Some recent UK fencing club tests using the new foil/sabre timings.

[darius]

Is it considered brutality if it could be considered a legitimate scoring technique? I've seen, and been on both ends of painfully nasty thwacks (attempted flicks) to the wrist in epee. If you can flick hard enough to bury the tip in your opponent's trapezius for 15ms, then why not?

The only times I've seen cards for brutality have involved bellguards, or a clear case of whipping with the forte.

darius

[telkanuru]

I've warned people in scholastic sabre for hitting too hard (ie. without using the fingers). They normally shaped up after one "Don't do that again".

And I say, yes, it is brutality. The odd hard hit is unavoidable, but is someone routinely slams their point into the other person, I'd say it may even constitute deliberate brutality, which is a black card last time I checked.

[cowpaste]

The replies on this thread need to stop. If we continue at this rate, we might damage the glorious infamy of certain other threads.

[Inquartata]

Women Fence ...

Oooh, are YOU gonna catch it...

[Inquartata]

Which will not even last that long if refs start consistantly calling hard flickers on brutality (Group III red card for you!)

And the chances of that? Slim to none, I'd say.

[Schiavona]

People complain about how they weren't given the attack in prep all the time. When I go to events to ref, coach, or just cheer on a friend I see the same thing every time. An attempted attack into prep that is late, and therefore the counterattack.

That's where I think the problem is. People think that if they see a big preparation, then they must have gone into it at the right time. It's always funny to see them look at the ref upset, argue, and then complain about the state of modern fencing; when they should really be looking at their own fencing.

But really, it's all rather moot isn't it? I mean, we've covered this ground on this forum endlessly and the changes are coming through for at least a year. So, let's all just sit back and see what happens...

Agreed!

I'm more interested in the effect in Sabre on the head cut-parry 5-riposte-remise.

Though the reports of a slow(not delayed) riposte in foil being blocked by the box is very interesting. Maybe they'll change 'immediate' in the Rules to 'damn fast' for the riposte ROW

[Chris]

I don't think that anybody here pretends to understand how the FIE makes their choices...

I don't think anyone anywhere does!
;-)

Now that we have had a couple years' experience with the new timing, while I think the choice of the length of the new debounce time wasn't adequately evaluated, and I am not 100% happy with it, I do rather prefer the change, BUT, sadly, there's still problem's not fixable by any change in the equipment.

<snip>I don't know how the directors are near you, but it's rarely a problem anywhere I've been -- a well-executed stop hit seems to be pretty clear. A poorly-executed stop hit won't benefit from the timing changes.

You see, 'stop-hit' implies that there is an attack in progress: you are assuming that the guy has maintained his attack, and that the other guy has to be 'in time', when, in fact, often the guy moving forward is no longer attacking, and it is HE who needs to worry about being 'in time'.

JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE MOVING FORWARD DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE ATTACKING!!!

Two things wrong with this:
First -- I won't believe it 'til I see it.

If you refuse to acknowledge the possibility, there's no way in hell you can ever see it!

Most fencers can extend their arm within 0.3 seconds. Or ought to be able to, if they're planning to make a little "tap" parry, or are marching down the strip waiting for an opportunity to finish their attack. I'm thinking that good fencers will find that the adjustments they have to make, lockout-time-wise, is very small -- if they notice it at all. In foil, anyways.

Well, frankly, I think that you have no basis for that number (I am inclined to think you are including reaction time in that), besides, it's not the arm-extension time that is relevant: it is ACTION time we need to consider: how long does it take you to execute the quicker hitting actions.

i.e. once you have made a beat, or pary, with the intent of delivering the hit, how long does it take you to to land the point on target?

I conducted a fairly simple, and reproducable experiment on hand speed:

I moved (or rather slapped) my hand back, and forth between 2 bookshelves 13 inches apart (this is the approximate measure of my elbow to the middle of my hand, and my estimate of how far MY hand moves doing a quick riposte).

I'm not all that fast, but I made 50 repetitions in just under 5.5 seconds (I wore a glove - otherwise it hurt my knuckles a little...the problem is counting the rep's yourself...): This resolved to .109 seconds/per action.

This is actually longer than I would have guessed, however, it should be considered that

A. I am not all that fast;
B. The 13 inches motion MAY be a touch long.
C. There is a certain ineffiency/slowness to repeating motion in this way
D. I am sure I could do it faster, if I practiced (and wore a more padded glove...): My first couple attempts were about 7.5, and 6.5 seconds.

If we (somewhat arbitrarily) drop another 10% off, we get it under .100 seconds per motion. (anyone able to repeat the 'shelf-test' much more quickly, please feel free to share.)

So, if we compare THAT .100 seconds to the .015 seconds debounce time (14-16 milliseconds) starts to seem quite long!

Of course, the whole point of foil is that you aren't supposed to be trying to hit someone unless you know you have faked him out of his shoes, and are going to get a clean hit!

The fact that some referees (think they*) can tell that one person's hand moved 9 millisiconds before the other guy only serves to encourage people to attack arbitrarily, hoping they are guessing the referee's rythm of 'Ready...FENCE!'

* In reality, the fact that so many referees are actually relying on the motions of the feet to determine priority of attack, makes one wonder if they hold these beliefs falsely.

Sabre's 0.120 seconds seems to be getting pretty crazy.

Well, here, I am inclined to agree: Inadvertent hits are so common in sabre that, if you make a deep pary, this short timing can often lock out the immediate riposte to deep target.

See above...

Oh, and finally, a disclaimer: Nobody's really actually done a lot of fencing on these timings yet, from anything I've read. I've done none. All is speculation.

See above...

Gotta' love the F.R.E.D.!!!

[downunder]

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