Where do you place your eyes on while fencing?

[seven6ty]

Mmm, no, you just insinuated that if you're looking at their eyes, you're not looking at their tip and therefore don't know where it's at. (You never mentioned tip again, so I'm missing any kind of clarification on that which may have followed in your post.) Sorry if I misunderstood.

[erooMynohtnA]

Mmm, no, you just insinuated that if you're looking at their eyes, you're not looking at their tip and therefore don't know where it's at. (You never mentioned tip again, so I'm missing any kind of clarification on that which may have followed in your post.) Sorry if I misunderstood.

There's a difference between looking and seeing. Looking is the action of directing your eyes, seeing is visually perceiving what is there. jBirch was saying that if you look somewhere, you can't see elsewhere. That's true if you're concentrating a lot on one area, but I don't think it is in the case of watching someone's eyes when you're fencing.

It's very hard to look at two things at once unless you have a lazy eye (I've seen people who can do it, and it's really creepy). It's easier to see two things at the same time.

I think I understand what you're saying. That you can have your eyes directed at theirs, and the main focus of your attention there, but you can still easily see anything else in your periphery without looking directly at it.

[jBirch]

Mmm, no, you just insinuated that if you're looking at their eyes, you're not looking at their tip and therefore don't know where it's at. (You never mentioned tip again, so I'm missing any kind of clarification on that which may have followed in your post.) Sorry if I misunderstood.

Well maybe we both just miscommunicated...

What I was specifically thinking of with that comment was the concept that if you focus hard on one particular point, you may pick up movement with your peripherals, but you won't be able to pick up details. Let's take low line actions in epee as an example...

I look at the eyes and the opponent fences in absence. I therefor use my peripheral vision to pick up actions that the opponent is making in the low line. What ends up happening is that I become highly sensitive to feints to the low line targets because I can't see the tip or the bell or the feet or anything with enough resolution to know what the heck it's doing down there. But movement is REALLY clear. So I have to react. And generally, because I still can't see what's going down, I have to react strongly.

On the attack, the extreme case in example is to hit a moving foot target while looking at my opponent's head/shoulders. The basic rule has always been that you hit where you look and you need to look at your target to hit it. Now, I don't mean that your entire head follows your eyes and you end up bobbing your head around like a bobble, just that one of the fundamental things to realise in fencing is that your eyes do different things at different ranges and as they relate to different actions.

Doing feint-disengage drills...how many times have you missed the parry or anticipated it because you weren't looking for the parry, but rather moving to the rhythm? I teach my students specifically to look for the parry and only if they see it starting to develop, to perform the disengage. This is easiest done if the action is started looking at the bell guard of the opponent and waiting for the reaction.

When my students encounter fencers who like to fix their attention on any one place for a prolonged period of time, they learn to feint to either the eyes or to places out of the immediate vicinity. Slow actions in the peripherals end up being almost invisible so sneaking in actions are useful too.

My unique point as different from some of the other comments is to keep "roving eyes" or "moving eyes" so that you don't end up with any of the weaknesses of either a defocused general gaze or a specific focused gaze.

Hope this helps.

James.

[Inquartata]

What author doesn't dream his work will have a greater impact than it will?

Barbara Cartland?

[Inquartata]

All you show-offs with binocular vision and depth perception, talking about things like "seeing the opponents eyes"! Hmmph!

"Hmmph!" seconded. Looking through not one but TWO mask meshes? Seriously, folks? You can pick up cues from their eyes?

OK, maybe in epee. I mean, what ELSE is moving in epee?

At any rate, you "eyes" folks are going to be screwed if you ever have to fence me.

[Despic]

Whoa, this thread has seen quite a fair bit of response. Thanks guys! So I guess, generally I'll have to look at the picture on the whole, with some emphasis on the elbows yea.

I'll see how it works out when I go for training tomorrow.