Picking a Lame for Foil Fencing

"The Lame is a metallic scoring jacket that you'll wear over your jacket when you're fencing electrics. It goes just like this. As you can see, it's going to cover my target area as a foilist, and conduct electricity so that it appropriately scores any hits to that target area. You want to be careful when you do get a Lame because you can develop dead spots, and those are spots in your jacket that no longer conduct electricity, and those can actually be a little bit more expensive to fix than they are to just replace. You can get one as cheap as sixty dollars or so, but they usually cost a hundred. So, make sure you take care of it when you do have one, because they're delicate, and you want to keep sweat and salts away from it. The Lame is obviously not necessary if you're not fencing electric. So a lot of times when you first start fencing, you're dry fencing--you're fencing at a club, you're learning, you're fencing in judged, dry fencing matches, and it's just not necessary. Now, later, when you want to fence in a competition, you will need one. You may be able to borrow one from your club, but also, if at your club--like this at this one, we have electrics, if you want to practice in your club, you know, obviously, with your full gear, that'll probably be the next investment that you want to make."