Sword Styles in Fencing

Series Summary

Fencing is the art of swordsmanship. It has developed into a competitive sport, being one of four sports featured at each of the modern Olympic Games. Protective fencing gear consists of masks, gloves, breeches and plastron. Typically made of tough cotton, nylon, and Kevlar, the full-body padding is very protective and cannot easily be punctured. Sabre fencing uses right-of-way like foil fencing, but points can be scored with the edge of the blade. This follows from the original design of sabres as edged swords, whereas the rapiers which led to foil fencing were usually pointed, thrusting blades.

In this free video series, expert swordswoman Amy Boyle teaches you the basics of epee fencing. Amy will show you the basic attacks, thrusts, advances, the en garde position, and how to disengage when fencing. Amy teaches her epee fencing techniques with clear instruction followed by careful examples. You will see beats, remises, reprises, counter attacks, and more. Amy will give you all the moves for advancing and attacking in epee fencing.

Video Transcript

"Before we start talking about epee attacks, I want to talk about some of the differences between the weapons and between the sword styles. Both foil and epee fencing actually evolved from 16th swashbuckling with rapier, but as noblemen started carrying shorter swords, foil, rather than rapier, foil evolved as a kind of sport, while the epee remained as a dueling weapon for some time. So it helps explain some of the differences in the style, and also what the weapons look like. As you can see, the foil is smaller than the epee. It's actually quite a bit lighter also--the guards are a little bit different. And let me go over some of the parts since we've talked about the foil--of the epee. The most striking difference is this, which is called the bell guard. The bell guard is a lot bigger, and there's a function behind that. The bell guard helps protect my hand much more, and because the epee target area includes my entire body, that becomes really important. I can actually use the bell guard to protect more than my hand, but we'll talk about that a little bit later too. The blade, as I said, is heavier, and this, which is called the cross section, is shaped a little differently. It's actually triangular. It makes it thicker and the groove here, actually in the blade, is called a blood groove, which of course doesn't have a practical purpose in sport fencing, but it did evolve as a way to kind of gruesomely let the blood out of the body after stabbing. And also, there's an indentation here so that broke the seal, so you wouldn't get your weapon stuck in your opponent. Once you broke that vacuum seal you could pull it out cleanly. So, that's the explanation behind it. Now that you're familiar with your weapon, let's talk about how the differences in style affect your play."