We spend most of our time on the True Fight (seeking control over the opponent’s weapon), but that’s only a piece of the game. So, December (or Deceptember), we’ll be focusing on the art of deception in fencing, specifically in our weekly rapier class.

There are a few ways we can look at deception in fencing:

  • Feints (aka fake, simulated attacks)
  • Invitations (exposing a target to entice opponent to attack there)
  • Voids (avoiding oncoming attacks by moving our body out of the way)
  • False-edge Attacks (using the back side of the blade to angle attacks around our opponent’s parries)
  • Sneaky Footwork (using footwork to trick our opponent)

We’ll primarily be looking at feints this month. Feints are fake, simulated attacks performed to provoke a predictable action from an opponent, such as a parry or a counterattack.

Fencing is often called a “conversation of blades.” It’s a dialogue, a call and response where blades clash and chat. Sometimes we’re telling the truth with our actions, other times we’re lying. And the best lies resemble the truth, and that’s something we want to take with us when feinting.

4 Ways to Make Your Feints More Believalbe

Here are things to make your feints realistic:

  • Feint like you attack. Make your feints look as close to your real attacks as you can, just don’t shift your weight forward. Move like you normally do when attacking, up to the point where you would shift your weight forward and lunge; stop there. This should follow good order of movement — sword, shoulder, hips. This video goes over how to do just that and practice it at home.
  • Put energy into your feints. We want to motivate our opponent’s into parrying. Putting energy into our feints (i.e., quick extension of the sword and arm) can make our feints feel more real.
  • Your best targets are the face or the sword hand. No one wants a sword to the face. People are more likely to believe a feint to the face and are more likely to instinctively move to parry attacks (and feints) aimed there.
  • Don’t feint all the time. Just like lying, if we feint all the time no one will believe us. We need stick primarily to the True Fight and use feints to get around our opponent’s defenses once we’ve got a handle on their defensive programming.

It should be an exciting month of training to end 2023. Looking forward to it!

Best,

—Justin
Head Coach
Boston Academie d’Armes
(he/him)