Sabre Books

[Ben[PrFC]]

First off, to conserve space I was considering posting this in the new thread about epee books, but my concern there was that perhaps that thread wouldn't get much traffic from sabre fencers.
Im looking for a good fencing book with a focus on, or at least a sizeable section, about sabre.
Most of the books Ive seen through searching amazon.com and the like have been foil or epee-centric.
Are there any good books out there focused on sabre, particular modern competitive sabre as opposed to historical fencing? Something with advanced tactics etc.
On a good week, I only get to practice 4 days, 2 hours a day. Average week is 3 days, 2 hours a day. Given the choice, life would be nothing but fencing practice and competition. And if I cant train under my coach all the time I'd at least like to be able to read up on some new things.

Thanks in advance, I've found everyone on this forum to be quite helpful most all of the time.

[Morra[PrFC]]

Ben,

Check out books by Nick Evangelista. Though he does have the philosophy that one should start with foil before any other weapon, he writes about sabre, too. I have The Art and Science of Fencing and The Inner Game of Fencing. You can borrow them if you want (I also have Aldo Nadi's On Fencingand a book called Le Magnum Livre de L'escrime, (The Big Book of Fencing)).

Since you're looking for books that are primarily about sabre, I reccomend Peter Westbrook's Harnessing Anger: The Way of an American Fencer. I have not read the book in its entirety, but considering that fact that it's written by Peter Westbrook, a sabrist, and an idol of our club, I assume it's a pretty good book. The part I read was mostly biographical, but I assume that it does focus a great deal on fencing (psychology?) as well.

Christina

[Sabresque]

Harnessing Anger is a terrific book that I've read a great many times. He's totally my role model. It focuses on his life and a tournament experiences, basically. Autobiography. There isn't really much on fencing technique. There is a little on the psychological stuff he uses on people before and after bouts at high level competitions, but they don't really translate to most fencers at local and national competitions.

Whether it has any actual fencing advice in it or not, it is one of the best books out there and you NEED to read it. But maybe I'm biased

Anyways, you've got my 2 cents now.

[D'Artagnan1673]

Zounds, Morra, its dangerous to give allegiance to Nick Evangelista on this fourm!!! <img src="graemlins/jester.gif" border="0" alt="[Jester]" /> <img src="graemlins/jester.gif" border="0" alt="[Jester]" />

I got severely flamed for doing so. It may have also had to do with the fact that I did it quite arrogantly

I have both of those books and find them to be an excellent resource. Sadly, Maestro Evangelsta doesn't give much thought into Epee in his books. He appears to me to be primarily interested in foil fencing. Still, I can accredit his teaching to my limited success in foil. My success is limited not because of his teaching, but because of faults which are my own.

[ 05-13-2002: Message edited by: D'Artagnan1673 ]</p>

[neevel]

It's likely you aren't going to find an up-to-date book on sabre, simply because sabre fencing was in so much flux for the last decade.

A couple of general observations about fencing books:

1) I have never seen a fencing book that even _tries_ to adequately address concepts of distance and tempo, which are really the keys to being a competent fencer. The best you'll get from most books is some idea of a constant fencing measure which you simply park yourself at and then try to maintain, which is just not the case. If you don't know how to vary the distance, and what actions require what sort of distance change, then no matter how perfect your bladework is you'll really be just an elaborate practice dummy. I tend to smile whenever I see someone complaining about an opponent beating them with pure speed, because it's usually about distance and tempo changes, which the complainer doesn't comprehend.

2) Currently active top-level coaches and fencers are generally too busy coaching, training, and competing to have time to write books. What this means is that books often are written either by a) older coaches and fencers who are no longer longer highly active at the top levels, or b) people who've never had much activity with top-level competitive fencing to begin with (e.g. Evangelista, Gaugler). In either case, the result is that books will tend to be at least a bit out-of-date. Add to that the limited selection of English language texts, so many of which are translations of older books.

That said, you can still get something out of the right book, especially if you're at a more basic level. Rudy Volkmann's The Big Book of Fencing has already been mentioned-- it's a great book for the beginning fencer. The English translation of Istvan Lukovich's Fencing: The Modern International Style devotes a good portion of its pages to sabre. It's a somewhat older book (1975, revision 1986) which predates electric sabre entirely, but can be a decent source for some fundamentals.

A key thing to be said in favor of both Rudy's and Lukovich's books are that the have a fair amount of material on basics of stance, footwork, and footwork drills. Having quick, crisp, small footwork is absolutely vital for sabre these days. If you can get, say, 5 foot-tempos in for every 4 of your opponent's, that'll give you a real edge.

In terms of understanding current approaches and tactics, a good way is to watch top level sabre fencing. Since (IIRC) your club is in the northeast, I'd get to Peabody, MA for the Sabre World Cup 5/24-26 if at all possible, and bring a video camera. Getting some videotapes of international sabre fencing ( <a href="http://www.fencingfootage.com" target="_blank">www.fencingfootage.com</a> , or Eric Dew just posted that he still has some tapes left of Sydney and Nimes) to watch and analyze would also be a good idea.

-Dave

[D'Artagnan1673]

Evangelista doesn't have a ton on distance, but I'd say he gets the point across. Check out the Art and Science and read the chapter in-between Foil and Epee.

[The Crazy Wacker]

Since yall are posting books, Are there any good for epee? I've been looking at Epee Fencing : A Complete System, by Imre Vass but its $30... don't think I'll ever spend that much on a book. I'll have to look at my public library, but I don't think they'd have anything like that in there.
<img src="graemlins/crap.gif" border="0" alt="[Crap]" /> <img src="graemlins/crap.gif" border="0" alt="[Crap]" /> <img src="graemlins/crap.gif" border="0" alt="[Crap]" /> <img src="graemlins/crap.gif" border="0" alt="[Crap]" /> <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[D'Artagnan1673]

Do try the library, I've found some great books on Epee from the library. I wonderfully out of date

[neevel]

[quote]Originally posted by D'Artagnan1673:
<strong>Evangelista doesn't have a ton on distance, but I'd say he gets the point across. Check out the Art and Science and read the chapter in-between Foil and Epee.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'm looking at it right now, and it's inadequate (I'll leave aside his notion that infighting is Just Plain Wrong, rather than a tool to be employed in appropriate circumstances). The thing is, there's is not just one 'proper' distance for attacking-- the proper distance depends on what kind of action you're making. For example, an angulgated attack to one of the deeper target sections requires a slightly different distance that an straight feint-disengage attack to a closer target section-- be off by just a few inches (or be executing the angulated attack from straight feint-attack distance) and you're liable to fail. Nor is there one 'proper' distance for all the different sorts of parry-riposte actions, or prise-de-fer actions. And even when you start at the proper distance for a given action, there a often small distance manipulations you can make in the course of that action which greatly contribute to its effectiveness.

What NE says is par for the course for most fencing books, and it barely scratches the surface. I'd much prefer to see distance addressed as an integral part of each blade action (i.e., here's a bind, here's the hand motion, here's the distance you want to start at, here are the distance changes you may need to make as part of the setup, or as you're executing it). While distance is too situational to ever cover completely in the book, something more than the cursory "here's the 'proper' fencing measure" would help get readers thinking about the concept in the proper way.

-Dave

[edew]

Last night, I remarked to a semi-beginning fencer that she was attacking from too far out. She told me that people were telling her that she's attacking from too close a distance. That made sense to me, but not to her.

The point was that for the particular action she was doing, she needed to get the opponent to counter into her attack, thus she needed to be closer. Being far away, with the particular action she was using, just scared the opponent away and she'll just be chasing the opponent instead of finishing.

Basically, distance is not a fixed length. It depends on several things:

• type of attack one plans to do
• one's own speed capability (changes due to stamina, opponent's skill level, etc)
• opponent's penchance for retreating or attacking

Fencing requires knowing one's body as well as the opponent's. One can't just go out there and work it like a machine.

Thus, any book that talks of distance in any absolute sense will put the reader into the wrong state of mind concerning the proper use of distance.

[135711]

she was doing a feint to the head?

i want to imagine the attack so i can figure out what needs to be done, thanks

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: 135711 ]</p>

[oiuyt]

It could be just about any type of couter-time action. Do something that draws a stop-hit, parry and riposte. Any type of broken attack, malformed attack, intentional prep, etc. could draw a counter-attack which can be dealt with on second-intention. I don't know specifically what action Eric's referring to, but there's a WIDE selection that fit everything that he's mentioned.

Given that we've drifted into talking about non-sabre things it's fairly plausible that Eric's even referring to a foilist where it's unlikely that the action in question invovles a feint to the head.

-B

[135711]

thank you for input ouit, but let's see what eric had in mind, but wide parries are sometimes necessary - you know? even if it doesn't fit right in the lanes. i was thinking of a running feint, feint, and then cut, then i wondered later on, you could do one feint, two feints, or even three feints, depending on the distance you're at, so then the fencer that eric was talking to, should: work on her distance and plan her attacks according to how many actions she would need to take before she can land a hit.

[edew]

The point is that it doesn't matter what the weapon or the action. The point is that specific actions in specific situations demand a certain distance to perform. Some may require a longer distance to develop, some a shorter distance. Against some fencers -- even beginning fencers, I can't make long, slow developing actions: they don't understand what's happening and could just as well step in with a stop-hit (foil). In those cases, I keep a shorter distance (knowing that they're unlikely to attack no matter what), and make simple straight lunge attacks.

Against other fencers, simple attacks result in simple parry ripostes to various parts of my back, so I have to conduct longer, slower, more varied developing attacks to catch them at a bad choice.

Distance depends on what action one does AND who the two fencers are.

[Inquartata]

Two from my library which are primarily sabre-oriented:

"Sabre Fencing", by D.F. Evered, 1982

Pre-electric, and very conservative, and brief at 92 pages, it's still the only book entirely devoted to sabre that I have seen.

"The Art of the Sabre and the Epee", by Luigi Barbasetti, 1936


Yes, 1936. Barbasetti was a master of the old Italian school. Hence it's very out of date indeed, even quaint. It's also the most detailed explication of sabre I've found, and goes into the most advanced technique ( though even that isn't really terribly advanced---advanced technique is all about tactical thinking and how to do the basics against different sorts of opponents on the fly, and it can only be learned by doing ). Most modern fencers have never even seen Itailan sabre fenced, and those who have are generally scornful of it ( Maestro Selberg derides it mercilessly in his instructional videos, for instance ). I have found that it can be useful for just that reason, though---no one has learned how to deal with it. And at any rate, a good deal of the book is as applicable to modern Hungarian fencing as to anything else, ie footwork, blade actions, etc.

[sabreur]

"Fencing and the Master" by Szabo, even though it is primarily oriented toward coaching, is very useful for sabre.

"Foil, sabre and epee...." by Garret et al. is pretty good, although like "Fencing and the Master" dates from pre-electric days.

"The Methodology of Sabre Fencing" by Beke and Polgar has almost mythological status--it was published in 1963 by Corvina Press in Hungary, and is supposed to be the best description of the classic Hungarian school available. I have seen one copy available on e-bay in the last five years--it went for well over $200. I've asked Steve Kinnoy if he has any plans to reprint it, but I think it would be a pretty limited market.

Evangalista's and Gaugler's books are useless if you are interested in modern competitive sport sabre.



If you are really serious about sabre, get the sabre videos from Eric Dew and watch them until they wear out, and find yourself a good master (one who is producing national class sabreurs) and study with him.

Cheers, MR

[ 05-16-2002: Message edited by: sabreur ]</p>

[135711]

i want one of those flame throwers, i am exhausted just reading these posts

[135711]

okay, i just realized something; if, for the next several months we take off our signatures, we'll be friends again, i can tell. i'll go first.