Know Your Enemy

When you go out onto the piste (or other* place of combat) do you check out your opponent? Or are they just another person to fight? I suspect a lot of fencers just get on with it without a second thought and sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. However, it might be of use to analyse the adversary before taking them on so here are a few questions you could ask.
Are they short or tall? Their height will determine their stride length (helping you maintain distance), their reach (ditto) and your likely attack range.
Are they athletic? This will determine whether they get stronger or weaker as a fight progresses and how well you exhaust them by using your footwork and the length of the piste. It also gives you a clue as to your energy conservation strategy which could be vital in a 15 hit match
Are they experienced? Difficult to judge visually but after a few hits you should have an idea
What is their energy like? Are they calm, twitchy, nervous, prone to anger etc? This will give you a clue as to how to fashion your tactics
Are they left handed? Might sound obvious but this will definitely influence your strategy...!
Have you fenced them before and if so, do they have any favourite techniques? This will give you an idea of what to use against them
All these things will influence the way you choose to approach the combat and there may be other indicators that you will wish to develop for yourself. I would strongly recommend that you give it some thought though because it's too late when you've just lost.

* I originally typoed this as 'otter place of combat' - presumably for gladi-otters.... I thenk yew

The Critical Margin

In Japanese martial arts there is always much discussion of the critical margin in an attack and it usually is directly related to the distance between you and your opponent. A legendary example is the duel between Musashi and Kojiro in which they both struck at each other simultaneously. Kojiro's blow sliced through the knot of Musashi's bandana whereas Musashi's blow crushed Kojiro's skull. In real combat a distance of an inch could make the difference between life and death; a critical margin indeed! There are lessons in this story that can be used to illustrate Musashi's grasp of the importance of these margins and I have already covered some of these in the post 'Musashi's Oar' from September 2008. There is another aspect to the story in the fact that Musashi tied a towel round his hair as a bandana and left the knot on his forehead. Why did he do this? Maybe as a means of keeping his hair out of his eyes (Musashi had notoriously long and unruly hair as opposed to the shaven topknot of most Samurai). Or maybe it was there as protection; just enough protection to make a difference where the critical margin was an inch or two? We will never know if Musashi was lucky or just very very good but I think that very good makes it own luck a lot of the time......
On a much less lethal level there have been many times in my fencing career where I have attacked someone, missed by an inch and then got hit by a counter-attack or riposte. It's very annoying when that happens and it is usually down to one (or several) reasons:

Incorrect technique selection: I'm either too close to use it or too far away, possibly because my footwork was wrong
Poor execution of the technique: no explanation needed!
Opponent out of range: they are moving away from me when I attack
Telegraphing: I make it obvious what I am going to do and they adjust distance before I do it
I attack the wrong bit of the target: due to my foil background I still tend to fleche to the body not the arm and can't cover the distance quick enough
Not getting inside their reflex time: I don't move them where I want them to be
A predictable rhythm: it makes it too easy to avoid my attacks

The all pervading factor in the examples above comes down to one of the three D's of fencing; distance. If you can't manipulate the space and distance of a combat then you are likely to lose it. It really is the critical margin of any fight and will determine the success or failure of the move you are attempting. Step in too deep and your feint won't have time to execute or you are vulnerable to counter; step in too short and you just won't hit or won't provoke the move that you are looking for. Distance distance; details details....

Congratulations are in order...

Well done to James Rose, who this weekend came third in his age group at the British National Championships; in fact he only missed out on a Final place by one point, losing 15-14 in the semi-final. James has shown great application over the last few years and is a nice chap to boot so this achievement is very well deserved.

The more I look, the less I see....

I've noticed a strange phenomenon occurring when I have a lesson off Coach Andy these days. Whenever I look at the target I want to hit I miss it but whenever I don't look at it I hit it. This is particularly prevalent in epee lessons when I am asked to stop hit to the wrist when attacked. If I look at Andy's hand I miss it completely but 9 times out of 10 when I vaguely focus somewhere near his right shoulder I hit the wrist plum on. I'm not even really focussing on anything specific but just trying to cultivate a general awareness of movement and tempo. It feels like my point of focus is actually behind him. I can't really put forward any specific reason for this but it does seem to generally relax me and allow me to mentally take in the big picture. The use of the eyes and what to look at has been discussed by Musashi, Takuan Soho and Yagyu Munenori with many metaphors that I have already covered elsewhere on this blog (see Feb 2009 archive) but sometimes it's interesting to experience a phenomenon yourself as that is when it really starts to make sense. It's also nice to feel that I am on a path that has been walked upon by greater antecedents than I!