Basic Advancing in Foil Fencing

Video Transcript

"Hi, so let's review our basic advance. Both your advance, and your retreat, is the most basic steps that you're going to have in fencing, and they're really important. As you become more advanced these will be second nature, but at first your technique is really important. So again, your feet are shoulder width apart, and you want your knees bent. Keeping your knees bent does a couple things: it keeps your center of gravity low, so that you're very well balanced; you have a lot of stability. It also makes it equally easy for you to move forward and backwards, because ideally your weight is centered between your front and your back foot. So you don't want a stance that's back here, or one that's up here. As you're moving, in the middle of your step, at the beginning of the step, in the end of the step, you want to always be balanced between these two feet. So if I take a step forward, my toes kick up first, move forward, and my back foot follows. If you notice, my feet are just as far apart as they were when I began. If I take a step back, my back leg moves first. This is called a retreat. Back leg, front leg, and you don't want to hop up and down. So if I take two advances, my eyes should be at the same level as they began the entire time. You never want to take a step up and come back down. That way you'll maintain your balance, and you'll be able to move with speed and security along the strip as fast or as slow as you'd like."