sabre feints

Watching videos of recent world sabre championships, I notice very common use of abrupt, often multiple circular or semicircular motions with a completely bent arm. Obviously these are threats, but I never learned anything like this in my day (which I admit was a while back). Are they called something official? ("body feints"? "half feints"? "feints of preparation"?) Have they any standing at all in reconstructing the action? in right-of-way?

And along the same lines, what about the occassional beating on the strip with the blade?

[Cutter]

I don't think the "feints" have any real name. If you can hit them when they are doing these it would be in preparation. A lot of fencers are using more blade movement before the actual attack in order to throw off their opponent on where the cut is going to come from. Sabre is getting faster and faster all the time and the game is simplifing so fencers are trying to use more "deception" in their attacks. Regarding hitting the strip, I am not sure what you mean other than an errant blade on a low attack perhaps.



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Cutter