Wide parries

[NGV]

Be closer? So I can make it to his body faster?

Imagine if a baseball pitcher was allowed to move the mound 10 feet closer to the plate - instantly, an ordinary fastball would become unhittable.

In fencing,the "mound" and the "plate" are the fencers themselves. That's why control of distance is so important.

[crquack]

Except we seem to be cheaper. And, perhaps, more helpful.

If your coach is less helpful than f-net, you need make some decisions about your coach.

I think you guys need to descend from your ivory towers. For a large chunk of population a *real* coach is a luxury. For many having no coach at all and learning from fencing.net is actually a better way than learning from a crappy coach.

OTOH having access to a proper coach only two or three times a year is an improvement achievable by most. Filling the rest of the time with helpful advice from f-net's (presumably) willing helpers is not a bad thing.

Lemons and lemonades...

[MyrddinsPrecint]

I think you guys need to descend from your ivory towers. For a large chunk of population a *real* coach is a luxury.

Uh, I don't think you're exactly using the common usage of "ivory tower" here........

[eac]

1. In foil, you don't need to be pointing at the target to make a feint or to get right-of-way. You also don't need to be making a parryable feint to draw a parry.

Instead, point wide and out of the swept area of the windshield wiper. If it's still in the general proximity of one of the wiping directions, and it's sharp and sudden, it will trigger a wipe, sometimes more effectively than will an actual parryable feint. Being outside (below, for 4-6 wipes) the swept area gives you more time to react to the wipe and switch your feint (not as suddenly) to the other side. Since you're not moving your hand very far (just using your wrist to make the point move far), and he *is* moving his hand far, *and* you're giving yourself extra time to react, you should be able to avoid the wiping basically forever as you get into distance. Then you force him to do circles, which he probably isn't very good at.

I don't know if this works for epee or not.

2. It is not true that enough fencers typing at computers will eventually produce advice better than the best coach, for the same reason that a clock with a million hands pointing in all directions doesn't tell time better than the best analog clock. If it's up to you to pick which answer to take, and you don't know the answer, it's useless.

And, it is a very serious indictment of your coach that f-net is producing better advice than him or her. However, it could be you just not paying attention.
Here is how to check. Go here: http://usfencing.org/pages/4689

Click on your weapon. Click on Senior-Junior. Scan for names of your coach's other students. If you find someone, especially someone with the preceding number lower than 30, you aren't paying attention.

If you don't find anyone, and your coach has been coaching for more than 10 years, and you want to be a seriously good fencer, consider switching coaches.

Edit: Coaches who satisfy this criterion are not that hard to find. The points lists are long, and at least the lists I've looked at are not really seriously dominated by very few coaches. Unless your budget is very small, finding one such that you can travel to them every 1-2 months and then go back and practice what they say is not hard.

[antonsilver]

Hello, I am "new" in fencing to, so in my group we make a lot of "windshield" parries!

I usually faint an attack, to trigger a parry, and then go for the hand instead, it is usually now wide open to attacks after performing the nearly vertical "windshield parry"! Some even halt a bit to see what happened!

After hitting them a couple of times like this they stop parrying like that!

It only works on other newbie’s like myself!