Hopping Footwork

[Genjuro]

Well, this is the first time I've started a thread, let's hope it doesn't 'die' very quickly... ;-)

What I'm interested in is the following: Hopping on my engarde position make me faster in reacting upon my opponents attacks, but I have a tendency to put my front foot a bit turned inwards, which isn't good for my balance when I make forward footwork or lunges.

I think it has something to do with the way I position my hips, when I use a classical engarde position (feet on a 90 deg or 1/2 pi rad angle) and my hips a bit turned inwards, my front foot tries to move also inwards because of a slight strain on my inner thigh. When I turn my hips more forward, I can't bend my legs as much as in the classical position and I put a annoying strain on my back foot. To avoid this, I use the point of my foot (no, not like in ballet) thus also creating a potential inbalance.

If any of you could follow the story: does anybody has any ideas on this biomechanical problem of fencing footwork?

[achilleus]

Bouncing is great for epee, where there is a lot of fighting for distance. Ok for foil, and not to common in sabre, where one is attacking or defending.

To bounce effectively, one must practice it.

Practice bouncing in a comfortable position. Practice lunging (correctly so as not injure yourself) and fleching from the bounce, practice switching seamlessly between advances/retreats, and bouncing.

It's almost impossible to maintain the classic guard when bouncing, but the mobility gained more than makes up for the loss.

[dunastor]

Regardless of bouncing yes or no, DON'T turn your front foot in.
practice a lot on a good on guard position. You can even turn your back foot a little to the front, but try to keep your front foot straight. It guides your line of movement.

[CarlKnoch]

From the sound of it you're hopping up and down.

A fencer I know (who fences like he has pent up springs for legs) told me recently that it's never a good idea to bounce just up and down. Always bounce forward and backwards.

When you're bouncing up and down you are immobile for the time that you're on your way up and down, and it's hard to go one way or the other when you land. This can also cause you to turn your front foot the wrong way as you bounce. When you bounce forward and back in differing patterns you will be more likely to be moving when an attack is launched at you. Also it will help you to keep your front foot forward as to stop yourself as you bounce forward is easier with your foot pointed straight ahead.

Just a thought. May not be relevant.

[reawl]

Why in the world would you ever hop? The added effort makes you tire faster. Why not work on making your non-hopping footwork quicker?

[Genjuro]

Why hop? I think because I'm already in motion I can move around the piste much more fluently then when I'm standing still.
Anyway, I'm just talking about very small hops, my feet stay on the floor wilst hopping, so I can react quite direct if something happens. Ok, you use more energy, but you are faster (every advantage has its disadvantage as a famouse soccercoach/player from my country once said- Dunastor: You know who... )

My problem is that my front foot is turning in automatic when I'm not paying attention to it. I've seen it with a lot of fencers (also the good ones).
It's more how you place your upper body (more forward or turned inward) I'm not sure what's best.

As for the bounces forward and backward, I think that this makes you predictable for your opponent,(also depending on the size op the hop) because if you go backward to forward, for a moment you'r more immobile then when you go just up and down.

[Artisan]

Originally Posted by reawl

Why in the world would you ever hop? The added effort makes you tire faster. Why not work on making your non-hopping footwork quicker?

Actually (bouncing) hopping can provide a relief when your legs become fatigued from more static footwork. It uses slightly different muscles in a much different way. Bouncing can help to keep you light on your feet, and makes your actions and distance harder to read by the opponent. Jumping into and out of distance, with feints, beats and attacks makes your opponent very uneasy, and can help you to control the bout. Sometimes your opponent will key on the rhythm you establish, setting themseves up for you to change tempo and make your attack catching them flatfooted.

[prototoast]

As for turning the front foot in, I could be wrong, but it seems to be much more common in epee that foil or sabre. Even some very high level epee fencers seem to do it, while it is almost never seen beyond the beginner for foil or sabre.

[dunastor]

Originally Posted by Genjuro

(every advantage has its disadvantage as a famouse soccercoach/player from my country once said- Dunastor: You know who...)

Where do you fence, Genjuro, and what weapon?

(Do I know you?)

[achilleus]

Originally Posted by Genjuro

My problem is that my front foot is turning in automatic when I'm not paying attention to it. I've seen it with a lot of fencers (also the good ones).
It's more how you place your upper body (more forward or turned inward) I'm not sure what's best.

It's OK for the front foot to turn in slightly, as long as when you lunge, the foot is pointing straight.

The Italians all turn the front foot in on the bounce, often referred to as a boxer stance. It offers a quicker change of direction, and faster fleche.

It's deadly to lunge like that, and if the foot pivots too much, it's bad for the knee.

Originally Posted by Genjuro

As for the bounces forward and backward, I think that this makes you predictable for your opponent,(also depending on the size op the hop) because if you go backward to forward, for a moment you'r more immobile then when you go just up and down.

If you vary the rythym of the bounce, and the length of the forward and backward movement it can be very deceptive. Hoping straight up and down is not recommended as it allows your opponent to read your distance. Fatal at the higher levels.

And again, practice it. The more you practice it, the more control you will have over your form when bouncing.

[shlepzig]

I have seen a lot of variations on hopping.

One epee fencer I knew, had a forward and back bouncing motion that was pretty consistant. His toes also were in a constant blur of movement as they would shift right and left a bit. Like a shuffle.

Advantage: He would use the momentum to make speedy attacks in that direction. His distance was also constantly changing.

Disadvantage: His opponent could use tempo and that momentum to catch him flat footed.

Another fencer I knew would bounce up and down on the balls of his feet.

Advantage: He could hide changes of distance from his back foot. And could preserve some of the sprung energy in his legs to propel a lunge.

Disadvantage: His balance went on and off tempo, and he could be caught flat footed if someone had his number down.

Personally, I don't have the energy to move my massive bulk up down or around that much for a full fifteen touch bout. I will someteims bounce momentarily, and vary the tempo to try to change my opponents perceptions of what I am planning, or to gain a couple of inches of distance sneakily.

As for the toe. Where the toe points the knee will try to follow, and where the knee points is where your lunge will go. If you angle them in you have to angle them back out, before or during, to make your lunge straight. I advise people to point the toe where they want the lunge to go.

Shlep.

[telkanuru]

I've run across some good and some bad bouncers (hah, pun). The bad ones generally have problems with weight distribution. At practice last night, one person bounced, but on the forward movement, she placed much too much weight on her front foot, allowing me to adjust my distance and beat-lunge to points no problem. However, the good ones don't do this. Instead, they are much more quick to 'turn the corner', and such techniqes do not work on them. They also use the bounce to control your actions (ie. they start bouncing, and you up your energy to match them, etc.). I bounce if I need to play a very fine distance game and/or to get my opponent, who (since he/she is not actually bouncing) is not as skilled at bouncing to bounce, and thus lose.

[UTEpee]

regarding the pointing of the foot.....

my coach and i have done drills with just a simple extension and advance where i hit to his wrist-- catch is, my eyes are closed. seems silly but it actually proves the point that unless you do something to change your direction of the point, it goes where your front foot is pointing. i know this because i actually had a severe problem of turning my front foot, and i couldnt hit anything on a straight advance or lunge. another idea to try, if you want your front foot to be straight, is to do footwork exercises with your front foot lined up on a line on the ground or perhaps the edge of the piste. that way you can see exactly how far the foot is turning and it gives you a guide to follow. granted i am a beginner, and these exercises helped me, they may be of little use if you are a more advanced fencer. hope it helps..

[rtran]

To fix the issue with your foot turning inwards try rotating your torso more forward. Alot of epee fencers dont' fence in the classical form with the shoulders forming a straight line towards the opponent. When bouncing in a stationary position your toes shouldn't really leave the strip. When bouncing forward and backward your feet should kindof glide along the strip.

[ztron24]

we get lots of famous visitors at my club, as all three of our coachs were world champions, olympic medalists, etc. anyways, we had another russian champion come to visit my epee coach, who was at the top of the standings around the same era. he and i are sitting watching some other members fence, one of whom is bouncing. he points at the guy and says to me 'you see that, i invented that.' and aparently he really did, i think in the 70s. he worked with a martial artist to try some new fighting footwork techniques and that's what they came up with. this new technique caught a lot of the best fencers of the day 'flat-footed' and he did very well internationally. caught on like wildfire...

i know i'm doing him and this board a disservice by forgetting his name, i'll have to ask my coach...

also, he stomped me into the ground despite being 20-30 years my senior.

[Grasshopper]

Omnes hopped alot - especially in the later stages of his career - perfect hops back and forth, this enabled him to react a just the right time.

When a tennis player is receiving serve, you will see him hop in the air and time his landing for the millisecond that his opponent connects with the ball. This allows him to use the natural springing action of his legs and move to appropriate direction. If he waits flat-footed, he will be late.

Basically, fencers can do the same thing, time the landing of the hop for just the right moment to react.

Even Romankov, the textbook classical foil fencer can be seen integrating a timely hop to find just the right time, even way back in the early 80's.

High level foil fencing timing is not a matter of seconds, it's a matter of milliseconds. A well-timed landing to a hop will help you find that timing.

[Inquartata]

This bouncing phenomenon was brought up in another thread, and it piqued my interest somewhat, so the last tournament I was at ( some unheralded little affair which no one has ever heard of, in Amarillo ) I watched the epee. I noticed that a very solidly grounded and often almost motionless Ray Sexton crushed an awful lot of bouncers...and of the bouts I watched the nonbouncers won about half. Judging by the ration I am lead to wonder whether there isn't a placebo effect at work.

I was also surprised to find myself doing it once or twice in sabre. Of course, in sabre you don't get more than about two bounces before you are forced to do something else...

[Epeecurean]

Very interesting thread!

I think it is useful to add bouncing to your repetoire of footwork so as to create new rhythms and change-ups in tempo. I like achilleus' suggestion to learn how to seamlessly shift between traditional footwork and bouncing and think this is the best way to integrate the two.

However, I'm not a big fan of incessant rhythmic bouncing, because often that is as static as staying flat on your feet and you can easily be caught out, like shlepzig says.

Grasshopper's observation of tennis players' positioning to receive the serve is very interesting and makes me think that you get a bit of a plyometric effect with a little bounce. This is the natural springing action he talks about. So a little bounce in fencing could be very useful not only as slight adjustment to the distance but to enable readiness to change direction rapidly and to launch a lunge.

A small experiment: is your lunge more explosive preceeded by a step or a balestra?

[MikeHarm]

I think I've probably gotten about 100+ touches in competition with my hopping angulated riposte to the high line over the last year in foil. The hop adds a little speed and height to the angulation so it goes in deeper and faster than my opponents were thinking it would. Its good for racking up some fast points, but I think it looks weird and I'm trying to move away from it.

[jetzm]

My lunges are definitely more explosive off of the balestra. I think it's because not only do I have a stronger force coming out of the jump, but mentally I'm more prepared to spring off the floor again.