Over the last couple months, my perspective has shifted on several subjects in historical fencing. Looking back, the insight seems obvious, but until the idea was presented to me, I probably wouldn’t have considered it since I had unspoken assumptions about the subjects that kept me from considering them.

Hit Quality: What about your buddies?!

One “cultural difference” we see among historical fencers is the emphasis on hit quality in sparring. Two extremes on the spectrum of hit quality conventions:

• Low standard for hit quality: Any strike with the edge (or even any strike regardless of with the edge or the flat) is considered valid and the bout is immediately halted after the touch
• High standard for hit quality: Poorly formed strikes that make contact are ignored and, even if a fencer is struck by a well-formed strike, the person who has been hit is allowed to perform one or more actions after being struck before the bout is halted

Both of these approaches are “wrong” from a simulation perspective, but they make different kinds of errors:

• A low standard for hit quality systematically overestimates the effectiveness of weapon strikes
  • This convention encourages fencing that doesn’t allow even a questionable blow to get through (which is a good habit, because you can’t perfectly predict what effect a blow will have and humans can be surprisingly fragile)
  • This convention favors the attacker because the standard for an attack to be valid is lower and the standard for an effective defence is correspondingly higher
• A high standard for hit quality systematically underestimates the effectiveness of weapon strikes
  • This convention encourages fencing that assumes your opponent will not obligingly stop fighting once they’re hit (which is a also good habit, because you can’t perfectly predict what effect a blow will have and humans can be surprisingly robust)
  • This convention favors the defender because the standard for a an attack to be valid is higher and a defence that is not quite perfect can still be acceptable

In my experience, groups that prefer a higher standard for hit quality tend to study an older fencing source (medieval and Renaissance). Groups studying later fencing sources (18th and 19th century onwards) tend to have a lower standard for hit quality. This partially reflects the training culture that existed in those historical periods:

• The modern “afterblow” convention (where a fencer who is struck can attempt to hit the attacker with an “afterblow” after being struck) is inspired by certain historical rulesets from the 16th century
• Military fencing training of the 19th century almost universally halted after the first touch
• Many medieval and Renaissance fencing sources show grapples involving grabbing the blade of your own sword or your opponent’s blade, so clearly the historical persons teaching such techniques thought not all contact between blade and body was sufficient to wound
• Later fencing sources tend not to feature blade grabs or explicitly dismiss blade grabs as too dangerous (or simply inappropriate)

As you can imagine, these different training cultures can lead to misunderstandings while fencing:

1. The “military fencer” strikes a “medieval fencer” on the arm while the “medieval fencer” is moving in for a strike
2. The “medieval fencer” continues their attack and hits the “military fencer” in the head
3. The “military fencer” is offended that the “medieval fencer” didn’t halt after being struck and the “medieval fencer” retorts that a quick hit to their arm isn’t going to instantly halt them in their tracks and the “military fencer” should have been prepared to defend against the afterblow
4. Both fencers walk away frustrated at how the other fencer wasn’t “martial” enough in their fencing

Personally, I’m biased towards having a higher standard for hit quality. However, I heard a good argument for applying a lower standard that definitely shifted my opinion on the subject:

The Argument

In a one-off fight or a duel, if you survive but take some light wounds that will heal in a few days or weeks, that is perhaps an acceptable outcome.

In a military context, or any situation where you are part of a team, if you are wounded even lightly, your capacity to support your comrades is instantly compromised. This reduces your group’s ability to win the current engagement. After the engagement, even if you survive, you are still a “casualty” while you are recovering and valuable resources will need to be diverted to support your recovery. For the sake of the unit, it is better for you to not be wounded at all than to wound an enemy and get lightly wounded yourself.

Therefore, we should train in a way that encourages not risking a wound, even a superficial one.

I find this argument persuasive! My conception of fencing is often a bit egotistical since it is an individual sport and I imagine it is just me vs the opponent. However, it is often much more important that the team do well than that you, individually, come out on top.

Hit Quality 2: Low-quality hits as high-quality provocations

Continuing on the subject of hit quality, I’ve taught my students that they should strive to deliver high-quality hits and avoid delivering low-quality ones. However, my opinion has shifted on that too.

To name a single, concrete example: it sometimes happens that one fencer attacks and is parried, but the parry isn’t perfect and the attacker can push through their opponent’s defence and lay the edge of their blade on the other person’s mask despite the opponent’s blade still blocking the way (similar to the technique directed at the neck shown at 8:07 in this video). Although I’m certain that having the edge of a sharp sword placed on your face is deeply unpleasant, it might not even cause a wound. Even if it wounds, such a slice on the face is probably not going to stop a determined opponent, so I wouldn’t consider it a fight-ending hit. However, you have achieved a very advantageous position and your opponent must react if they want to improve their situation. That is, your “low-quality” hit is a very high-quality provocation and will likely result in a reaction that you can easily use to set up a fight-ending move. Alternatively, tying this in to the previous point about hit quality, the fact that your situation is so advantageous might mean that continuing the exchange is not worthwhile since the person in the inferior position can at best turn a bad situation into a less bad situation.

To use chess as a metaphor, a low-quality hit is another way of “checking” your opponent even if it isn’t “checkmate”. As in chess, placing your opponent in check is generally a good move, so going for low-quality hits can be a valid tactic. An experienced chess player might be able to recognize when their situation cannot be salvaged even if “checkmate” hasn’t yet been achieved, but I think it’s worthwhile to train the “end game” and practice turning “check” into “checkmate” rather than conceding the game at “check” every time.

Going forward, I’m still going to aspire to high-quality hits, but I’ll explore how I can use low-quality hits as waypoints on the road to a high-quality finisher.

Striking with the flat of the sword?

In the early days of HEMA, there was a debate about whether you should parry with the flat or the edge of your blade with some people arguing that you must parry with the flat. As the influential trainer and YouTuber Matt Easton explains in this short video, this debate has been dead for years: parrying with the edge of the sword is extremely well attested and there are a lot of good reasons to do so.

Flipping the script from defense to offense, having proper edge alignment while cutting is often a point of emphasis in historical fencing training:

• A good cut should aim the cutting edge at the target
• A good cut should keep the edge in the same plane for the entirety of the cut

Since I’m familiar with both of these topics and their background, I’ve generally trained motions that resemble striking actions (whether offensive or defensive) with the edge directed towards the target.

However, it must be said that, due to asymmetries of the human body, sometimes it is biomechanically difficult to direct the edge towards the target while doing certain motions. For example, beginners in longsword fencing will quickly notice that it’s physically easier to throw a good-quality cut from your dominant side (the right side for right-handers) than from your non-dominant side. There are various ways a person can react to this fact:

• Practice harder on your non-dominant side
  • If it’s harder to do, that just means you need to practice it more
• Focus on areas of excellence
  • Any time spent practicing difficult cuts could be better spent improving what you’re best at
  • The early Liechtenauer tradition says that you should fight from your right side if you’re right-handed and from your left side if you’re left-handed; this suggests something akin to focusing on what you’re good at
• Stop caring about it!
  • If I have to move from point A to point B and it’s hard to direct the edge at the target while doing so, then I just don’t bother

That last perspective is something I’d never really considered. It seems lazy, but it’s fair to pose the question, “If it doesn’t matter that your edge is directed at the target, why bother?”

Why might it not matter?

• You don’t care if the cut lands with poor quality because you’re just trying to provoke a reaction (see the section “Hit Quality 2” above)
• You don’t care if the cut is poor quality because you’re setting up something else (like the next action in a sequence)
• You don’t intend cut with the blow anyway (perhaps because the blow is a beat, not an attack, or because you are simply moving from one position to another)

There are several historical examples of using the flat of the blade on purpose:

• Striking with the flat to facilitate a continuation with the edge: Daniel Pope’s interpretation of Meyer’s Kronhau
• Striking with the flat to flick around the opponent’s defense: Daniel Pope’s interpretation of another technique from Meyer
• Binding with the flat to facilitate a cut to the other side: Keith Farrel on the Kölner Fechtbuch
• Beating with the flat to parry: Federico Malagutti’s interpretation of Fiore’s “breaking the thrust”

I was so eager to reject the old “edge vs flat” parry that I neglected to consider that just because parrying with the flat all the time is wrong, that doesn’t mean it’s never right to parry with the flat. Similarly, cutting in with the flat can be legitimate if done on purpose.

Going forward, I’m going to explore using the flat to parry when its convenient to do so and see where that leads me.

Extend your arms! Keep your sword in front of you! Or maybe don’t…?

When I started épée fencing, two pieces of advice I heard again and again from my coaches were:

1. Extend your arm fully when you attack
2. Keep your sword in front of you when you aren’t attacking

There are good reasons for a coach to say these things, especially to a beginner. But, particularly when fencing with weapons that lack much built-in hand protection, such as all swords with only a simple crossguard, keeping your hand in front of your body presents and easy target and an easy follow-up target. As such, while extending fully has its place, retracting your hands and holding them off to one side might be a better default.

Some of these positions feel very vulnerable with my hands so withdrawn, but the kind of attacks that can threaten such a withdrawn position are more committed (and, therefore, more exploitable) than attacks that can threaten an extended guard.

With my longsword fencing, I’ve been trying to follow these rules:

If you are not actively attacking or provoking…

1. Your hands should not be the easiest target; keep your hands withdrawn
2. Don’t hold your hands in front of your body, but to one side or the other
3. Always have one shoulder forwards

I “stole” these “rules” from this video by Oskar ter Mors.