Circles within circles

This week at the club I gave a lesson on the action of moving the blade in circular sixte. I wanted to show how the same movement can be applied in both offensive and defensive modes and I started by reviewing the circular parry of sixte, the important points being:

• The hand remains in sixte at all times - otherwise the action will be more easily deceived due to it's wide nature
• The thumb remains on top at all times - otherwise the hand will supinate or pronate and remove the point from the target area, thus making the riposte more difficult
• The opponent's blade is engaged with their foible against your forte  
• The parry is left as late as possible, the opponent's blade being encouraged into your foil guard in what I refer to as 'the triangle of control'

If a circular parry is carried off in a neat and timely manner it is a very enjoyable parry to employ but it depends on delicacy not strength. The strength of the parry should lie in the fingers and hand and travel no further up the arm than the wrist.   
I then moved on to the engagement of sixte and how it was different to a beat, a more subtle reconnaisance of the opponent's grip strength and reaction to your blade movement. The important points are:

• The preparation must be made as the back foot lands while you are stepping forward.      
• The engagement is made with your mid-forte against their mid-foible
• The engagement is a preparation and as such is a prelude to an offensive action. Do not make the mistake of only preparing without doing something. I see a lot of fencers who engage, withdraw, engage, withdraw, without actually ever doing anything at all!  

I then looked at successive parries of sixte made against someone who has deceived your first parry with a feint and then counter-disengaged under it. You respond by continuing around in another parry of sixte, usually accompanied by a small step back to account for the opponent's accelerating lunge.
Finally I looked at the envelopement, where two rapid and successive engagements of sixte are made as a bind, your blade moving forward aong the opponent's blade to make the hit.
And that was that! I was trying to show how the same movement, executed with sound basic principles could be deployed in many different ways. This to me is one of the great pleasures of fencing, using one technique to do subtly different things...... Circles within circles......