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Compound Footwork: The Next Step

  Footwork is what gets you to the right place to make a touch. Being able to perform multiple footwork actions in a sequence is important both technically and tactically. Should an advance-lunge be two separate actions or one compound action? Read on. The difficulty of teaching preparations is that they involve compound footwork and […]

The Importance of Seeding

The Importance of Seeding, or Why Can’t I Win Any DE Bouts?   When I had only been fencing about a year, I started to become a regular competitor. I went to all the tournaments I could find. I did OK (not great) at the novice and E-and-under types of tournaments, but it seemed like […]

The Importance of Preparation

  In 1997, when I had been fencing about two years, one of my coaches asked a group the (rhetorical?) question, “Why do you people fall into your lunges at the end of a preparation even though you can’t hit your opponent? Why aren’t you learning this stuff in the lessons?”, I started trying to […]