How To Disappear Completely

Fencing is like Dancing....

...if you have the right partner, your skill improves FAR beyond your experience level.

I had a cold. I didn't want to go to practice. I didn't want to run up four flights of stairs four times in four minutes (I'm only down to 4 and a half minutes anyway) and then run laps round the building. I didn't want to practice footwork and race across the gym en garde. But for the last ten minutes of practice, I got to fence one of the student instructors (the one that makes us run stairs, actually). Not only did I get to improve my carte parry* and attack-disengage,** I learned how to avoid the disengage with a different parry, a return to en garde.*** However, I need to remember to keep my wrist "oout." It helps me to aim and hit target (for foil, the chest area) more successfully.

*Carte parry: stopping the attacker's blade by rotating the wrist across the front of the body, in something like a windshield wiper motion. The object is to get the lower (and stronger) part of your blade over your attacker's blade while pressing it down, in order to deflect his blade off target.

**Attack-disengage: you extend your arm for the attack, but dip your blade ever so slightly in order to avoid your opponent's carte parry. Your blade then comes over his, and you carry forward on the momentum of your thrust to (hopefully) hit the target area.

***Return to en garde: Your opponent has attacked, you've done a carte parry, but he has succesfully disengaged. If you have stepped back while doing your carte parry, you might have enough time to bring your arm back to en garde position (bent elbow, hand slightly extended in front of you, pointed at opponent). This reversal of the windshield wiper movement of carte parry catches your opponent's blade underneath (because if he has disengaged, his blade is now over yours) and pushes it up and to the side, away from you.