Thinking out of a corner...

I had an interesting bout at the club last night, which goes some way to reinforcing my previous post concerning making the opponent come to you. I was invited to fence by an opponent who I'd never faced before, one of my younger students who has taken up epee since learning foil. I didn't know what to suspect as he's quite a physically imposing lad and my brain was definitely work-fuddled but was pleasantly surprised to find myself 8-2 up after a couple of minutes. It all seemed to be too easy, my hits to arm were getting through; I got some nice hits to wrist and then.... it all started to go wrong. Suddenly I was being picked off very neatly on my wrist as I tried exactly the same attacks that had worked previously and I was soon only 11-10 up. I strongly suspected I had been set up and knew that I needed to come up with a new game plan. I played for a bit of time as I explored options, just doing enough to keep the bout going without leaking any more hits. Thinking it through I realised that my opponent's strength was his speed in the counter-attack and essentially I was 'going to him' all the time. What's more, he'd obviously worked this out and was deploying his strength well and if I carried on like this I was going to lose. So I decided to take his strength away from him by pretending to attack and then responding to his counter with a circular bind. I felt if I could get a two or three point gap I would be ok and lo and behold I got to 13-10 up with this change of tactic. He then had to change his method (and all credit to him, he responded to the situation well) by attacking me which then allowed me to start countering him, finally taking the match 15-11.


It was a good match made more pleasurable by the fact I felt I had thought my way to a win by employing processes and techniques that I advocate regularly to my students. It's nice to practice what one preaches! I'm not saying Musashi, Munenori et al would have been proud but they may have just perhaps ghosted the merest hint of a nod......