Attack in Fencing

Video Transcript

"So, no one wants a good sword fight without an attack. We're going to talk about attacks one through five. My offensive moves are the same as my parries. As I attack Ken's one, he parries one, two, just outside his hip, three, outside his bicep, four, outside his other bicep, and five, stopping just above his head where he stops my sword with the correct parry. So once again, one, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. If Ken were to parry a nine, my attack is the same. I attack five, he parries nine and just reverses his guard. Same with a seven. He parries seven, he parries eight, my attacks are the same. Just about three inches outside of that prime target area. There's another kind of attack in choreographed fighting, and it's called a slash. A slash is never meant to hit my opponent, so it's all about my opponent selling the slash by evading it. First I want to talk about the basic technique of the slash. Imagine I'm going to make a slash to Ken's abdomen. I'm not actually aiming for his abdomen, so instead of coming across in a wide slash, I'm going to pull in my elbow so that it looks like I'm slashing out much farther than I am, but I'm doing what's called a draw cut, by cheating and letting my sword arm come back a little bit. At the same time, Ken's going to help sell this move by taking a quick step back as if he's evading. But you can see how far away I am from him, I can't hit him. If Ken doesn't move anywhere I'm still not coming anywhere close to his body. The camera helps sell this move, but so does the reaction of your opponent. So, a slash looks a little bit like this. Another kind of slash--that would be an overhead slash. Let's say I want to aim for Ken's head. Most important thing in a slash is going to be the tail. My opponent doesn't know to duck until I tell him to duck. I tell him to duck by giving him a moment to see by elbow. I don't slash until I see that he's seen this. Until he starts ducking. So, in the middle of a fight, my elbow comes up, he knows that's the motion to duck, I slash where his head used to be, not where his head is, but a couple feet above where his head used to be, and we can go on from there. So, there's quite a few safety modes in there. One, we have the choreography established beforehand. He already knows I'm going to slash. Two, I have to tell so he knows to duck or to evade, and three, I don't even slash until he does evade and I make sure to slash well away from where his head, where his abdomen was. Next I think we're going to talk about diagonal slashes and a different kind of evasion. We talked about the mid slash, the head slash, but there's another kind of slash and that would be a diagonal slash where I'm coming over his head. Now, I'm not aiming for his head. I'm actually tracing a diagonal slash just around his body. So your opponent's reaction to your attack is always what makes your move. It's always what makes you look good. So that's that. Let me give you a few more tools before we go into teaching fight."