Speed

At the regional fighter's practice this last weekend, there was a fencer bemoaning the fact that he was having to work harder to get in the groove. The downside of this was that the fencer in question is one of those fast little suckers who can strike faster than you blink. So what's the problem? Speed and hard do not mix. Well, okay, speed and hard mix too well. And while I came out of my passes with him without any lasting mementos of the occasion, some of his hit were a bit harder than strictly necessary.

The thing with speed in fencing is that it's easy to be fast if you don't mind hitting like a freight train. Likewise, it's easy to hit softly if you don't mind being so slow a snail could void your thrust. The difficulty is in combining speed and a soft touch.

If you know your range, you can do a fast thrust to just short of your opponent and then slowing your thrust down to a more manageable level, but if your opponent closes while you're thrusting, you'll still hit like a freight train. Breaking your wrist when you strike helps, but it doesn't alleviate the force of that initial contact. Or another option is to have a very light grip on the sword - which lends to a natural breaking of the wrist when you strike - but the problem here is the danger of being disarmed.

So what's the answer to speed without strength? Believe it or not, slow work. Practice your moves slowly, focusing on the precision of the strike and putting the bare minimum force into your touches. Start at quarter speed and stay there until you can consistently hit on target without harming and then move your speed up to half. Again, keep at your drills until you are consistently hitting where you want as soft as you want and then move up to 3/4 speed. And so on.

It may be that in the end, you cannot got at what you think should be your full speed. All that means is that you shouldn't have been going that fast to begin with and you'll have to make do with what feels like 85 - 90% of your proper speed. But that's okay, with your new-found precision from all of your slow-work, you'll discover that that's more than enough to get the job done.

And whatever you do, please don't try to force fast. It hurts.