Problem Solving

One of the key things that any fencer has to be able to do, at speed and under pressure, is solve problems. The other night one of my students was telling me about a problem he had at a recent competition. He had been using beat attacks on a person with a very strong grip but once he'd executed the beat his opponent would parry the beat and riposte hitting simultaneously. This caused some inconvenience to my student as the hit would go against him, based on the president's interpretation. He asked me how he could have got round it. To me there are several answers but you have a think before reading on.....
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keep thinking
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Got an answer?
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Hurry up, he's winning!
Anyway, here are my suggestions in no real order of merit.
Do a beat disengage instead, therefore the opponent has nothing to parry thus denying the opponent's strength.
Try a beat but with a first counter riposte attached, thus using the enemies strength against them. You'd need to do this from a little further out to give yourself the distance to make it work though.
Where the opponent has a strong grip, try engaging their blade with pressure and see if you get enough reaction to attack off it with a disengage.
As I said earlier, this is the sort of thinking you need to get used to in order to improve your fencing. Every opponent throws up different problems and it's down to you to solve them!