Popularity of different weapons

[Bonehead]

Because you're wrong.

Oh, now I see. Thanks.

[foibles]

I have a theory that part of the popularity increase of épée and sabre occurred as a result of the fall of the Berlin wall.

When it became easier for eastern block coaches and high level athletes to move to other countries many picked the USA... and brought their knowledge with them. That info has slowly diffused into the US common pool of knowledge raising our general understanding of épée and sabre.

As our understanding increased, our comfort level in teaching those weps increased and popularity increased in kind.

I'm not a history guru.
I'm curious to see what others think.

[telkanuru]

Oh, now I see. Thanks.

Glad to bring you around.

[Fencergrl]

Oh, now I see. Thanks.

Traditionally many coaches believed (and some still believe) that foil is the right weapon to start a beginner, for the reasons you state and also because the blade is light. Here on the west coast of Canada there are quite a few coaches that still ascribe to that belief and would argue quite strongly that it is the only way to teach a beginner. I have been told many times that it is wrong to teach a beginner student who wants to learn epee or sabre that weapon without forcing them to learn foil first. If a beginner student (or a child who already fences epee or sabre) shows up at their club, they HAVE to take a beginner foil class and they will not be permitted to fence their weapon of choice until the fencing master decides they can and decides to allow them in a sabre or epee class.

The more modern approach is to let someone fence the weapon they are drawn to, or learn the weapon the coach wants to focus on. A coach might decide to teach only epee because it's a cheaper way to start a club or another type of weapon because there is a need locally in the market place. Some clubs start out teaching all 3, but only draw fencers who prefer certain weapons, so you'll hear that a club is mostly a foil club, meaning you on any given evening you might find fencers who will fence sabre or epee, but you can always find foil fencers there.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Epee is popular because
-- It's the least expensive: no lamés or special masks.
-- It's the least dependent on shifting fashions in refereeing
-- It's the least dependent on revolutionary timing changes
-- It requires the least technical preparation and training before results become possible
-- It has the most comprehensible rules
-- It is most closely linked to the tradition of dueling

Foil is popular because it requires a unique combination of creativity and precise technical control. Also, as has been pointed out, because it used to be the most generally accepted training weapon (because as long as there was memory of the sport's origins, learning to parry was regarded as essential).

Very good list on why epee generally is more popular than the ROW weapons. However, when you check that list, none of the points would explain th large difference in numbers of foilists vs. sabreurs.

On the question of why there are more foilists than sabreurs, I guess that the best way to find out is to ask fencers which have done the transition - in either way - between the ROW weapons and see whatever answers tend to come up the the most.

Personally, I am primarily a epee fencer, but have dabbled in sabre also. Foil does not attract me - I see nothing in it which the other weapons do not offer. Personally, there is one big thing that I like in epee which sabre lacks: defensiveness. In epee, it is a valid strategy to be defensive and wait for your opponent´s mistakes and capitalize on them. That greatly appeals to me, but in sabre it gets you killed.

Another thing that I personally find better with epee than the other weapons is that the blade has some stiffness and heft to it. Now, if sabre would have a blade comparable to, or exceeding, that of epee in stiffness I personally would seek it out as a spectator, and I think that that would apply to many other people also. I personally think that the lightness of the sabre - so that it can reasonably be manouvered by the fingers and hand - is a detriment to its popularity as a spectator sport. If the sabre blade were sufficiently heavy and stiff so that it had to be wielded by the elbow and shoulder, and that it would not appreciably bend when the blade hit the opponent in a cut, then there would be more viewers. Due the this expected higher exposure, I suspect that there would be more people who would try out such a modified sabre also.

Note that I state my personal preferences and assumptions here. I am not claiming that my preferences apply to anyone else than me.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[migopod]

Actually I recall someone in armory once mention that by the rules sabre blades have the stiffest blades of all three since s2000 at least in terms of maximum deviation of point under the test load.

Don't have my rules handy, and maybe I'm misremembering.

Rules check, sabre bend 4cm-7cm. Epee 4.5cm-7cm. Foil 5.5cm-9.5cm.
All over 70cm with 200g load. So epee and sabre are nearly the same stiffness, although the stiffest sabre blade is stiffer than the stiffest epee blade.

[blondie1983]

Hello, ive been fencing sabre for almost 2 years now at the high school level, and ive been wondering, why are foil and epee so popular? Dont get me wrong, im not trying to badmouth those 2 weapons and i dont really have anything against them, this is just an honest inquiry and id like to know what you guys think. Ive fenced all 3 weapons already, and I just dont see the appeal of foil. imo its far too restrictive, and if youre going to make only the torso target area, why go out of your way to include the groin? that seems a bit...idk what the word im looking for here is, somewhere between evil, unsportsmanlike, and annoying. Epee i can understand more, though I dont understand why everyone fences it so slowly. I know 6 different people (me among them) who switched from sabre to epee at some point and fenced high-paced like we did in sabre and we did very well. Anyways, before i go off on a rant, can someone please just explain to me why everywhere i look foil and epee are alot more popular than sabre? again, no disrespect intended, just an honest inquiry

and please dont treat this as a "which is the best starting weapon" thread. Im not concerned with which weapon to choose in the beginning, im concerned with why certain weapons are chosen over the others more often for competition and practice

I started fencing as an adult, so cannot speak for younger fencers that are channeled into certain weapons. Also at my club we have people fencing every weapon so I could have picked any of them and would have had somebody to fence. With all this freedom, I chose saber. Like the OP, I also cannot understand how people can like other weapons... However, this is a topic I did give some thought to.

I immediately enjoyed saber in the very beginning for several reasons:

1. No off target lights (for some reason I always felt like the touch should still be mine because I did hit them!)
2. Your not getting jabbed, poked and stabbed into your flesh (I do not miss the bruises)
3. You have a new tactical freedom of hitting to the arms and head.
4. You can score a touch with any part of your blade not just the tip
5. The bouts are shorter and more intense
6. You are planning simpler tactical actions from touch to touch instead of losing yourself in one l----o---n---g unending touch
7. We have some great American saber fencers kicking some serious ---!

Why do people choose foil?

1. They see a tactical situation they find interesting
2. They like the movement (footwork) that is required of them in order to fence their weapon
3. They do not mind being poked, and probably prefer it to being slashed
4. They might be a traditionalist and believe they should master the foil first before trying other weapons
5. They might believe that mastery of foil is the best way to begin a mastery of all weapons
6. They think that because all these other people are doing it, that they must know something they don't, so they follow the crowd
7. As stated before, you do it because that is what your club/coach has to offer

Epee I enjoy very much, and feel it is the same as saber in many ways. It also has the interesting tactics that come with a larger target area. As for epee being boring and slow... it depends on who you have watched fence it. If you are watching two very defensive fencers, and they have scored three touches in three periods, just gouge your eyes out. I once had the opportunity to watch two A rated collegiate epeeists (not that rating matters, but these two are excellent fencers!) fence. Both were extremely tall, quick, athletic, aggressive, correct, and smart. That level of epee fencing was very exciting, and was actually "almost" saber-esque in its foot movement.

Sometimes all it takes to attract someone to a certain weapon is to see those that fence it really enjoying it (at my club you can hear certain fencers laughing and crying out with the touches, clearly in love with what they are doing). It helps also to have a coach who is good at teaching it, and having club mates that are willing to invite others into the weapon, to try it, and to encourage them in it. I always invite foilists that look frustrated and unhappy, and those who are always hitting flat to try saber. I have successfully helped (or converted) one girl to saber.

Not everyone can enjoy saber. For some the actions are too fast, the touches progress too fast, and the assessment of the bout needs to happen too quickly for them to enjoy the process. (That is why you need to try convert people to saber early on, before they get stuck in that slow-mo mindset!).

Different strokes for different folks. Try to channel your enthusiasm to bring more people to saber. Invite your non-saber club mates to fence it with you (challenge them to a 15 touch bout in saber, if they say no, offer them a five touch lead), and have fun on the strip while fencing with them. Show them some of the moves you can only do with saber (head cuts & parry 5, stop cuts etc). When they see the new possibilities they might want to stick with it.

[whtouche]

I think it's funny, it seems all sabre fencers (myself included) have a hard time understanding the popularity of non-sabre weapons.

As for why epee is so popular worldwide I have a theory. I think epee is the most instinctive weapon of the three, what with whole body target and no right of way. If you handed any given person or group all three weapons and gave them a very brief overview and then left them alone with no coaching it seems to me likely that they would be able to advance further in epee. "Hit with the point, and hit first."
It seems logical that this would be the reason alot of countries have epee but nothing else really. Sweden? Switzerland? (yes I confuse them sometimes..) Estonia, etc.

I fully recognize the likelyhood of this entire post sounding ignorant.

[redheaded_sabreuse]

Nope. I've seen foil fencers try to transition to saber. Ugly.

Whereas I actually found it really freeing to transition from foil to sabre. I'm smallish (5'5") and almost all my opponents have been taller than me, so I end up in a lot of infighting situations. What a total relief it was to have all those hits that would have been flat or passe in foil score me an actual point in sabre!

It's funny; I found the transition from foil to sabre easy, but once I'd been fencing sabre for awhile, I started taking a foil class again as well. And for me at least, it's much easier to apply foil techniques to sabre than it is to use sabre techniques in foil.

Fun part is, most of the sabre fencers I train with have never fenced foil, so they have this fun habit of forgetting that yes, you can attack with the point in sabre. So I'll get an opponent wading up to me flashing the cutting edge around this way and that, oh yeah, so gonna get you, sucka -- and while they're still too far away to attack (they think) I'll just drop my point, jab into their preparation with a straight thrust and land a point attack.

Plus now that I've fenced sabre for awhile, foil feels a little confining -- whadaya mean, I can ONLY attack with the tip? And it pays off to be REALLY aggressive and get in your opponent's face and chase him/her down the strip in sabre, while using the same tactic in foil means that you'll be throwing yourself on the other guy's blade while lots of your attacks end up passe.

[K O'N]

Epee is objective. Foil is not. That's why I quit foil and sold all my foil stuff to the girl I was driving back from a competition with twenty odd years ago.

It was perfectly clear to me then that it was possible for many, perhaps most, of us to work like crazy, train like crazy, fence like crazy with foils, but be doing something that was close to but not exactly what high level coaches and directors called foil fencing. Then we get to a competition and discover in the sixteen or the thirty two that what we thought was an attack wasn't, or (more often), something we thought wasn't an attack was. And we were out, and the director and the coaches of the fencers still in the competition would shake hands and go outside to smoke and speak Russian to each other, and the whole thing felt like a scam, like we had never had a chance. I emphasize that this is how I felt, not necessarily how things actually were.

But in epee you at least knew what the rules were. You knew all the rules, no subjectivity. You might still lose, but at least you'd actually lose the game you thought you were playing, not some similar but not exactly right game.

We had examples in Texas of people who had coached themselves to a very high level of epee. No such examples were to be found in foil or saber. I fenced at a college club with no coach. It seemed possible to us to self-coach epee to a pretty high level. It seemed impossible to self coach foil or saber. So I fenced epee.

I think foil is popular because a lot of people start with foil and never switch. They didn't pick foil, they were given a foil and for whatever reason they never quit. I think epee is popular because the size and weight of it suits some people, the ability to be defensive and the pace of the fencing suits some people, and the objectivity suits some people.

Of the three, saber is least popular because almost no one starts with saber and it has none of epee's advantages. It really does require a coach, it's very hard to understand, you'll never figure it out on your own, it's not objective, the rules are not clearly written down. All it has is that touches happen quickly, not really much of an advantage.

K O'N

[Bonehead]

How do you coach yourself to a relatively high level. I find that really unlikely. How high are we talking here?

[Purple Fencer]

Actually I recall someone in armory once mention that by the rules sabre blades have the stiffest blades of all three since s2000 at least in terms of maximum deviation of point under the test load.

Don't have my rules handy, and maybe I'm misremembering.

Rules check, sabre bend 4cm-7cm. Epee 4.5cm-7cm. Foil 5.5cm-9.5cm.
All over 70cm with 200g load. So epee and sabre are nearly the same stiffness, although the stiffest sabre blade is stiffer than the stiffest epee blade.

Yep...although a sabre blade is easier to bend during a fencing action, they're allowed LESS deflection when tested on a gabarit....what was sabre's minimum flex in 1999 became the MAX flex in 2000...and I'm glad it did....last week I was sparring with someone, broke his current blade, and he pulled out a blade from before the change.

He makes a cut to my 4...I make the parry, but the blade whips into my chest.

On the prior blade I would make that parry and not get hit....THIS time he whipped around and got be square on the nipple...YEOWTCH!!!

I just bought a manplate for when I fence him again...

[K O'N]

How do you coach yourself to a relatively high level. I find that really unlikely. How high are we talking here?

Tim Glass was 3rd in the U20 world championships in the mid 70s, entirely self coached. He was US national champion in 79, I think, and had just then moved to Houston to join Sebastiani, so he was still mostly fencing on stuff he taught himself. There were certainly others. I don't think you'll find anyone who has done the same in saber.

Lots of good epee fencers in Texas when I started were self coached. I remember watching David Boyce fence Al Peters in the finals of the Van Buskirk in 85 or 86, while someone who knew them both laid out the plot for me; Al was classically trained and a nationally ranked foil fencer, David was a big athletic kid from UT, entirely self coached. David won 12-11 (10 touch win by 2 max of 12). It was clear to me there that in epee you could work hard and if you had the talent you could at least be in the bout with a very good fencer. We had the pentathlon center in San Antonio, so we saw very high level (for the US) epee, that helped. We would go down and fence, then come back and try to copy everything we saw.

Anyway, we weren't trying to prove a point, there were no coaches in reach. The nearest coaches to me were the Towrys, an hour away in Dallas, and they were packed. Half the time you went you couldn't get a lesson. We didn't want to be self coached, there were no coaches around, and if you were going to self coach, epee pretty clearly was the way to go.

K O'N

[catwood1]

How do you coach yourself to a relatively high level. I find that really unlikely. How high are we talking here?

I hear Oiuyt is a kinda good sabre fencer who is self taught. He did recently make the finals of a Division 1 NAC...

[Peach]

I hear Oiuyt is a kinda good sabre fencer who is self taught. He did recently make the finals of a Division 1 NAC...

Of course, he is also a rather qualified coach himself, so despite being self-coached he is well-coached.

[I_luv_saber]

-- It is most closely linked to the tradition of dueling

Absolutely not. Otherwise, yes the other points are pretty valid.

[I_luv_saber]

Another thing that I personally find better with epee than the other weapons is that the blade has some stiffness and heft to it. Now, if sabre would have a blade comparable to, or exceeding, that of epee in stiffness I personally would seek it out as a spectator, and I think that that would apply to many other people also. I personally think that the lightness of the sabre - so that it can reasonably be manouvered by the fingers and hand - is a detriment to its popularity as a spectator sport. If the sabre blade were sufficiently heavy and stiff so that it had to be wielded by the elbow and shoulder, and that it would not appreciably bend when the blade hit the opponent in a cut, then there would be more viewers. Due the this expected higher exposure, I suspect that there would be more people who would try out such a modified sabre also.

Sounds similar to some of the older sabers before the streamlining was done.

F.net sells a Hutton saber that's modeled after those. I'd be down to try.

[Rock]

Always glad to confuse, clarify, or derail any thread ->

From "Lessons in Sabre, Singlestick, Sabre & Bayonet, and Sword Feats; or, How to Use a Cut and Thrust Sword", by J.M. Waite, 1880.

From page 1,

How to Hold a Sabre.

In holding a light sabre, place the fingers rounf the grip so that the middle knuckles are in a line with the edge, and let the thumb lie on the back to enable you to direct the point.

With a heavy sabre, the thumb should be placed round the grip, or you may be disarmed by a strong beat made with a sword of the same weight.

[A comment on the singlestick grasp, and then ->]

Hold the sword securely, but do not grasp it tighly, or your hand and arm will soon tire. The grasp should only be tightened when delivering a cut or forming a guard.

There is great art in easing the grip directly after a movement has been executed. A swordsmen who does this properly has what is termed "a soft hand," a great desideratum in sword play. It gives quickness to the hand, and saves it from being jarred.


From the first page it's clear that that there's a distinction between heavy versus light sabre technique.

(The book also contains varieties of sabre duelling regulations, all of which consider the various types of sabres that might be used.)

[Allen Evans]

How do you coach yourself to a relatively high level. I find that really unlikely. How high are we talking here?

The same way you coach yourself to a relatively low level: pay attention when you lose bouts, watch what your opponent's are doing on the strip, pay attention to what you're doing on the strip, experiment, innovate....think.

(How many of these things Oiuyt actually does, I can't attest to)

[SJCFU#2]

I hear Oiuyt is a kinda good sabre fencer who is self taught. He did recently make the finals of a Division 1 NAC...

And IIRC he enjoyed a fairly sucessful collegiate fencing career doing epee prior to taking up saber.