http://www.whatisfencing.com/article...148b8&itemid=2 I greatly admire her.

[wflaschka]

If you have ever watched flessel fence, that Is the kind of footwork I am going for. That and good bladework. Anyone know how to improve hand eye coordination and eye speed?

I'm a great believer in gadgets. Gadgets are patient while you do endless repetitions, which is what eye-hand is all about.

Have you done the tennis/golf ball hanging from a string? Hit it endlessly with every combination. Mix it up with long, room-crossing lunges.

Here's a thing I've been meaning to try... it was a gadget from the 1800s. A target hangs from a string, the string loops over a hook in the ceiling, the end of the string is in the fencer's hand. It's a long string. The fencer lets go of the string, the target starts to fall. The fencer lunges or adv+lunges and hits the target. Total eye-hand coordination.

For footwork -- In one salle, I used to push a punching bag so it would swing like crazy. I'd put my tip on the bag, and keep distance as it swung back and forth. (Eventually I couldn't resist, and I would body-slam it with an infighting prime.)

[Mo]

I'm an epeeist, non rated, only for a year, 14 years old, six feet tall, my favorite color is clear, my favorite shape is a line, I enjoy chasing rocks... when I grow up, I wanna be a butterfly.\

Seriously, I want to have the lighting fast, perfect form yet loose footwork that is exhibited by all the pros.

Is there any sport that you can learn in a year??
If you could be that great in a year, wouldn't it be mostly a waste of time??

You need to work your a$$ off for years!!! Get a grip!!

To be a great fencer you have to have:
-A great work ethic
-A good coach
-Great fencers with which to practice
-a nice mommy
-lots of money