Fencing Club

This week was a very productive with my class working very hard at the cuts and defences. They drilled themselves on foot work and the 6 cuts and 4 defences. 

Michael also returned for his test and past it with flying colours.

Towards the end of the lesson, Mphango and Michael lined up to test their guards against everyone elses cut that they had been learning, each person had to use fencing steps to cloes in on Michael or Mphango then step and deliver a cut when they thought they were close enough. At the start everyone kept trying to hit Michael and Mphango’s swords, but after a little correction, they started trying to hit Michael and Mphango.

And suddenly they started being more successful!

One fantastic piece of skill was shown by Hasham (sorry if I spelt it wrong, I don’t have my list with me!), who threw a cut 1 at me, which I blocked. I then asked him how he could hit me quickly, he promptly flipped his sword over, stepped to the side and thrust. PERFECT!!!

A big congratulations to all who graduated this Wednesday!

Each pupil who had been attending the fencing club since September were given a short test to see how much they had learned during their time at fencing club.

They had to show me the salute, the en guard position, how to step forward and how to step back, 4 of the 6 cuts, 2 of the 4 guards that they had learned and how to riposte from a guard. In addition to this, they had to fence each other to the best out of three points whilst showing good control and movement.

Particular mention must go to Tulsi and Aatteeqa who’s bout lasted over a minute with thrusts, all 4 cuts and lunges being used. Excellent stuff! Also, Suraj for his very direct approach to fencing, all his 3 hits were done in under a second or two against Harris. Nathanial was also very good with his lunge, as poor Carl found out, Mphango’s moulinets were fantastic, even if she did show off a little!

So to Nathanial, Aatteeqa, Alana, Suraj, Saif, Ali-Asgar, Sarah, Harris, Tulsi, Mahnoor, Carl, Hunaina, Nadine and Mphango, well done and congratulations! I hope to see you all sign up again later on this year before the Lidget Green tournament that will take place in the summer. Keep practising at home and if you have any questions about fencing, please come and ask!

The newcomers who behaved excellently got a good idea of what they were going to be training in over the next 8 weeks and hopefully they will be inspired by what they saw.

Perhaps, they will be even better than the first group? We’ll have to see…

Nope, no fencing round a bonfire, I’m sorry!

This week, we were refining our cuts and our guards. After the year 6’s went to Winmarleigh Hall and experienced some fencing that had NO CUTS in it, they wanted to get back to good old slashy slashy pokey pokey rather than just pokey pokey.

We had a few very good games of Simon Says, whilst practicing footwork and cuts and defences. Lots of good work was done, although it was the listening skills that let people down!

We then replayed the bridge game, although this time the bridge could hold 4 people, adding a bit of a tactical element to it. It turned out some of the kids were very aware. Although my memory has let me down, as one sneaky attack by the sabre’s was foiled, the defending foil returned the attack with a perfectly timed parry only to be then hit by the cowardly sabre’s partner who had just dispatched the foil’s partner!

There were some brilliant plays and an excellent example of a single time defence (thats blocking your opponents sword and hitting them at the same time!) by Saif who blocked and stepped forward at the same time to thrust his opponent on the mask!

I’ve got some fun and games next week, so be prepared!

Mr F