Fencing styles

[jspierre]

Do you force your fencing on the strip to make your opponent "deal" with your pressure and persistence, or do you "read" your opponent and adjust your strip tactics in response - ie., think how to outsmart versus steam-roll?

In other words, can you/do you fence a "one size fits all" style or more like the text book ideal, give and take, exploiting weaknesses?

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

Originally Posted by jspierre

Do you force your fencing on the strip to make your opponent "deal" with your pressure and persistence, or do you "read" your opponent and adjust your strip tactics in response - ie., think how to outsmart versus steam-roll?

In other words, can you/do you fence a "one size fits all" style or more like the text book ideal, give and take, exploiting weaknesses?

if my opponent has a strong offense, I adjust my defense and try to find a weakness, if he has a strong defense, I try to find holes in his defense and exploit them with a strong and effective offense. Easier said than done, and no two bouts are really the same.... being able to change it up is a key skill.

[Alain]

Obviously, some people will feel more comfortable either in attack or defence. In my opinion, though, a top fencer should be more or less comfortable in both and, once you have reached a certain level, it is generally better to adapt your tactics according to how your opponent fences. Sometimes, you may feel it best to let them attack; other times, you may feel it better to go for the attack yourself.

During competitions (if you get a chance), especially in poules, it is always useful to do your homework and watch your future opponent fence beforehand - once you have seen them fence someone else, you will have an idea about how to fence them yourself. It is better to learn from other people's mistakes, rather than your own...

[Grasshopper]

Originally Posted by jspierre

Do you force your fencing on the strip to make your opponent "deal" with your pressure and persistence, or do you "read" your opponent and adjust your strip tactics in response - ie., think how to outsmart versus steam-roll?

In other words, can you/do you fence a "one size fits all" style or more like the text book ideal, give and take, exploiting weaknesses?

This is a very good question and I think many fencers wonder about it. Even at the top (again sorry for only foil guys), there are (have been) fencers who seem to "read" their opponents: (Omnes, Golobitsky, Romankov, Numa, etc.) and those who just "impose" their tactics (Sanzo, Cassara, Weidner, Koch, Wessels, Joppich.)

My personal feeling is that when you are young and your body is at it's peak, you can steamroll as you like. But realize that your body will reach a point (usually around 27 or 28 years old) when you can't steamroll effectively anymore and you are forced to "read" to win.

This could be the reason why "reading" fencers like Romankov, Chefchenko, Omnes, Numa had such long careers (into mid-thirties) compared to the "imposers" who generally can't perform after 28 years of age.

Any thoughts?

[nahouw]

Originally Posted by jspierre

Do you force your fencing on the strip to make your opponent "deal" with your pressure and persistence, or do you "read" your opponent and adjust your strip tactics in response - ie., think how to outsmart versus steam-roll?

In other words, can you/do you fence a "one size fits all" style or more like the text book ideal, give and take, exploiting weaknesses?

Well, of course, I would much rather prefer an opponent in which I can read, predict and then make my actions easy... however, that doesn't happen, and then I have to resort to forcing my actions. All in all, I think that you need to have a combination of both -- by forcing your actions, you can then get your opponent into a place of predicitability -- it is a balance.

[jspierre]

Originally Posted by Grasshopper

This is a very good question and I think many fencers wonder about it. Even at the top (again sorry for only foil guys), there are (have been) fencers who seem to "read" their opponents: (Omnes, Golobitsky, Romankov, Numa, etc.) and those who just "impose" their tactics (Sanzo, Cassara, Weidner, Koch, Wessels, Joppich.)

My personal feeling is that when you are young and your body is at it's peak, you can steamroll as you like. But realize that your body will reach a point (usually around 27 or 28 years old) when you can't steamroll effectively anymore and you are forced to "read" to win.

This could be the reason why "reading" fencers like Romankov, Chefchenko, Omnes, Numa had such long careers (into mid-thirties) compared to the "imposers" who generally can't perform after 28 years of age.

Any thoughts?

Yeah...I think you've put your finger on the essence of my question; namely, the sport has gotten much more atheletic at the high end, and strongly competitively athlete's, with superior physical skills, I think, are in a position to impose an aggressive style on the stip, partly on the theory that, one, fencer's even at the top that can read and adjust are just very few and far between, and those that can do it, still find it very challenging to execute in real time, and two, why hold back an physically imposing style if you can reliably mashall the force, especially in a pool bout where time-is-of-the essence, and a mistake in a read-react style could cost touches, if not the bout.

When two guys (gals) on the strip are like this - I'll call them physical performers - you get a real dogfight, very entertaining but brutal. If the other guy has the ability to modulate his/her game to exploit the biases of an incessantly phyical performer, that tends to "tame" the attack pretty quickly. I think imposing an overwhelming phyical style in foil and saber is easier because of RoW priority and directing variable. In epee, the temporal priority makes this approach more risky/costly, though you see the style sometimes in a mix of patience and very aggressive preparation leading to very strong attacks (I'm thinking of the way Arnd Schmidt used to fence epee).

I think that at the top of intl fencing, fencers have the ability to pull out whatever style will work, partly because world-class fencers can "read" the psychology of their opponents so well (and they've fenced the same opponents so many times, I suppose). But, there's probably an argument that a physically imposing fencer who is mid-class (domestically, at least) should simply "turn the heat up" on the strip in some 90% of his/her bouts and adjust thereafter.

I also think age has something to do with this. I've seen late teenagers, early 20 year olds with plainly superior strip speed, and they've used this on older fencers to advantage. I'd also note that the ability to read-adjust tactics seems to develop more fully later in you're fencing career precisely because age and experience inevitably lead you to more fully developed fighting skills.