Sabre Drills

[westcoastsabre]

Does anyone have any sabre drills that can be done by yourself in a small space (like the amount of space one might expect to be available in a house)?

[wflaschka]

In the privacy of your room...

1. Put fencing bag on chair, so it leans against the wall

2. Stick your mask on the fencing bag

Et voila! You've just made a fencing dummy!

Get en garde in front of this set-up (if you do this without being en garde, you'll be teaching your body to hit from a weird elevation -- not good). You can do the following drills to fine-tune your motor skills.

- Cut head, double-tap left cheek, double-tap right cheek. Return to garde. x50. Focus on getting sharp, crisp sounds.

- Cut head, hold. Parry four riposte to head, hold. Parry 3 riposte, hold. Parry 5... &etc. By leaving the tip out between parries, you're building fast, late-arriving parries that an opponent won't be able to get around. x50, randomizing the parries.

- Footwork combinations. Double retreat, lunge to head. &etc. x50.

- Anything you want. Just remember the critical thing is a good en garde.

[Capt. Slo-mo]

If you have a full length mirror in the house, try all the parry/footwork ideas listed above...and watch your reflection, especially hand/arm position. Extra credit if you can get enough room to do some footwork to and from mirror so you can watch dropping hand, going to center guard, etc.

[AndrewH]

Originally posted by wflaschka
- Cut head, double-tap left cheek, double-tap right cheek. Return to garde. x50. Focus on getting sharp, crisp sounds.

Make sure too that when you do this, you practice cutting by squeezing your fingers. Try to hold your arm steady and cut only with your fingers, then when your used to that, add in the arm movement to and from the target.

[sabrebelle]

Footwork, footwork, footwork. It's not just for sabre, but it helps. With only a small space, I find that focusing on a combination of three advances and three retreats (repeat forever) helps with foot speed as well as increasing the ease of changing directions.

If you have enough room for some longer footwork, visualizing an opponent and reacting to their actions is a good way to train mentally as well as physically.

Also, music helps with the silence of training alone....

[Kling]

yep cool drills

[Flunge]

the drill above where you thrust and then parry all the lines from that thrust position is good - make sure you try it with a lunge or advance lunge, then get lots of repetitions completing it with a full recovery or holding the lunge. hold the lunge whenever you can -- not in public probably.