So I fought the single rapier world number 112 at a tournament a few weeks ago, and other than being a lovely human being who beat me thoroughly like 11-5, I did get this nice attack which I feel warrants some more analysis.
I was essentially trying to recreate a method of attack that I've seen some Olympic epee fencers do a few times, wherein they quickly duck beneath their opponent's point to score. Like so:
The problem is though, this is often contingent on your opponent going for an attack of their own - and my opponent unfortunately does not take the bait. Rather, he retreats and moves out of distance, preventing me from scoring in the traditional epeeist way.
However! While the original plan failed, it did present an opportunity for a fun play. As I crouched suddenly and agressively while moving forward, my opponent, having some self preservation, retreats a little. While he does this, he drops his guard slightly, moving from seconde (defending the outside line with wrist pronated) to quarte (defending the inside line, wrist supinated)
This, naturally, exposes his outside line.
In that moment, I was able to extend my point, pronate my wrist, and launch a fleche (an attack where the back leg passes over the front, creating an explosive running attack) which lands cleanly onto his chest/shoulder area.
The benefit of pronating my wrist is it creates opposition.
While Olympic epee is governed by electric score boxes which have built in delays to officiate afterblows (In epee, once a light goes off, the other fencer has only 40 milliseconds to land their afterblow), HEMA is a lot more based on the judges discretion. Thus, it is much more important to make it clear that any afterblow is parried or significantly out of time.
By pronating my wrist, and placing my blade on my outside line so that my long edge faces his blade, I was able to both attack and move his blade clear as I did. In doing so, I pretty much pre-parry any counter he has at his disposal. While his blade does get out at the end and potentially clip my leg a teeny bit, this is easily over an acceptable tempo where an afterblow can be given, and therefore, the three points for a thrust to a chest was awarded to me!
To be honest though, a lot of this analysis is fun to do after the fact, but my body moved before my brain could process what it was seeing properly, so I'm thanking the training and muscle memory for this.
Anyway I'm still not really sure what I'm posting on this damn website so like if anyone has bothered to read all of this, and liked it, please let me know and I'll keep at it!
gummygunk
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
