Well, I’ll be back in San Diego pretty soon, so I need to start thinking about my fencing game again. I’m an okay fencer. I belong to a club there, and I regularly fence against people who show up pretty consistently. By consistently, I mean they might practice three times a week. Do some competitions. I show up more like three times a month.
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| (Illustrative Only) Jonny and Tommy decided to duel over who is going to start chopping wood for the winter. A new sport of 'dock fencing' was born just now. 🙃 If you step out of the lane you fall off. |
When I’m in San Diego, though, I really enjoy going to the club. Fencing is a fun sport, and the people tend to be interesting. I like the type of people it attracts. There is an appreciation for the beauty and history of the sport, but there is also something appealing about the one-on-one nature of the competition. You are directly challenging another person, and you have to react to what they are doing in real time.
Our group has just about everybody. We have nerds, former Marines, college students, professionals, and just regular people who happen to enjoy fencing. It also isn’t an outrageously expensive sport to get into, so there is a pretty diverse group of people who participate.
From a fitness standpoint, fencing is an excellent cardio workout. It is fast, explosive, and you can burn a lot of calories in a relatively short period of time. You are constantly moving, accelerating, stopping, lunging, recovering, and reacting. It can be surprisingly demanding.
The one downside from a fitness perspective is that fencing is highly asymmetrical. Your lunges and much of your movement are repeatedly practiced on the same side. My general suggestion with any activity like this is to balance things out. If you are practicing 20 lunges on one side, do another 20 on the opposite side. It may not necessarily improve your fencing performance, but it can help keep your body more balanced and may be better for your overall physical health.
Another thing I like about fencing is that there is always something new to learn. You can always find a technique, maneuver, or strategy that you haven’t tried before.
I recently started looking into something called a distance trap. I haven’t really tried it fully yet, but the basic idea is interesting. Fencers become accustomed to one another. Over time, they learn your distance, your pacing, and your rhythm. Once someone becomes comfortable with those patterns, you can sometimes use their expectations against them.
One way to do that involves manipulating the opponent’s perception of distance. Because the opponent is often watching your hand and blade closely to judge what is happening, you can create the appearance of changing distance without actually moving your feet very much. A small movement of the hand or blade can make it look as though you have moved away or changed position, while in reality you have maintained or even shortened the distance.
That is where fencing gets really interesting. It isn’t just about being faster or stronger. There is a psychological component to it. You are trying to understand what the other person expects you to do, establish patterns, and then break those patterns at the right moment.
And that is probably one of the reasons I enjoy the sport. It combines conditioning, coordination, history, technique, strategy, and a little bit of psychology. You are not just exercising—you are trying to outthink another person while moving at a pretty high speed.
I'm a licensed fitness trainer, yoga trainer, and engage in a lot of sports so send me a message to the right or an email if your interested in some fitness help. muradabel@gmail.com
The history of this sport is so interesting and a lot of people who play like learning about the history of different types of swords.
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