Beginnings...

[WhiteKnight]

About a month ago, I decided that I wanted to try fencing. Since then, I've been doing research on the Internet about it and I've learned quite a lot, but I have a few questions for anyone who's willing to answer them. You see, I live near Chattanooga, Tennessee and I've been looking for any sort of class or coach to teach fencing, but I've found none. Should I try to learn from a book with a partner that's also interested, and if so, could any books be recommended?

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"Many seek a degree of normalcy in their lives, but I follow my heart to wherever it may take me."
-N. Reksten

[MikeHarm]

You might just as well try a cyber course in fencing from www.classicalfencing.com if you're going to do that, which I don't think is a good idea either. Did you check out www.usfencing.org? They may have a club listed near you, if one isn't listed thats in range try emailing some of the clubs in your division because there may be some that aren't on the list. A lot of times smaller community colleges and such don't have a big net presence.
Re books, my favorite is Rudy Volkmann's The Big Book of Fencing.

Mike

[damianip]

I'm with MikeHarm on this one: If you're going to be a sport fencer, the best single book to have is Volkmann's Big Book of Fencing. It'll be a while before you "outgrow" that one.

Learning from a book is challenging but is excellent as an augmentation to good instruction.

Of course, if you don't have any teachers available, it's certainly better than nothing. You may want to look at some of the instruction videos that are out there. I never seen or used any myself.

If you do decide to go it alone with a training partner, a mirror or video camera would be very helpful.

Good luck.

Paolo