Understanding Terrain

A great swordsman once wrote "Use whatever qualities of the setting you can, concentrating on taking advantage of the situation". Whilst he was predominantly discussing physical terrain, this advice can also extend to other aspects of the fencer's mind-set. If you are fencing steam foil and relying on the eye of the judges and the president to give you the points you need to vary your techniques to allow them to see what you are doing. Electric scoring apparatus is designed to deal in fractions of a second so using flicky or whippy techniques that are simply too difficult to spot will not lead to victory when you are depending on human error. I am not advocating slowing right down but in order to be given points the officials must be able to see what you are doing. You must use the situation you are in and take advantage of the conditions.