Begining Fencers: What Parries to teach.

[big poppa]

I have several new fencers this season and ten weeks to teach them in before they begin to compete (high school) I have decided to teach only three parries and two attacks with a strong emphis on footwork and timing. Which parries would you those of you who are foilests suggest i use?

[Mergs]

I'd teach 4, 6 & one of the low line parries (7 or 8; probably 8 instead of 2, which is a bit more natural, but easy to overpower adn take it out of line). As for attacks, beat and a simple feint disengage. 10 weeks until they start competing? Good luck!

[zeidolon]

Only three parries? It seems to me that four (4,6,8,7) is much more natural as a base set of parries to start with. Even if you don't spend a lot of time focusing on all four, I think it is worth teaching them, especially if they are going to be competing. All it takes is one competitor to realize they don't know how to parry low and that's all she wrote.

Robert/Zeidolon

[HilandDoug]

Mergs is right. I teach beginners in either a 12 week class or an 8 week class, and they only learn 4 & 6, straight attack, feint attack, and beat attack. Adding an 8 will help your fencers if they're going to compete!

Good luck!

[big poppa]

Hi Doug, good to see ya! I was thinking along the lines of parries . 4, 8, and counter six but im having second thoughts about counter six im leaning towards just teaching six.

[Wizardly]

righties:4,6,7,8,C6,C4
lefties:6,4,8,7,C4,C6

The frequent mention of 8 and 2 makes me wonder: do your righties spend a lot of time defending their outside low line?

[zeidolon]

Hrm, this is interesting.

I rarely get attacked in 8. It is usually 4 and 6, with a lot of 7 thrown in for variety.
(right handed, foil, french)

[Inquartata]

Prime through tierce.

Oh, you probably meant foil. Maybe you ought to have said so, rather than assuming that "beginner" automatically equals foil?

[westcoastsabre]

Inq.,

why prime through tierce. In sabre fencing at any level I've seen muchmore quarte and quinte then prime and seconde. If they're going to be competing i'd say its extremely important to learn something to protect your head.

As for the original topic, if they are going to fence for the school I'd say teach then 4 and 6 and let the rest just kinda happen. from 4 and 6 most beginners would seem to be able to put the pieces together and do counter 4 counter 6, 7, and 8. Besides that, just tons and tons of footwork.

[veeco]

3 Parries in sabre I would probably not teach prime or second.

I would teach quarte, quinte, and tierce.

Actually those are probably good enough to get national points, seeing as sabre as so few different targets, mainly head, flank and chest, with a little hand thrown in for good effect.

Parrying in sabre is like throwing a 4 sided dice and decide which parry to use depending on the number that came out.

Let's go sabreurs, show us what you got!

[veeco]

Oh sorry, I forgot the "Italian style" quinte which is kind of the same thing than a quinte, but just looks much cooler when you can actually pull it off

[cowpaste]

Originally posted by Wizardly
The frequent mention of 8 and 2 makes me wonder: do your righties spend a lot of time defending their outside low line?

I'm a left handed foilist and my favorite spot to poke righties is outside low line. That usually means I hit them a bit above the sword arm hit, which is one place where I do not have much trouble with blades sliding off. Outside high is also pretty good, but a bunch of people counter-attack or arm parry attacks to that location.

[pkt]

Does anyone teach their newbies how to do the offset to their brand new FIRST blade?

Does anyone konw what I'm talking about?

- -

In sabre I'll teach the low triangle first
then the high triangle.
i.e.
3 - 4 - 5 then
1 - 2 - 5

I'll also show them why the parries are numbered thus to help them remember.

- -

In foil,
6 - 4 lateral and
later on
counter 6 and counter 4
much, much, much later on
semi-circular parries 6 to 8 and 4 to 7.

see also the thread called 'What is a parry?"

PK

[Inquartata]

Oops, sorry, quite right, I meant prime through QUINTE....

[wflaschka]

I vote 4, 6, 8 as the main parries. 4 & 6 cover the predominant number of attacks. 8 is useful for the flank stuff.

IMHO, parry 7 should be stricken from the books -- it takes too long to enter into, it breaks the wrist out of its fixed position, it takes time to riposte. It's the one parry that, when you do it correctly, leaves your hand out in the middle of nowhere, tactically speaking. When it finally makes itself useful to mid- and high-level competitors, it's as a flying parry that ends in the high line or with a flick to the shoulder -- nobody actually wants to terminate an action with their hand in that position, the hand is instead always transitioning into and out of 7.

For the two attacks -- straight attack (unless you emphasize it from the beginning, it will take years for fencers to trust it), and beat attack. The variations that can be had with these two attacks, in terms of tempo, target and speed, will keep the fencers busy.

[mini-romance]

Hey, I'm new here, my friend's a fencer (two years fencing foil and sabre) and I'm starting up in the spring, and just wanted to get a feel for things. He's been teaching me footwork and basic parries, I've learned 4 and 6 so far on foil. Just dropping a line wherever I fit in

[edew]

Originally posted by wflaschka
I vote 4, 6, 8 as the main parries. 4 & 6 cover the predominant number of attacks. 8 is useful for the flank stuff.

IMHO, parry 7 should be stricken from the books -- it takes too long to enter into, it breaks the wrist out of its fixed position, it takes time to riposte. It's the one parry that, when you do it correctly, leaves your hand out in the middle of nowhere, tactically speaking. When it finally makes itself useful to mid- and high-level competitors, it's as a flying parry that ends in the high line or with a flick to the shoulder -- nobody actually wants to terminate an action with their hand in that position, the hand is instead always transitioning into and out of 7.

For the two attacks -- straight attack (unless you emphasize it from the beginning, it will take years for fencers to trust it), and beat attack. The variations that can be had with these two attacks, in terms of tempo, target and speed, will keep the fencers busy.

Gee, I dunno. When I was a starting fencer, and was fencing against some top-level fencers, the only parry that was successful (in that they couldn't disengage around it easily) was the 7 parry. I say it's certainly worth teaching.

[Wizardly]

You sure we're talking about the same parry 7? Parry 7, as in parry 4 with the point low? Parry 8 is useful for defending lefties, it's true (waves left hand). But versus other righties, I'd imagine 7 is more useful.

[wflaschka]

Originally posted by Wizardly
You sure we're talking about the same parry 7? Parry 7, as in parry 4 with the point low?

Yeah, that's the BASTRD!! I hate it. I have compelling reasons to hate it... but I can't find my notes right now. It goes something like: If you can parry a low-deep-inside line attack with a standard parry, then you're breathing in your opponent's face. The distance is so close that something you're doing, distance-wise, is clearly defective.

Targetwise, we're talking everything from the belly-button to the waist, opposite the opponent. Everything on the near side of the belly-button can be adequately covered with the 8, given that the fencer's trunk is at a reasonable 45 deg. angle.

If you're able to keep a rational distance, then a low-deep-inside attack won't ever really even reach target (barring a beer-belly, pregnancy, conjoined twin). In this, the 7-zone is different from the "nearer" targets like the high- and low-outside line, on which you can still be hit even if you keep rational distance.

With a normal retreat-parry against a lunge to the 7-zone, your blade is catching the opponent's blade at their foible -- hardly parryable, or at least not worth parrying. It's too difficult to make a solid block in the low-inside line, because there's usually nothing solid to connect with. The 7 is mostly worthwhile when the opponent is crawling up your leg (very close), and that indicates other problems that are more worthwhile to correct.

So, there's no need to wrench the hand into a 7 position (the three-point-turn of fencing). Instead, one can simply scoop the opponent's foible with what is essentially a flying circle-6. This is definitive, it makes a noise, and it doesn't make the hand linger in the low-deep-inside wasteland.

Lastly, if the opponent draws you into a 7 parry with a feint, and then extends to high-deep-inside line -- you're stuck. Your fastest mitigating action from the 7 is a circular 6, because it continues the movement of the blade in the direction you were going to enter into the seven. Unfortunately, a circular 6 against a high-deep-inside attack is [1] weak leverage, and [2] draws the opponent's tip across your whole chest as you make your parry.

Edew -- Gee, I dunno. When I was a starting fencer, and was fencing against some top-level fencers, the only parry that was successful (in that they couldn't disengage around it easily) was the 7 parry. I say it's certainly worth teaching.

Maybe I go too far when I write "stricken from the books." But I certainly don't think it's critical for newbies.

About a year ago, Craig told me about a nuismatic approach to tactics he is working on. It is basically a means of evaluating the usefulness of different targets based on success ratios. I'm dying to see this; I think it would be useful to show what bits of fencing we can do without, when building basic fencers. Ahem! I hope Craig rolls this out soon!

[edew]

The 7 parry isn't used just to parry low inside line attacks. Few fencers make a direct attack to an open line without some disengages. However, many fencers do make a slow preparatory attack that starts by aiming at the low inside line. (The Rochester March attack, for example.)

The typical attempt to block that attack is the parry four, which the fencer would immediate react with the disengage and and hit to the high outside line.

To preempt that disengage, one makes a fake four parry and combine it with a seven parry, feint the riposte to the high inside line, and disengage to the high outside line. The parry is done early so it's never the case that the attacking blade is so deep into one's defenses as to make a mockery of the parry.

Also, a seven parry is just half of a strong sweeping circle-six parry. It's just that instead of following through by bringing the blade up to the top and perhaps flicking the riposte to the shoulder or back, one just just makes a direct riposte to the belly from the seven position.

The reason why that's effective is because in righty-righty (or lefty-lefty) situations, it's hard to parry a belly target riposte from a lunging, arm extended position. (Of course, the effective solution is the prime parry.)