Lesson 1: The Basics
The forward, or sword arm, is of course held in front with the point constantly threatening the opposition. The rear arm is held in accordance with the weapon in question. As foil allows only the trunk of the body (front and back) to be hit, the rear arm for this weapon is held high, curled behind the head. This opens the lungs, and creates a ballast not unlike the tail of a cat. This ballast can be used to quicken the thrust and recovery of lunges. With sabre' and epee' (we will recall that with sabre' the entire top half of the body is target and with Epee' the ENTIRE body is target including the arms for both) the rear arm is held behind the waist as the ballast provided is far less important than protecting target area.
When defending oneself from an attack, there are three basic methods (with a million and a half varieties.) The parry, or displacing the attack by use of the blade. The displacement, or avoiding the attack by moving out of its way. And the counter-attack, or attacking through your opponents thrust before he/she can land theirs. The parry is of course the most rudimentary and the most important to master.
Basic parries are discussed in reference to the zone of the body they are designed to protect. If a fencer were to draw a cross on their torso, with centerpoint right around the sternum, it would divide the fencer into four zones. Each zone is labeled intuitively as 1, 2, 3, and 4 moving clockwise around the fencer with 1 being the upper right quadrant (containing right shoulder and breast), 2 being the upper left quadrant (left shoulder and breast) , 3 being the lower left quadrant (left side of stomach and left hip) and 4 being the lower right (right side of stomach and right hip).
The parries are a little less intuitive as the parries are based on the classical fencing style (which actually encompassed 9 basic parries.) The parry designed to protect quadrant 1 (Q-1) is point high (tip pointing towards the opponents eyes) with the bell of the sword guard moving right to force the attack to miss by passing thew opponents blade to the right of the defender. This is parry FOUR. The next parry, SIX, is the same parry in opposition (point high and bell to the left) designed to
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