How to Use a Sabre in Fencing

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Tim Weske on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip, I'm going to show you about the sabre, the third one. If you'd like to see more information about this, you can look at swordplayla.com. The sabre, when you look at the foil in the epee, is all together different guard. Reason for this is because everything is target from the belt to the top of the head. Different than foil, the arms and head, torso, back, hands are all part of the target. The sabre is a little unique in that you can thrust with this weapon to score a touch, but you can also make a cut. In doing cuts, like you'll see in the theatricals, stage combat portion or like what people want to do is make a big cut like this. That really doesn't do you any good because when you're making big cuts like this and trying to chop somebody, they're hitting you if they know what they're doing. They're just give you a little poke and then they run away. In each one of the weapons, by hitting the target area that I've mentioned for each one, you score one touch per hit. Again, it's not 2 hits for a thrust or 2 hits for a cut. It's one hit or one point or one point. "