How to Parry as a Defensive Fencing Maneuver

Video Transcript

"My name is Brad Bogus. Now I am going to guide you through the basic defensive maneuver also known as the parry. The concept of the parry is when an opponent goes to make an attack at you, you take your blade and you deflect their blade away from your target area. Now notice that when I am deflecting I am not waving my sword all the way across my body in a very wild and theatrical way. I have my body here, my sword position guarding my five. If an opponent was to make an attack at my four, so imagine the blade coming towards here I am going to parry it by rolling my wrists over, holding my sword to the inward part of my body with my point facing the opponent. The reason I am not doing this is because I have all this ground to cover just to get my weapon back into their target area. So I just do enough to keep their blade from coming across mine and hitting my target area. All you want to do is block what is necessary not over exert yourself and cause yourself to open on the other side of your body. So all the target areas are named by what you are parrying. You’re in five you have a parry attack at four, parry four. To get a defense six, you are going to parry six by rolling your wrists outside of your body, again the point facing the opponent just enough the sword cannot get into your target area. If you want to parry seven, there is two ways. You can lower your wrists downwards so that you are deflecting the blade out to the side and you can make a counter attack or you can drop your blade like so which is another way that is a little bit easier and little bit less effort on the wrist to make a quick parry. If you are going to parry eight pull the wrist outwards, point drop down like this just enough to prevent the sword from hitting your target area. "