Surprise is one of the four elements of fencing. Using it judiciously in the lesson turns the fencer from a robot into a thinking athlete.

“Distance, timing, technique...and surprise” are the four elements of scoring a touch in fencing. Many of the fencing lessons I have had focus on the first three, but "surprise" was often neglected by the coaches who trained me. I am not sure why that was. I can speculate that fencing pedagogy (at least in the United States at that time) has long focused on students executing technical skills. A student's technical skills are often the most obvious in their lack and the easiest for the coach to teach and for the student to acquire. Because of this, there is a long tradition of giving lessons with a foreseen beginning and a foreseen end (if your lessons consist of telling your student to make a specific action, and the student is then successful with that action, you're living the the land of foreseen beginnings and foreseen endings). Using surprise in the lesson reduces the control a coach may have over how the lesson progresses and force the student to (temporarily) experience failure. This can be uncomfortable and difficult for both coaches and students.

A surprise occurs when a fencing action confounds the fencer's assumptions or expectations. This can be done in a number of ways:

  1. Through movements, actions, or timings.
  2. Through misdirecting the opponent’s attention to something other than the student's intended action.
  3. By causing the opponent to question their own impending action as the best choice in the situation, leaving them hesitate and "catching them thinking".
  4. By establishing patterns and then breaking those patterns of movement, or seeing a pattern of movement in the opponent and interrupting that pattern.

Fencing operates with a cycle of "Observe - Decide - Act" 1. Surprise "breaks" the opponent's decision cycle and forces them to continuously return to the "Observe" portion of the cycle to decide their next course of action: their previous assumptions are no longer valid. In the fencing bout this forces an opponent to give up their initiative and adopt to the fencer's actions. Losing initiative means that the opponent is now responding to the fencer's last touch and not the fencer's next action, and thus the opponent is often unable to set up one of their own. Constantly forcing the opponent to return to the "Observe" part of the cycle is said to be "inside the opponent's decision loop". The fencer's actions build up an expectations which can then, in turn, be confounded by the next action which, in turn, can be used to build new expectations, only to reverse those expectations again.

For example: your student observes a pattern of moment by the opponent. The student attacks into the opponent’s predictable advance and scores. This happens again as the student observes the same pattern of movement. On the third repetition of the opponent's footwork pattern, the student moves into the opponent’s advance—as if to attack as before—but then moves out of distance and makes a parry and riposte against the opponent as they attempt to attack early to forestall being surprised again. First the student confounds the opponent's expectations by moving forward when the opponent expected them to move backward, and then the student moves backward when the opponent expects the student to move forward. The opponent might choose at this point to give up the initiative and regroup.

Another example in épeé: the student is constantly worrying the opponent's hand with beat attacks, pressing and closing the distance and making determined actions to the opponent's near target. Suddenly—without a making a beat—the student makes a direct lunge to their opponent's foot to score. The opponent's attention was drawn to defending their hand, and their expectation was an offensive action would be preceded by a beat. The attack to the foot without a associated beat was so dissimilar that the opponent could not assess the new situation and react in time. Going forward the opponent must now divide their attention between defending their hand and their foot, diverting their attention further.

Saber is replete with surprise actions oriented around the use of footwork, timing, and distance. Simultaneous actions are often used to set the opponent's expectation of the fencer's speed, intention, and depth of penetration on the attack. Classic saber tactics involved making one or more simultaneous actions and then pulling the space to make the opponent "fall short" or by coming to the center slightly slower than the opponent in order to set up a parry and riposte action. The expectations of the opponent as to the speed and depth of each attack are used by the fencer to create surprise and an advantages tactical situation.

Of course, these same things can surprise your student in the bout. Careful observation of the opponent's preparation/movements, knowledge of the opponent's patterns of thinking in order to anticipate crucial moments when surprise might be possible, and moving from a position of balance can help the studentavoid surprises. Often the opponent will reveal their intentions through small clues that the student can read in order to anticipate when the opponent is going to try to confound the student's expectations.


Coaches Using Surprise in the Lesson

Using surprise in your lesson builds both intuition (through observing small changes and clues in your actions and understanding when surprise might occur) and developing tactical flexibility. If the student is truly surprised by you in the lesson one could assume that the student should get hit. In fact this is a distinct possibiliy, so surprise has to be used judiciously and where appropriate. Surprise is a tactical teaching tool and it shouldn't be introduced when the student is learning a new skill. It's a subtle distinction, but surprise is not to catch the student in error (that would be more of a "shock exposure" approach to teaching) but to give the student a possible alternative scenario in the context of a skill already being practiced. To this end, surprise has to be built into the lesson carefully and in a methodical way.

At the beinning the use of surprise should be as simple as denying your student a prerequisite for the action being taught, with the understanding that they should call off their execution and reset in balance. Stepping back during the "Advance in Preparation Drill" is a simple use of surprise in a beginning lesson. Also appropriate at this level is giving the student a strong cue that you are swtiching gears, such as taking a very fast double retreat before switching from defencing against the student to attacking them. Later, these signals can be much more subtle (as simple as a change in your weight distribution or how you prepare on the blade).

Some ideas of surprise in the lesson for the student:

  • Can the student call off an attack and remain in balance if you suddenly remove the prerequisite for that attack?
  • Can the student change the target of an attack or riposte if you suddenly cover the orginal line of attack?
  • If the student's initial attack fails, can they recover with either a continuation of the attack or with a defense against your response?
  • Can the student who is expecting to make a defensive action in the lesson see the opportunity for an attack and act on it?
  • Can the student who is maneuvering to make an attack defend against a sudden attack by you?
  • If you change the distance after the student defends against your attack, can they adjust their riposte to suit (from direct to compound as the distance expands)?
  • If you counter-attack against the student's attack instead of parry and riposte, can they finish their action and score?
  • Can your student interrupt your preparatory footwork pattern with an attack of their own?
  • Can you student switch from one technical skill—say a detached riposte—to a different technical skill, such as a riposte with opposition or transport?

These are the sorts of situations that every student will face on the strip. It's important that the student be able to adjust to a changing situation by either a technical adjustment (continuing an attack over a longer distance, attacking a different line, switching from one technical skill to another) or a tactical adjustment (moving from attack to defense or the opposite).The ability to make adjustments on the fly is one of the hallmarks of a skilled fencer.


Students Using Surprise Against the Coach in the Lesson

As the student becomes more sophisticated, the surprise becomes more sophisticated and you can become the one surprised. You should encourage the student to take control of their lesson by:

  • The student makes a choice to surprise you with a change of distance. In a lesson in which you are regularly on the attack, the student, rather than parrying your attack, expands the distance to make your attack fall short by expanding the distance. They then make a take over attack on your recovery.
  • Similarly, the student should use different footwork to accomplish the same idea in a lesson. An attack delivered with a lunge can just as easily be delivered with a fléche or a flunge.
  • If the student has been attacking with one preparation (say, a beat), they may occasionally make an attack against you with a dissimilar preparation such as a press, or no preparation at all.
  • In a lesson in which the both of you are manuvering, the student can suddenly collapse the distance and make a direct attack or attack on your preparation.
  • The student should be encouraged to change tactics, such as attacking you when you've broken into their space (either on purpose or unknowingly) and have not made an attack of your own. The student may also (where appropriate) substitute counter-attacks for parry and riposte without prompting from you.

The examples here are just a touch of what might be possible on both sides of a lesson using surprise. Like any modification to a lesson, it is important to make sure that you're balancing the need for tactical/technical flexibly with the number of repetitions necessary for the fencer to move their training forward. Surprise is an important part of being a creative fencer, and should be trained and rewarded.


1This is loosely based on the fighter pilot John Boyd's OODA loop, long a mainstay of air-to-air combat.⏎