Strip positioning

A few nights ago I was half asleep, half-dreaming about fencing. It occurred to me that since most people fleche to the inside—my left side of the strip—perhaps I could hinder fleches by fencing close to the strip's left edge. Not only would that make it hard to fleche me without running off the strip, but it would give me more room to fleche my opponent. As I thought about it I seemed to recall some fencers tended to fence to their left edge of the strip—my right side—which would do for them exactly what I was thinking—making it harder for me to fleche and easier for them.

So on Monday I spent a lot of time hanging out toward the left edge of the strip. Sure enough people did not fleche me much. Also, people often followed my lead and moved toward that edge of the strip. But I only fenced a few people, so this notion requires further testing. The last person I fenced was John Varney, who did not drift over to the edge of the strip and fleched just fine against me. His fleches tend to hit well before he passes you, so being near the edge didn't help much with him.

Likewise, Don Penner didn't move to the left edge either. In fact he stuck close to the right edge (from my perspective—for him it was the left edge). John tended to stay in the middle, but Don was so much to the right that we were quite askew on the strip when I went to the left edge. Afterward I told him how I was trying out this idea of using the left edge and he seemed to be doing the same thing. Was he doing it to prevent people from fleching him, I asked. He said not really. People can and do fleche to the outside—which is perhaps something else I should try as it might be an unexpected form of attack. He said he used the left edge to facilitate some of his favorite attacks, including, if I remember what he said, a kind of fourth position on guard and flick, as well as a parry 2 combined with a forward step from the back leg. He pointed out how if someone lunges and you parry 2, your tip will likely end up near their knee. I had been trying to convert my instinctive parry 2s into parry 8s because I found my parry 2s tended to force the other person's point onto my own legs. But Don's idea of advancing with the back leg seems like it might avoid this problem while letting your own point be driven down toward your opponent's legs. Being near the left edge of the strip might make this tactic stronger too. Definitely something to try.

Don said that due to his habit of hanging out near the left edge and using a kind of fourth position on guard, Marshall said he fenced "like a left hander".

Another attack idea I had had while half asleep and tried out with some success was a fleche with a feint into 4 and disengage into 6 (that is, my feint into my opponent's 6 and disengage into their 4, if they are right handed). Basically it is making some threats in 4 and waiting for them to advance, then extending in 4, starting the fleche and disengaging into 6 during the fleche. It worked fairly well against a few people, although not so well against Don or John (not surprisingly, as they are so good).