where should point be (epee)

[frenzl]

should i in the en garde position direct the point at my opponents arm or bell or whatever?

[laughingduelist]

Personally, I find that it depends on the opponent. Sometimes I fence using absence of blade, with my arm dropped and my point towards their foot. This is particularly useful when fencing someone who is very good at hand touches or taking someone's blade. Other times, i fence with my point towards the opponents guard. Generally, the best thing to do is make sure that your guard protects your entire arm and keep the point on level above your guard.

[akishier]

when youre en guard (in the 6th position), direct blade towards opponents (right) shoulder.

There are other positions like the 8th where you direct blade towards opponents upper thigh.

[Fechter1]

Note: This applies to epee.

Always have your point oriented towards the opponent's closest target, the wrist. This reduces the time needed to position your blade properly for an attack, makes disengages easier (harder for them to engage your blade). Great against those wrist flickers (they tend to impale themselves on your point... he he he).

[Delmont]

I agree with laughingduelist. It depends on what your opponent likes to do. Will think of examples later. Just got up and head is kinda fuzzy.

[dreadfoily]

The classical epee en gardge seems to be to keep your tip pointed at your opponents inner arm, the stance is similar to foil, but more narrow, with the arm extended slightly more than in foil, and the weapon parellel to the floor. That's the classical stance; but, many hot"dogs" like to keep their tip almost to the floor, until the director tells them to raise their guard; it's to keep an even playing field at least in the beginning, then you get creamed in a few seconds because the guy standing in front of you fenced about 20 years with an A.

Anyway; I generally like to keep the tip of the eppe up, when I have the strength.

p.s. you know, just when I was getting good at killing some of the other epeeists, someone said "don't jump" what a putz. The jump is a standard movement in epee. It's actually practiced in some salles, and it's great for popping a light one on your opponents arm.

[Tireur]

"There's nothing to winning, really.

That may be the new "classical" stance, but in the old days they taught us to keep the point slightly down. It kept the underside of your forearm covered.

[Dar Tanyon]

The pointy end goes in the other guy..........

[grphiw]

As mentioned before, either in 6 or 8.

Whatever you do, don't expose too much of your arm. That's just asking for trouble.

[shortepeeist]

I must agree with what everyone else is saying about keeping it aligned with your opponent. One thing that I have found useful is that if the person is taller than I am I tend to have the tip up a little bit. That is just because I am the shortest epeeist in my club.

[Gav]

The traditional (classic?) arm position would have you stand on guard with your forearm parallel to the floor and the tip only slightly raised [if at all].

Modern thinking still keeps the forearm pretty much level with the ground however the tip should be raised so that it is above the level of your opponents guard. This will help you when you lunge, or straighten, as the tip has a natural tendency to drop.

I wouldn't advise raising your forearm at all as good Epeeists will capitalise on it.

[Katman]

You should have your tip pointed at thier soul!

[The0ne]

I fence epee really weirdly, my engarde changes a ton in the bout. This is so that my opponent doesn't have a chance to find out that I have no clue what I'm doing! I almost beat B in a pool bout once. . .

[cathy a former fencer]

my new salle will be foil only for the time being, when I get started again, i'll have to sign off the board forever [insert cry emoticon from all of you] because the new guy JUST WON"T WANT TO SEE this cr_p on the net from me! So, just for a few more days, bear with me. I have to get my foil brain back, I went nearly 100% epee. The brain doesn't know what a lame is anymore.

[The0ne]

It's the shiny thing you try and hit in foil

[D'Artagnan1673]

Personally, I prefer to place my point in different locations depending upon the situation. Where you place your point will also differ depending upon how good you are at managing distance. The whole "point at the floor" routine to me requires a solid grasp of distance to keep a veteran epeeist from exploiting the aforementioned weaknesses of not covering your arm with the guard.

One of my favorites is to keep my point at my opponents wrist and forearm and let him/her run right into my point on the attack. Granted, I fence at a lower level so this probably does not work against seasoned epeeists.

[Dee EffEll]

What ever you choose, be sure to actually do what you think you are doing. The best way to check this is with a mirror or videotape. I had to spend some time with the newly installed mirror at my club. What I thought was a guard position behind my bell really wasn't!

[jBirch]

frenzl,

As D'Artagnan1673 alluded to, you place the point at different places depending upon what response you are trying to ellicit from your opponent.

Case in point:

If I place my point in seconde at the floor, you will see my exposed outside forearm (facing inwards) and may attack it. In reality, what I'm doing though is "inviting" your attack to my open area, so that I can quickly prime and riposte. After my attack hits, you may be wary of attacking to the inside forearm with my arm in seconde so I can gain a measure of distance on you by, essentially, closing the forearm even though it is exposed.

If you are just starting out then you want to have a relatively neutral guard. The reason for this is that you haven't enough experience to offer an invitation that is useful: you're just putting yourself at a disadvantage. There are a couple of philosophies around a neutral epee guard and whichever one your coach favours is what you should use until they teach you something else. Most epee coaches will set you up with one of the following positions to start:

1) epee level with the floor, elbow 1 fist from the leading hip, point at the opponent's bell, angulated at about 12-1 o'clock.

2) epee raised upwards, elbow 1 fist from the leading hip, point just outside and above the opponent's trailing shoulder, angulated at about 2-3 o'clock.

The idea with the first position is to cede your high and low lines but guard your forearm from attacks. You leave yourself in a good position for stop hits to the forearm and have good mobility to transition to the high or low line depending on the attack. The idea with the second position is to close out 6 and set yourself up for an advantage defending against high line attacks. The first is a little more agressive and the second a little more defensive, but at a beginning level it really doesn't matter. Some coaches have variations of angulation on the first position (different sides of the forearm), but the second is usually pretty much a classic foil en guard. The idea with the angulation is so that an opponent will impale themselves and you don't have to do a thing except stand there.

Once you move past this then you get into the positions for the various guard positions. I wouldn't recommend any of these (except maybe 2), but if you're looking to throw your opponent a curve ball, they sometimes help. All the numbered parries are also guards and all of these assume a right-handed fencer. In 4, the point is above the opponent's right shoulder, in 1 & 7 about a fist's width outside their forward toe, in 2 & 8, outside of their trailing knee, and 5 left-side about 15 degrees forward, 35 degrees up. The advantage to a low line guard (2) is that your opponent is forced to go above your bell in order to hit your forearm. Some say that you remove the disengage as a problem, but I disagree.

Of particular note in epee is "guard with point in line" where you use the classic PIL, not as an attack, but as a guard. It's called a guard because it essentially protects you from attack by stop hitting anything coming in while keeping your own target as far away from your opponent as is possible. Generally here you want to keep your point just aft of the bell on the top of the forearm or directly at their eyes. Sometimes, fencers can't see a point that is directed at their face and the distance becomes really hard to judge.

As a beginner, the basic en guard positions give you not only protection but a measure of feel for the proper distance to be at. If your swords are crossed, then you can thrust. If the points are just seperated, better lunge, etc... As you get more advanced you'll find, especially in the beginner-intermediate levels, that if you remove this distance crutch, your opponent may have a little bit more trouble realising when you're threatenng and when you're out of range.

Hope this helps.