Reversing shoulders

[drippingwet]

Reversing shoulders - when will it be legal and how effective can it be (examples)?

If anyone's seen the "Deep attacks can be parried, no big deal" clip on the foil fencing actions cd-rom, is Romankov's opponent reversing shoulders in an attempt to avoid the riposte?

Thanks.

[Tomas N]

It's legal now and it's effective for infighting.

Example/drill: Someone does a straight attack on you into 4. Do a deep parry 4, and take a big step in. Trick is to have your opponents blade go past you as you step in. Pull your sword arm back straight (here you can twist your body and reverse shoulders if necessary) and hit.

Of course, I'm assuming epee or foil here.

Tomas

[drippingwet]

So can reversing shoulders actually be used to make the opponent's hit miss - a sort of body parry?

If not, does it look like it's going to be possoble in the future?

[Tomas N]

Well, in the example I gave above, I wouldn't say that the main reason you're reversing shoulders to avoid the hit, but as you turn your shoulder, it's going to be natural/inevitable that your back shoulder (and therefore target area) is going to get closer to your opponent, therefore making it harder (the closer you are, the harder it is to hit) for your opponent to hit you. Also, the back arm will come in contact with your opponent's blade. As long as you aren't too obvious about it, you can do a little bit of manipulation of his or her blade (pushing it out a bit) while turning your shoulders for the parry.

Tomas

[kalivor]

It is legal. Walter and Craig give a decent analysis of when and how it can be used here: http://www.fencing101.com/content/view/141/35/

It can/will also be used for infighting, though I'm not sure how necessary that is, for those of us who've already learned infighting without inversing the shoulders.

[Victor]

It's important to remember, however, that covering target is still a no-no. So if you're going to turn sideways to take an infighting stance, you'd better make sure your arm and hand are kept out of the way.

[Schiavona]

Turning your back toward your opponent is still a foul. So if you turn your shoulders completely make sure you are on the 'outside' of your opponent's arm(same hand to same hand). In the bad old days when we did this we kept the back hand/arm still and weren't called on covering target unless the arm was moving around.

[Gruntled]

****I'm making a statement about drippingwets posting frequency and how he is annoying........ limit yourself boy!"***