This drill puts direct, indirect, and compound attacks into a distance framework for the student. Too often the focus in lesson is isolated on bladework, and coaches often get lazy and teach the same blade work (simple and compound) over the same distance without regard for the compexities of the action.

Over a decade ago, I was looking for a drill to solve two problems: first, my students would come into attacking distance but often stopped to make an additional (unnecessary) preparation, or—second—my students lunged at the end of an advance whether they were in attacking distance or not. I wanted a drill that would be both student initiated and distance driven. My goal was a drill that taught the student to initiate closing the space and then quickly make a decision about making an attack.

Like most good ideas, the entire drill came to me in in one piece while I was doing something not related to the original problem. Also, despite what I thought was a flash of brilliance on my part, this drill turned out not to be a unique idea of mine, but is quite common in most fencing pedagogies.

The drill is quite simple. You and the student find a distance at which the student can make a direct, simple, and explosive attack that can score before you can parry (1). From this attacking distance, the student takes an additional step backwards to a preparation distance. From this distance the student is outside of their ability to hit with a one-tempo attack. The student initiates the drill by taking a step forward in preparation. Your choices on the student's step are:

  1. You stand still .The student should immediately lunge to hit you. Or...
  2. You step back as the student steps forward. The student should not attack, but reset to the original starting distance and the drill repeats.

There are no blade actions by you in the basic version of this drill. Your weapon should be held in such a way to allow the student a clear path to the target, but not so far out of line that you can't parry if necessary.

If your decision is to step back, it is important that you retreat as soon as the student begins their advance. There can be no delay by you in denying the student the distance necessary to attack. Watching the student's front foot can help ensure that you move immediately. When they move, you should be moving as well.

When you step back, the student should abort the attack and "reset" back to the original distance. The student should not bobble or lose their balance at the end of their preparation step. If they do, either verbally correct them, or attack them on their loss of balance. If the student should decide to attack you, even though you have left the space, you should be able to make an easy parry and riposte.

If your decision is to stand still on the student's advance, the student should end their advance and should lunge with no hesitation. After the hit they should recover in normal order and return to the starting distance. It can be helpful to have the student work from a mark or line on the floor so they return to the same spot every time. This will let the starting distance be consistent.

You are controlling this drill, but the student is deciding. The most important thing is to move at the correct time and watch the student for errors in execution. These errors are mostly going to be in their balance and the timing of their attack after the preparatory step:

  1. The student can finish the advance and fail to lunge immediately.
  2. The student fails to notice your retreat and lunges anyway.
  3. The student sees that you have stepped back, but has anticipated lunging, and arrives at the end of the advance badly off balance, and may have to take a small step to recover.

If the student finishes their advance, pauses, and then lunges, you should be able to parry and riposte the attack. The student should parry your riposte and counter-riposte if they can (they should "fight out" the touch). If the student attacks even though you have left the space, you should be able to parry and riposte against the student (and again, they should fight out the touch). If you pull the space and the student stops but loses their balance at the end of their advance, you can attack into their loss of balance.

I find it useful to not give much correction the first time I do this drill. The student should be able to understand why a particular iteration was successful or not. Don't be too quick to solve the problem for them, though you may need to remind very young students that if you step back, they should not attack.

It's best to start this drill blocked for each of the two options. After a number of repiditions blocked, you should alternate between standing still or stepping back. Finally, you should randomly stand still or step back. When you move to a random execution of the drill, be alert and ready to move at the start of the student's step.

This drill reinforces good mechanics, but it is mostly about one of the most important things about giving an indivdual lesson: teaching the student to "see" fencing and to make decisions based on what they see.

After doing this drill for a number of repititions (blocked, serial, and random) stop the drill and talk to the student. There is a lot going on here, and you need to bring the student's attention to a few points, especially if they were not very successful in making the right decision (remember, this is a drill about making the right decisions not in the number of times the student hits you. Emphasise these points:

  • A smooth, balanced prepartory step is important. If the student anticipates the lunge and is leaning strongly forward at the end of the step, they will be off balance if they don't lunge.
  • The student must have good lunge mechanics. If the student is in the habit of kicking the front foot and "falling forward" in the lunge with little or no push from the back leg, the lunge will be too slow. The student must be able to accelerate through the entire leg and not be slowing down at the end of the lunge. Poor lunges should be easily parried.
  • The student's decision to lunge/not lunge is made on the landing of the student's front foot. Many students will wait until their back foot lands in the advance to make their decision. This will be too late. They will either lunge into the wrong space, or there will be too much hesitation before they lunge into the correct space that you should be able to step out of the distance, parry, or both.
  • Related to the previous point, the student must understand that they have to watch you from the start of the step, and not simply "open their eyes" at the end of the preparation (the step is the preparation here).
  • In the advance the student’s back foot must come up as quickly as possible. Even if the student is making a “slow-ish” advance with the front foot, a late back foot will mean that the lunge will start too late if the student's decision is to attack.

The student may attempt to “cheat” by making their initial advance very fast or very large in an attempt to catch you unawares. Be alert and ready to retreat quickly. Watching the student's front foot will prevent you being caught by a fast advance. If the student attempts to make a long advance to close the distance, their advance is usually too slow and has too much "air time" to catch you in the wrong space (feel free to retreat futher if the student tries this. It's what an opponent would do). If you begin to move when the student moves, it will take a very athletic student with a long lunge to capture the right distance (if they do, they are probably cheating you on the lunge space—a skilled student with a very good and smooth lunge can do this drill from a surprisingly long distance, which is the point).

If you step back, the student may also try to extend their lunge to hit by leaning, over lunging, and so forth. Don't allow this. They will be unsuccessful in hitting you, and they won't be able to recover well or defend well. In general, most fencers can lunge further than they can actually hit an opponent who is putting up even a rudimentary defense. Bad lunges at close distance aren't necessary. Bad lunges from out of distance should be parried.

After the lunge (whether it hits your or not) insist on a good recovery on the student's reset. Don't let the student flop back into on guard. If necessary, once the student has recovered, immediately take a step or two forward and force the student to retreat in good order.


Simple Complications

This drill involves many of the essential elements of making an attack: taking the initiative, seeing/creating the proper distance for an action, making a decision, and acting on that decision without hesitation. In some ways, I feel this drill is the sine qua non of offensieve fencing actions in all three weapons. Becaue of this, the drill is open to many modifications. Some simple modifications are:

  1. Do the same drill with the student attacking in low line, either inside or outside. The drill is the same, but the student finishes in the line they start with, i.e. start in low outside on the advance and finish in low outside.
  2. You have the option, when you escape the student's advance, to perform a "take over" attack with your own advance lunge that the student must parry and riposte against. As noted ablove, this option is useful for students who over lunge into a position they cannot get out of.
  3. Have the student start the advance in preparation after maing a peliminary advance or retreat. This is a good first start to allowing the student to move freely before making an advance in preparation. This can further be adapted to teach the student simple "distance traps" using footwork patterns.
  4. Make the attacking footwork a fléche rather than a lunge (in foil and épeé).


Adding Difficulty

Once the studnet is comfortable with doing the simple version of this drill, add additional tasks to increase the level of difficulty. The first modification is to divide the student's attention by adding a slow sweep through a high line on the student's advance.

Adding a slow sweep for the student's blade turns two situations into four:

  1. The student advances while the you stand still. You do not move your blade. The student attacks direct with lunge (or fleche). This is unchanged from the original drill.
  2. The student advances and you stand still while making a slow search for the student’s blade on start of the student's advance. The student avoids your sweep/search, finishes their advance, and lunges to score.
  3. The student advances, and you retreat in time. You do not move your blade during the retreat. The student stops in balance and then resets with a retreat. This is unchanged from the original drill.
  4. The student advances and you retreat while making a slow search for the student’s blade at the start of their preparatory step. The student protects their blade (derobing your search if necessary), stops in balance, and resets. The student does not lunge.
  5. As in the introduction of the original drill, you can present the four options as blocked, then serial, and then random.

Your search is done slowly and deliberately early in the student's advance. The search is simply a moving obstacle (like a windmill in a miniature golf course) that the student avoids on the way to your target (if they make an attack). If the student has a hard time perceiving this search, make the search slower and more exaggerated. You can also start from a low line and move through a high line to make the search more obvious. At the start, search through the same line every time. Later, you can vary the line of the search, keeping it slow. Caution the student to watch your shoulder/chest, rather than your blade.

Students will find this drill very difficult at first. They will see a sweep as an invitation to lunge even if the space is wrong. They will focus more on the blade opening than on the space.

You can add the previous modifications to this drill that you might have used in the simple version (different targets, different attacking footwork, ecetera) and add some additional ones:

  • The student can avoid your sweep with a coupé rather than a disengage.
  • If you find the student's blade on the sweep, you should immediately riposte against them.


"Advance in Preparation" Turns into "Feint and Disengage"

Beyound being a simple go/no go drill for distance, I have used a variation of this drill to help students understand the execution of a feint/disengage attack. As I mentioned above, most fencers can lunge further than they can score with a direct attack. To score at the edge of the fencer's lunge distance, they must steal time from the opponent. Outside of the one-tempo space the student must make a compound attack. But first, the student must learn to recognise that they are outside of the one-tempo space, but not yet outside of their ability to reach the opponent. This drill can assist in helping them understand that difference.

In teaching this drill, your control of the distance and how it opens (or doesn't) becomes very important. The distance in this drill is more nuanced and demands closer attention from both sides of the drill: you as the coach creating the space, and the student in deciding whether to prosecute an attack, and what form that attack will take.

Previously, the timing of your retreat gave the student a "yes" or "no" answer to making an attack. The student either had the distance to make an attack or did not have the distance (you stepped back). In coaching this next variation of the drill, you will change the timing of your retreat so that the student may have to make their attack over a longer, two-tempo distance. They execute a feint and disengage in order to hit you.

The drill begins the same way as the orginal version of the drill:

  1. The student advances and you stand still. The student attacks with lunge.
  2. The student advances and you retreat immediately. The student stops in balance, then resets with a retreat.

Do this several times, either blocked, alternating, or randomly. Then, without telling the student, add a third element:

  1. You retreat on the student's advance, but slightly later than in Option #2. Observe the student’s reaction.

Introduce Option #3 as a variation of Option #1 by retreating just after the student has hit you with their lunge. In other words, the timing of your retreat is so late you haven’t appreciably changed the distance. Gradually make your step slightly earilier and earlier, but still so late that the student is still deciding to lunge and scoring against you.

At this point, the student recognizes that the distance is almost good enough for them to attack. They will probalby come to the edge of their preparatory stop and hesitate, stutter, or misstep. The student knows they can reach you, but they also know that you have the time to parry their direct attack. Now is the time to show the student how to steal that little bit of time that they need, and that stealing is done with a feint and disengage.

Now the drill becomes:

  1. The student advances and you stand still. The student attacks with lunge.
  2. The student advances and you retreat. The student stops in balance, then resets with a retreat.

  3. The student advances and you retreat late. The student lunges with a feint and disengages your parry to score.

Stepping back from the student's advance “on time” denies the student the distance to make an attack. However, if your step is “late” the space between the you and the student is expanding, but not so much that the student can't reach you at the end of an accelerating lunge. While the expanding space gives you (the coach) time to parry, a simple disengage can steal enough time for the student to score at this longer distance.

The philosphy behind this drill is one of time and space, rather than simply "action". If the student can make a direct attack to score, shouldn't they? The opponent should only be successful with a parry when the student's attack can't cover the distance to the target before the opponent can cover the line being attack with a parry. In a full competitive situation, there are a few more variables in executing a feint-disengage, but I believe that recognizing the distance is an important one and this drill is the start of teaching the student when to attack direct and when to attack compound.

Many coaches have been taught to teach a student to make a “feint”, see the coach's parry, avoid the parry, and then lunge. This is probably fine to teach the basic mechanics of a disengage (though I think it does a real diservice to the student). In real fencing the opponent sees no reason to parry unless an attack is developing in front of them and that means that the student's point is closing the distance to the opponent's target without hesitation (2). Invariably, disengages have to be done in the middle of attacking footwork. Teaching the disengage divorced from the footwork helps the mechanics, but gives the student a very incorrect impression of why the feint works. If the fencer is simply making their feint by sticking ther arm out and not closing the distance, why should the oppnoent parry?

This drill is very challenging to the novice fencer. It is a combination of decision making and good mechanics. You may have to take a step back and work on lunge and blade mechanics to make the student successful. If the student is having difficulty, switch between the drill (advance and making the decision to lunge straight or feint and disengage) and the mechanics of making a good, accelerating lunge with the disengage. You may need to start the student in making a smooth extenston with their hand and feet moving together, making the disengage in the middle of an advance, and building up from this to making a disengage in the lunge.

With an experianced fencer, you can combine all the drills in this example together, forcing them to make direct attacks, indirect attacks (avoiding an early sweep) or feint disengage attakcs (3).


Final Thoughts

I have done this drill in all three weapons, making small changes as needed for each weapon. This drill is a good first step to introducing fencers to the idea of a decision point in fencing based on changes in distance, rather than just blade mechanics. It is also an excellant way to introduce the student to initiating actions on their own, rather than waiting for a cue from a coach.

I also use this drill as a tool to refine technical execution of blade work and foot work. The student may make the right decision (to attack) but if their execution is poor, the attack will not succeed. Blade work must be done with fingers and good technique, and footwork must be balanced and smooth on the approach, with lunges done with good acceleration. Understand, however, that it is much more important that at the beginning, the student understand the concept of distance, decision points, and how changes in distance effect their actions. At the start it is more important to focus on the student's correct decision than on good execution. Good mechanics and good decisions go hand in hand of course, but it is often more valuable to the student to introduce them to a concept and then "back fill" the techique necessary to execute the concept.

It is easy to see that by adding some additional footwork and challenging the student on the distance, this drill can be a basis for a very challenging lesson in all three weapons up to a strong intermidiate level.

1 Note that for a student that is just beginning, this distance might be very close.⏎

2 For more informaton about feints, see: https://www.coachescompendium.org/LIES.HTML⏎

3 To be especially cruel, sweep early for the blade while stepping back slightly late, forcing the stundent to make a "disengage, feint and second disengage in lunge". This is a very difficult skill and should not be left for an advanced fencer.⏎

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Evans. This article may be reproduced freely, as long as it remains unmodified and his copyright notice is included.