Incendiary threads are fun!

[Allen Evans]

One of the difficulties in summing up the difference between classical and modern fencers in a neat package for outsiders is that there seems to be an on-going struggle by the classical fencers to define exactly what it is they do.

Adam Crown, for instance, insists that what he does is not classical fencing, but "correct" fencing (and everyone else is wrong? He seems to think so). I doubt that W. Gaugler would put himself in the classical camp, yet many classical fencers I know tout him as an authority. There seems to be very little agreement about what classical fencing is among the classical fencers themselves.

This problem grows further when trying to explain it to a non-fencer, to whom the nuances of an explanation like: "fencing done as if the blades were sharp" are lost.

AE

Ooops! I see just about everyone else has beaten me to this point!

[Hauptman]

I've never seen someone openly abused for fencing in a more classical style. I can promise you that they'll be judged as one of the worst fencers in the pool before the referee says fence, and it's probable that some of the other fencers will make comments behind their back. But sportsmanship is the same in modern fencing as it is in every other sport, and with a few exceptions, everyone who shows up at an event will be treated equally no matter what their style is.

As a matter of fact, the few times I've seen people openly hostile to a fencer simply because of their fencing style, it's because they adopted a highly unorthodox method that works very well against some opponents. If anything, this is the opposite of classical fencing.

Ok, so they're judged the worst fencer before any fencing starts. And that doesn't affect the directing? And somehow talking behind someone's back is ok and good sportsmanship? That won't be noticed and the bad feelings felt?

I've seen it first-hand. And it is the reason that many fencers don't compete. Don't want to call it abuse? Fine, but that doesn't change the result.

[mrbiggs]

Ok, so they're judged the worst fencer before any fencing starts. And that doesn't affect the directing? And somehow talking behind someone's back is ok and good sportsmanship? That won't be noticed and the bad feelings felt?

I've seen it first-hand. And it is the reason that many fencers don't compete. Don't want to call it abuse? Fine, then what do you want to call it?

Look, when I step up to the strip, I'm going to use every cue I can to get a sense of who I'm fencing. If I overestimate them, I might fence too fancy and lose touches when they don't react properly. If I underestimate them, I'll try a simple action and get burned. I've been on both sides of these situations, and both can cause upsets in pool bouts.

It's very, very rare that a fencer with a classical stance will be successful at modern sport fencing. I'm not saying these fencers don't exist, but it's a cue I'm going to look for. There are tons of others: if a fencers en guard is basically standing up straight, I'm going to judge them similarly, or if they're wearing rainbow socks, or if they look like they're having a lot of trouble hooking in, or if they spend a lot of time on the salute.

So no, I don't think it's disrespectful or bad sportsmanship to judge a fencer. It's part of the game. If you don't want to be judged, get on the strip and start winning touches with your classical en guarde and french grip. I've seen it done before, and believe me, it doesn't take long for the quiet whispers about the guy who fences really weird to turn into warnings that you'll lose the bout if you blink.

If someone doesn't want to compete because other fencers will judge their skill, then it seems to me that they're missing the point of what exactly a competition is.

No, it doesn't affect the directing.

[MUHSfencing]

One of the difficulties in summing up the difference between classical and modern fencers in a neat package for outsiders is that there seems to be an on-going struggle by the classical fencers to define exactly what it is they do.

Adam Crown, for instance, insists that what he does is not classical fencing, but "correct" fencing (and everyone else is wrong? He seems to think so). I doubt that W. Gaugler would put himself in the classical camp, yet many classical fencers I know tout him as an authority. There seems to be very little agreement about what classical fencing is among the classical fencers themselves.

This problem grows further when trying to explain it to a non-fencer, to whom the nuances of an explanation like: "fencing done as if the blades were sharp" are lost.

AE

Ooops! I see just about everyone else has beaten me to this point!

It's very nice to see how much agreement and understanding there is of this difficulty of defining "classical".

But I feel compelled to point out that your doubts of Maestro Gaugler's classical self-identification appear to be unfounded.

Check out this article for example:

http://www.scherma.org/gaugler/weapo...nd_school.html

For those who cannot abide the academic nature of Dr Gaugler's prose, just skip to the last bit:

...
By insisting on use of the Italian foil grip in its examinations, the Council of the National Academy of Fencing at Naples has taken the first step toward a return to classical fencing; in other words, efficient, elegant, and safe swordplay.

[MUHSfencing]

Ok, so they're judged the worst fencer before any fencing starts. And that doesn't affect the directing? And somehow talking behind someone's back is ok and good sportsmanship? That won't be noticed and the bad feelings felt?

I've seen it first-hand. And it is the reason that many fencers don't compete. Don't want to call it abuse? Fine, but that doesn't change the result.

That sounds very unpleasant. Makes me appreciate what good sportsmen & women our local USFA competitors truly are.

But I also agree with mrbiggs. I have no problem with judging someone's fencing based on any number of different cues. That's totally legit.

However - the officiating and socializing should be fair and friendly to everyone, as they have been in my (sadly limited) experience here in the midwest.

[jaketheranger]

My second brush with classical fencing was more a brush with the "historical martial artist" camp.

Now, I'm not a Renaissance Faire guy or anything, but I've gone to a few and have had good fun. To give credit where credit is due, I've seen a few amazing archery and jousting demonstrations. The food's usually pretty good, too. The combat demonstrations, however, seem to come in two varieties: Theatre (choreographed) or "boffo" (nerf swords and shields with no relation to real combat).

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw on the agenda a public demonstration of "ye olde fine demonstration of dueling: rapier and backsword". I've seen some of the local ARMA fencers, and I'll tell you that, though they're the nicest bunch of people you've ever met, they couldn't fence their way out of a paper bag, God love 'em. This guy, however, claimed to have to have trained under XXXXX in Spain and XXXXXX in Italy, and so on and so forth, so I figured it would be worth a look-see. Shank of fowl in hand (fried chicken) I went to go watch.

The "maestro" looked pretty impressive in all his period finery. Bald, shining head on a stocky body...sporting a mustache that would have put Errol Flynn to shame. He had a cheerful young female assistant and they proceeded to spin a romanticized tale about how honor was, once upon a time, won at the point of a sword. He then did a pretty, choreographed set with the assistant-- filled with some interesting maneuvers (they liked to "hamstring" an opponent).

Then came the good part: Who would like to give it a try?

So my hand shot up. I was given a big old-timey mask, a quilted jacket, and a heavy coach-like glove. The 'rapiers' (backswords?) were wooden staves with a cross-guard on an epee like bell. It was heavy, but not actually too horribly balanced (center balance was about six inches up from the bell). Oh, yeah, and we got buckler shields. Yahoo!

We prepare to begin and the 'maestro' tells me "don't worry, I won't hurt you. Go ahead and try to hit me." Okay. I feint toward his off hand (buckler), drawing the ridiculously huge parry....I'm sure it has some other name, but the best I can describe it as is a 'sweeping six'...a back-cut, maybe? Anyway, I disengage and cut over (I'm an epeeist, so this was a novel attack for me) and whack him on the wrist. The best part: HE DROPS HIS 'BLADE'.

"You've fenced before?"

"Yep, some sport fencing."

"I'm going to show you why that didn't prepared you for this, okay?"

"Sure thing!"

So now he's a little ticked off...and we begin again. He starts to circle me, not a bad tactic, beats my blade to the inside with his buckler, also unexpected, steps in and whacks me behind the knees. Point for the maestro! So now I realize I have to have lateral movement, no big deal, I've got a few years of martial arts experience.

"See how different this is?"

"Yep."

The third engagement was actually pretty fun. He wasn't a bad fencer, but he wasn't quick and wasn't very coordinated. He depended on boorish beats and bashes from the buckler to open up target (remind you of someone you fence with? Probably!). So I opened the distance and waited for him to overextend himself. My chance came when when he beat, a little too close, with the buckler and rampaged in.

Inquartata.

I then lunged to his exposed flank and, again to his credit, he brought his shield down to block. So I moved the point lower, nailed his thigh, went through his legs and he tripped up on it onto grass, face first. I didn't want to be a bully and poke him while he was scrambling up.

Red faced he shook my hand and said, "Please hand my gear in to my assistant." Say what you will, the guy at least meant well and tried to be a class act, embarassed.

I've heard that this has become something of a Ren Faire urban legend on the their circuit. There are few things that give me such a wide smile.

[crquack]

or if they spend a lot of time on the salute.

OK, how is this significant? My limited experience suggests that the better the club the more perfunctory the salute becomes. Is this right?

[erooMynohtnA]

OK, how is this significant? My limited experience suggests that the better the club the more perfunctory the salute becomes. Is this right?

Following that one step further:

The quicker the salute, the better club; so the longer the salute, the _____ club.

A even better
B worse
C pastrami
D all of the above

I really think you already answered your own question.

[mrbiggs]

OK, how is this significant? My limited experience suggests that the better the club the more perfunctory the salute becomes. Is this right?

Not necessarily.

It's just that people who spend a lot of time on the salute often aren't spending a lot of time on the rest of their fencing.

There are exceptions, of course, I very recently fenced a successful A rated fencer whose salute was hardly fancy, but definitely more drawn out than I see in a normal bout.

[RITFencing]

OK, how is this significant? My limited experience suggests that the better the club the more perfunctory the salute becomes. Is this right?

I would say that the more hung up a club/instructor/fencer/whatever is on saluting, proper etiquette, etc is, the worse they tend to be at actual fencing.

Note that this does not mean quicker, necessarily.

What I mean here is that when people try to force it, either reflecting on how cool they must look, or how traditions must be followed, or how we must all show proper respect as befits the station of a person or god in heaven knows what is going through the minds of some people, they tend to be bad fencers.

The good ones tend to just do it without investing a lot of conscious thought. While I don't always like to use it as an example, take a look at a karate class sometimes. The ones all hung up and tripping over themselves to bow every three seconds, follow every percieved tradition precisely or use japanese for every possible phrase when english could do just as well are probably either newbies, idiots or both. The ones who have been doing it for a while and are more skilled and comfortable with the environment just kind of do their thing. It's no longer really special or amazing to them. They don't necessarily skimp on anything, but they don't go out of their way for it either. It's just natural.

[tkexi991]

Wonderful. Let me at him too!

My second brush with classical fencing was more a brush with the "historical martial artist" camp.

Now, I'm not a Renaissance Faire guy or anything, but I've gone to a few and have had good fun. To give credit where credit is due, I've seen a few amazing archery and jousting demonstrations. The food's usually pretty good, too. The combat demonstrations, however, seem to come in two varieties: Theatre (choreographed) or "boffo" (nerf swords and shields with no relation to real combat).

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw on the agenda a public demonstration of "ye olde fine demonstration of dueling: rapier and backsword". I've seen some of the local ARMA fencers, and I'll tell you that, though they're the nicest bunch of people you've ever met, they couldn't fence their way out of a paper bag, God love 'em. This guy, however, claimed to have to have trained under XXXXX in Spain and XXXXXX in Italy, and so on and so forth, so I figured it would be worth a look-see. Shank of fowl in hand (fried chicken) I went to go watch.

The "maestro" looked pretty impressive in all his period finery. Bald, shining head on a stocky body...sporting a mustache that would have put Errol Flynn to shame. He had a cheerful young female assistant and they proceeded to spin a romanticized tale about how honor was, once upon a time, won at the point of a sword. He then did a pretty, choreographed set with the assistant-- filled with some interesting maneuvers (they liked to "hamstring" an opponent).

Then came the good part: Who would like to give it a try?

So my hand shot up. I was given a big old-timey mask, a quilted jacket, and a heavy coach-like glove. The 'rapiers' (backswords?) were wooden staves with a cross-guard on an epee like bell. It was heavy, but not actually too horribly balanced (center balance was about six inches up from the bell). Oh, yeah, and we got buckler shields. Yahoo!

We prepare to begin and the 'maestro' tells me "don't worry, I won't hurt you. Go ahead and try to hit me." Okay. I feint toward his off hand (buckler), drawing the ridiculously huge parry....I'm sure it has some other name, but the best I can describe it as is a 'sweeping six'...a back-cut, maybe? Anyway, I disengage and cut over (I'm an epeeist, so this was a novel attack for me) and whack him on the wrist. The best part: HE DROPS HIS 'BLADE'.

"You've fenced before?"

"Yep, some sport fencing."

"I'm going to show you why that didn't prepared you for this, okay?"

"Sure thing!"

So now he's a little ticked off...and we begin again. He starts to circle me, not a bad tactic, beats my blade to the inside with his buckler, also unexpected, steps in and whacks me behind the knees. Point for the maestro! So now I realize I have to have lateral movement, no big deal, I've got a few years of martial arts experience.

"See how different this is?"

"Yep."

The third engagement was actually pretty fun. He wasn't a bad fencer, but he wasn't quick and wasn't very coordinated. He depended on boorish beats and bashes from the buckler to open up target (remind you of someone you fence with? Probably!). So I opened the distance and waited for him to overextend himself. My chance came when when he beat, a little too close, with the buckler and rampaged in.

Inquartata.

I then lunged to his exposed flank and, again to his credit, he brought his shield down to block. So I moved the point lower, nailed his thigh, went through his legs and he tripped up on it onto grass, face first. I didn't want to be a bully and poke him while he was scrambling up.

Red faced he shook my hand and said, "Please hand my gear in to my assistant." Say what you will, the guy at least meant well and tried to be a class act, embarassed.

I've heard that this has become something of a Ren Faire urban legend on the their circuit. There are few things that give me such a wide smile.

[tchwojko]

Sports Fencing is to Classical Fencing as Football (either one) is to Ice Dancing.

[LordShout]

OK, how is this significant? My limited experience suggests that the better the club the more perfunctory the salute becomes. Is this right?

On a similar line the best fencers I've seen tend to do clean quck salutes to their opponent and wait for the ref to acknowledge their ref salute before returning it and going into en garde.

I agree with mrbiggs, you watch, you learn, you judge everything your opponent does from the time you get to the tournament till you're packing up for the day, you see someone talking about classical and prancing around with a fancy salute, you fence them differently then if you see someone come in, stretch and step on the strip in all FIE gear that looks like its come through the wars with more NAC stamps then you can count on one hand.

I'm not saying everyperson with FIE gear and NAC stamps is good, or that every person with a fancy salute is bad but I look for correlations that will help me figure out what to do in the first 20 seconds of a bout, and this is one that nearly always holds true.

[jeff]

I think that's fair. If you're been at this a while you have experience sizing people up quickly by their mannerisms. I don't know if it's true, but I've read that expert chess players can size up an opponent by how they grab the pieces. When our estimates are wrong, we learn and adjust. Also, if a school or fencer embellishes a ritual part of fencing like the salute, it might be a clue that this is a higher priority than other parts.

MUHSfencing: I haven't forgotten, just been busy. I did find my notes, though

[Grasshopper]

I had a classical fencer come to my club one day. He had long bleached blonde hair so I think he was going for the Thor look. Or maybe Hulk Hogan... Anyway, I beat him in 15 seconds of stop time, 5-0 using one move: feint disengage. Maybe he was waiting for his moment to slice me in half like in Rob Roy, but alas, it never came.

[migopod]

.... Also, if a school or fencer embellishes a ritual part of fencing like the salute, it might be a clue that this is a higher priority than other parts.

It is also possible that some unfortunates who started with CF and transitioned to fencing may have done significant work to relearn technique but not really taken any significant measures to unlearn the excessive salute for the same reasons that fencers tend to not spend a great deal of time acquiring one.

maybe...

[jeff]

That could very well be the case. I think it's easy to learn to go "swoosh, swoosh!" in a 2-count salute instead of "swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!" 8-count salute.

[migopod]

That could very well be the case. I think it's easy to learn to go "swoosh, swoosh!" in a 2-count salute instead of "swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!" 8-count salute.

Natch! I'm now counting myself highly fortunate to have never developed *that* flamboyant of a salute. I'm thinking in the three to four swoosh range. Of course in the interest of swoosh economy, I'm trying to reduce my dependence on swooshes, especially as many swoosh researchers have indicated that we've passed "peak swoosh" some years ago, and in the future there may not be enough swooshes for developing fencing economies.

[jeff]

I feel a threadjack coming...

Well, then the economics say that the swoosh futures market, so maybe you could trade some swoosh options.

On the other hand, perhaps the physics point of view is that "conservation of swoosh" takes precedence, or maybe "swoosh parity". A decrease of swoosh in one place is equalled in swoosh elsewhere.

[Capt. Slo-mo]

For each swoosh, there must be an equal, but opposite swoosh?

Or entropic swooshes: each swoosh gradually diminishes until, in the end, there are no swoosh energy units left at all.