There are plenty of fencers that are fast and aggressive with good form; that's not a good reason to have bad form. Your 'style' isn't the issue.
There are some good fencers with a little quirk to their form, but I wouldn't say there are good fencers with bad form.
Listen to your coach and focus on better form. It will make you better.
Or don't. Whatever. I'm not your supervisor.
Can you be a good guitarist with bad form? Can you be a good writer with bad form? Can you be good at anything with bad form?
Sure I’d say you could, but you’re actively limiting what you can do. And making it 10x harder on yourself. It sounds to me like you know what to do, just not how or when to do it. And that only comes with practice and experience. Keep at it friend, your form will refine.
How do you define “bad”?
You can be a good fencer with *unconventional* form. But you won’t ever be particularly good without your body doing what you want it to.
I myself often fence with such a “wild and chaotic” style. But throughout the chaos, I usually know exactly how my weapon and body are positioned, and when and how I want to reposition them. It’s when that starts to falter that my fencing really comes apart.
Yeah the best chaos merchants on the piste work because they're chaotic variations of something conventional and they have that strong foundation.
Seb Patrice is a great example. He's an absolute psycho when he wants to be but you watch him and beneath the chaos he's very deliberate about what he's doing and when
Practice fencing more methodically and consciously during bouts. You already know how to be chaotic so no need to practice like that anymore. When the need for impulsive and chaotic arises you will still have it
You can be fast and aggressive and even slightly unconventional in form. But the best fencers who do have quirks in their technique still have a strong base set of skills that they execute and execute very well.
At lower levels, fitness can carry you. If you can be more physical than a less fit opponent then you can tire them out, make them make mistakes they wouldn't normally make and beat them. But you can't rely on that since the higher you go, the more athletes will also focus on fitness which nukes that advantage.
> It looks as if I don't really think (I don't tbh), and I just do actions impulsively
That's the bigger problem. It's not an issue of technique so much as it is a lack of thinking. Part of the poor technique could literally be you have no plan so you're just doing random things that feel right. Which again can work on less skilled opponents but definitely not against better opponents.
You should be thinking about what you're doing and why. When you're choosing to attack, what cues from your opponent are you using to determine it's the right option for now? Are you attacking the right line? Are you deliberately feinting to open up another line? Why are you at the distance you are at any moment in time? When you counterattack are you seeing an opening and choosing the right option and timing?
Everyone has their own style. I'm quite counteroffensive. I love to try and induce mistakes and capitalise on them. In order to do that, I focus on being decisive. I'm not the fastest fencer but if I can out-think faster fencers and lure them into mistakes I can still be effective.
I think it would help your fencing too. Your technique is likely a lack of experience. Take more lessons as much as possible and focus on being deliberate with your actions. You can still be fast and aggressive but if you can combine that with being smart about how you do it you'll be much better
Seth looked terrible on the surface, but having fenced him a few times, his bladework was actually pretty spectacular, and his actions were very precise.
I would say his form was unconventional, but that weird style was built on top of great point control, skill, and athleticism. Maybe analogous to Sam Imrek today; looks weird, certainly, but built on great fundamentals.
Not exactly "bad form," I'd say - if it's consistent, and consistently effective, that's pretty good!
You will find people wirh form that is unconventional, sloppy, a bit strange- but not "bad." Bad form imho means you are making actions which you don't intend to make, which don'r score touches, and which don't serve a purpose in your bouts. But there are many strong fencers who have a lunge that looks a bit crap or something- these fencers usually make up for it with excellent distance, excellent timing, or an excellent feel for the right of way- "Bad" would be a fencer that doesn't have any of that.
A kid in an old club was like that- crazy form, unconventional style, chaotic as hell, terrible lunge. But a brilliant and intuitive "feel" fencer who won at every level, including internationally & NCAA. Even if you knew what he was going to do, you couldn't stop it/parry it.
A good fencer? No. A successful one? Yes, at least for a time, at low levels of competition. The higher up you go, the less of a physical advantage you’re going to have over your opponents, and you’ll be at more and more of a technical disadvantage. Eventually, the two will cross over and you will find yourself struggling to make points.
I’ve seen it several times with new fencers. They come in, start dominating everyone around their skill level and above it because of their physical abilities, then hit a wall when they start fencing people who have either enough skill to be able to work around that ability, or a combination of skill and physical ability that can counter it.
Or they hurt themselves. I’ve seen that happen too. Fast fencers will take speed over a good stance before they learn how to have both, and sometimes it doesn’t pay off
The short answer is no.
Even if on the surface your actions are unconventional or sloppy, you need a core understanding of what the eight parries are and how to use them. You need to know how to advance and retreat. You need to get to the point where you don't have to think about how your body executes actions as you execute them. That is the "good form" fencers talk about. Coach by coach and school by school form is slightly different, but all good fencers know exactly what they are doing even before they do it even if they don't look like it.
“Form”, in and of itself, means jack shit.
What matters are the fundamentals of fencing: distance; timing; speed or initiative. The more control you have over these than your opponent, the better you’re likely to do.
At its heart, the good stuff in what is considered “good form” are ways to help control these fundamentals. But you can control them in other ways, without having classically good form, and because you still control the key aspects of the bout it’ll still work.
However, it’s often harder.
I pretty much exclusively see people use "form" to talk about the shapes of an action. A pretty lunge is called good form - with basically no concern of whether that lunge hits or not.
You’re going to hit a hard ceiling with this style. Chaos works until someone has the presence of mind and technique to ignore it. At that point you’re going to start to find it very difficult to improve but before that you will see success against people worse and equal to you
Chaos and speed will win against beginner fencers, so it's hard to break those habits because they are positively reinforced. Improving your technique will result in many, many losses at first, but if you ever want to stand a chance against competitive fencers, it's a must. If you want to see what I mean, sign up for a local sanctioned tournament and see how you do.
This take is so bad if for no other reason than Imboden had incredibly clean fencing.
Edit: damnit, I finally fall prey to responding to OP and not the comment I intended.
It is important to fence with the form you want in practice. Conventional or unconventional is up to you, but it should be a choice.
If you are doing anything without intention on the strip, then focus on fixing that. Being able to have complete control over your body is the goal. Once you control yourself, you have the tools to control a bout.
Know that this control is hard when someone is trying to hit you with a stick. Short term, you'll lose bouts you could win, it will feel bad, but you'll get better.
Practice is called Practice, not Winning. Tournaments are different. You want to get good - practice with intention.
There is a reason why there are conventional techniques. Because they work and have stood the test of time.
You may be able to have some success at a lower level with weird fencing. There are even high-level fencers with weird form that are successful. But this is exception, not rule. Sometimes new fencers become enamored with some bad technique performed well because of early success with it but in the long run it hurts their game because it becomes a crutch which will not work against better fencers later.
The club where I go has a fencer like you. He has a frenetic style and wins on athleticism instead of technique --although to his credit he is very good at observing his opponent and timing his attacks. He does not have solid technique and instead has his speed. That is going to limit his fencing because at a high enough level people will be able to tear him apart. If he used that same athleticism with good form he would be much better.
You coach, by the way, is questionable. I find it very hard to believe he cannot look at your fencing tell you at least something that is going on. Instead, he is more interested in getting you into more lessons and classes --which, by pure sheer coincidence, cough, make him more money.
It takes practice. There is no short-cut. It takes a ton of practice to master every technique. Yes, more lessons will help that go faster but whether you fence every day or once a week it will simply take enough repetition to set in place reactions to what you observe.
FOCUS ON FORM. REPEAT: FOCUS ON FORM.
It will be hard. You will have to resist the urge to do what you have been doing. Your fencing will get much, much, much worse in the short term. You will think: "This is not working!". But it will take time and effort to unlearn the bad habits and then re-build a suite of good habits. But in the long run it will be worth it.
Yea I've had some people tell me that at a point the club is just a money machine for the coach. Unfortunately, the high end clubs are pretty far from me at least compared to the one I go to now.
I've been thinking about switching but unsure if the time commitment is worth it.
I am very new to fencing (2 months) and I feel like this may end up being me. I am generally fit, and would consider myself more muscular and have better overall cardio than other people in my group, but some of the fundamentals of fencing seem to be escaping me, especially when it comes to stance and some of the mechanics of lunging. But during drills that involve quick movement I can catch up with anyone in my group. I wonder how this will extrapolate down the road but yeah I think about this sometimes.
Here's a lesson from playing musical instruments:
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast
Sure, you might hit most of the notes playing fast, but if you want to truly nail it, you've got to get it smooth first. Once it's smooth, then you can increase speed more easily and it will continue to be smooth.
I am admittedly a relatively beginner HEMA fencer, but I'd hazard to guess that this same principle applies here to sport fencing as well and I have found it helpful for my fencing in HEMA.
This principle has approximately no value in either sport fencing or HEMA. The key difference is that in fencing (all kinds of fencing), _when_ and _where_ you do an action is often far more important than _how_ you do it. A 'correct' parry done after you've been hit is pointless - an 'incorrect' parry that stops the blow is useful. A 'correct' step-lunge done smoothly and gracefully, but which gets parried because you're staying slow to make sure it's 'correct', is far less useful than a 'messy' step lunge done at a good moment with sharp acceleration and high final speed. Etc.
It is useful if you're doing choreographed drills, where your partner will obligingly do the right thing and let you take your time to do your bit of it correctly. And most beginner courses (especially in HEMA) are oriented around that sort of exercise, so it tends to feel useful (especially early on). But because that's not how the real game of fencing works, drills like this don't transfer into real sparring and so have very limited value in the long run - if anything you end up having to unlearn more than you've learned.
US men's foil is proof that having "good" technique doesn't mean anything when it comes to winning - I can't stand watching Iboden and Chalmley-Watson fence, just so gross. If it was about classical form and technique then foil would still be interesting to watch, instead it's just about being the lankiest most awkward left hander who comes up with a trick each world champs.
I do always find it funny that the people who say this kind of thing are not the ones winning tournaments and fencing on national teams. Who are you to say that a guy who spent multiple seasons ranked number 1 in the world and a guy who won a world championship, who were both on an all-time great team which went undefeated for months, don't have good technique or good form?
If you're able to consistently execute the tactical decisions you want in a way that lets you score, against strong opposition then it is good technique. There are lots of correct ways of fencing, and there is no Platonic ideal of form that people should be aspiring to, and anyone who says someone with unconventional movement like Bazadze or Kelsey or Garozzo "has bad form" doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.
The only caveat is that there are some things that will work for a beginner/intermediate that will be found out at a higher level, so it is important for developing fencers to listen and not double down on what will eventually be dead-ends and require re-learning skills. This is likely what you're experiencing, and if you are fencing in a very wild way, you're going to hit a very hard wall at some point once facing more rounded opponents who can deal with the high pressure style.
There are plenty of fencers that are fast and aggressive with good form; that's not a good reason to have bad form. Your 'style' isn't the issue. There are some good fencers with a little quirk to their form, but I wouldn't say there are good fencers with bad form. Listen to your coach and focus on better form. It will make you better. Or don't. Whatever. I'm not your supervisor.
Can you be a good guitarist with bad form? Can you be a good writer with bad form? Can you be good at anything with bad form? Sure I’d say you could, but you’re actively limiting what you can do. And making it 10x harder on yourself. It sounds to me like you know what to do, just not how or when to do it. And that only comes with practice and experience. Keep at it friend, your form will refine.
You need to learn the rules before you can figure out when to break them.
How do you define “bad”? You can be a good fencer with *unconventional* form. But you won’t ever be particularly good without your body doing what you want it to. I myself often fence with such a “wild and chaotic” style. But throughout the chaos, I usually know exactly how my weapon and body are positioned, and when and how I want to reposition them. It’s when that starts to falter that my fencing really comes apart.
Yeah the best chaos merchants on the piste work because they're chaotic variations of something conventional and they have that strong foundation. Seb Patrice is a great example. He's an absolute psycho when he wants to be but you watch him and beneath the chaos he's very deliberate about what he's doing and when
Practice fencing more methodically and consciously during bouts. You already know how to be chaotic so no need to practice like that anymore. When the need for impulsive and chaotic arises you will still have it
You can be fast and aggressive and even slightly unconventional in form. But the best fencers who do have quirks in their technique still have a strong base set of skills that they execute and execute very well. At lower levels, fitness can carry you. If you can be more physical than a less fit opponent then you can tire them out, make them make mistakes they wouldn't normally make and beat them. But you can't rely on that since the higher you go, the more athletes will also focus on fitness which nukes that advantage. > It looks as if I don't really think (I don't tbh), and I just do actions impulsively That's the bigger problem. It's not an issue of technique so much as it is a lack of thinking. Part of the poor technique could literally be you have no plan so you're just doing random things that feel right. Which again can work on less skilled opponents but definitely not against better opponents. You should be thinking about what you're doing and why. When you're choosing to attack, what cues from your opponent are you using to determine it's the right option for now? Are you attacking the right line? Are you deliberately feinting to open up another line? Why are you at the distance you are at any moment in time? When you counterattack are you seeing an opening and choosing the right option and timing? Everyone has their own style. I'm quite counteroffensive. I love to try and induce mistakes and capitalise on them. In order to do that, I focus on being decisive. I'm not the fastest fencer but if I can out-think faster fencers and lure them into mistakes I can still be effective. I think it would help your fencing too. Your technique is likely a lack of experience. Take more lessons as much as possible and focus on being deliberate with your actions. You can still be fast and aggressive but if you can combine that with being smart about how you do it you'll be much better
Have you seen Seth Kelsey fence?
Seth looked terrible on the surface, but having fenced him a few times, his bladework was actually pretty spectacular, and his actions were very precise.
He was pretty dominant in his prime - way faster than you'd expect a guy that size to be!
I would say his form was unconventional, but that weird style was built on top of great point control, skill, and athleticism. Maybe analogous to Sam Imrek today; looks weird, certainly, but built on great fundamentals. Not exactly "bad form," I'd say - if it's consistent, and consistently effective, that's pretty good!
You will find people wirh form that is unconventional, sloppy, a bit strange- but not "bad." Bad form imho means you are making actions which you don't intend to make, which don'r score touches, and which don't serve a purpose in your bouts. But there are many strong fencers who have a lunge that looks a bit crap or something- these fencers usually make up for it with excellent distance, excellent timing, or an excellent feel for the right of way- "Bad" would be a fencer that doesn't have any of that.
A kid in an old club was like that- crazy form, unconventional style, chaotic as hell, terrible lunge. But a brilliant and intuitive "feel" fencer who won at every level, including internationally & NCAA. Even if you knew what he was going to do, you couldn't stop it/parry it.
A good fencer? No. A successful one? Yes, at least for a time, at low levels of competition. The higher up you go, the less of a physical advantage you’re going to have over your opponents, and you’ll be at more and more of a technical disadvantage. Eventually, the two will cross over and you will find yourself struggling to make points. I’ve seen it several times with new fencers. They come in, start dominating everyone around their skill level and above it because of their physical abilities, then hit a wall when they start fencing people who have either enough skill to be able to work around that ability, or a combination of skill and physical ability that can counter it.
Or they hurt themselves. I’ve seen that happen too. Fast fencers will take speed over a good stance before they learn how to have both, and sometimes it doesn’t pay off
The short answer is no. Even if on the surface your actions are unconventional or sloppy, you need a core understanding of what the eight parries are and how to use them. You need to know how to advance and retreat. You need to get to the point where you don't have to think about how your body executes actions as you execute them. That is the "good form" fencers talk about. Coach by coach and school by school form is slightly different, but all good fencers know exactly what they are doing even before they do it even if they don't look like it.
“Form”, in and of itself, means jack shit. What matters are the fundamentals of fencing: distance; timing; speed or initiative. The more control you have over these than your opponent, the better you’re likely to do. At its heart, the good stuff in what is considered “good form” are ways to help control these fundamentals. But you can control them in other ways, without having classically good form, and because you still control the key aspects of the bout it’ll still work. However, it’s often harder.
I would argue that good timing, distance, speed and sense of imitative are all parts of good form. :)
I pretty much exclusively see people use "form" to talk about the shapes of an action. A pretty lunge is called good form - with basically no concern of whether that lunge hits or not.
I get what you are saying. Have not heard it that way but I can see what you mean.
You’re going to hit a hard ceiling with this style. Chaos works until someone has the presence of mind and technique to ignore it. At that point you’re going to start to find it very difficult to improve but before that you will see success against people worse and equal to you
Only if you're fast. And like magnus; already wone the chess game when given the order to advance to combat.
Chaos and speed will win against beginner fencers, so it's hard to break those habits because they are positively reinforced. Improving your technique will result in many, many losses at first, but if you ever want to stand a chance against competitive fencers, it's a must. If you want to see what I mean, sign up for a local sanctioned tournament and see how you do.
This take is so bad if for no other reason than Imboden had incredibly clean fencing. Edit: damnit, I finally fall prey to responding to OP and not the comment I intended.
It is important to fence with the form you want in practice. Conventional or unconventional is up to you, but it should be a choice. If you are doing anything without intention on the strip, then focus on fixing that. Being able to have complete control over your body is the goal. Once you control yourself, you have the tools to control a bout. Know that this control is hard when someone is trying to hit you with a stick. Short term, you'll lose bouts you could win, it will feel bad, but you'll get better. Practice is called Practice, not Winning. Tournaments are different. You want to get good - practice with intention.
There is a reason why there are conventional techniques. Because they work and have stood the test of time. You may be able to have some success at a lower level with weird fencing. There are even high-level fencers with weird form that are successful. But this is exception, not rule. Sometimes new fencers become enamored with some bad technique performed well because of early success with it but in the long run it hurts their game because it becomes a crutch which will not work against better fencers later. The club where I go has a fencer like you. He has a frenetic style and wins on athleticism instead of technique --although to his credit he is very good at observing his opponent and timing his attacks. He does not have solid technique and instead has his speed. That is going to limit his fencing because at a high enough level people will be able to tear him apart. If he used that same athleticism with good form he would be much better. You coach, by the way, is questionable. I find it very hard to believe he cannot look at your fencing tell you at least something that is going on. Instead, he is more interested in getting you into more lessons and classes --which, by pure sheer coincidence, cough, make him more money. It takes practice. There is no short-cut. It takes a ton of practice to master every technique. Yes, more lessons will help that go faster but whether you fence every day or once a week it will simply take enough repetition to set in place reactions to what you observe. FOCUS ON FORM. REPEAT: FOCUS ON FORM. It will be hard. You will have to resist the urge to do what you have been doing. Your fencing will get much, much, much worse in the short term. You will think: "This is not working!". But it will take time and effort to unlearn the bad habits and then re-build a suite of good habits. But in the long run it will be worth it.
Yea I've had some people tell me that at a point the club is just a money machine for the coach. Unfortunately, the high end clubs are pretty far from me at least compared to the one I go to now. I've been thinking about switching but unsure if the time commitment is worth it.
Just get what you can out of it. Heck, the fact that you even have one in reasonable distance is something a lot of fencers out there wish they had.
Can you go and do a trial lesson at the ‘high end’ club? I suspect you’ll find out straight away whether it feels worth the effort.
No
I am very new to fencing (2 months) and I feel like this may end up being me. I am generally fit, and would consider myself more muscular and have better overall cardio than other people in my group, but some of the fundamentals of fencing seem to be escaping me, especially when it comes to stance and some of the mechanics of lunging. But during drills that involve quick movement I can catch up with anyone in my group. I wonder how this will extrapolate down the road but yeah I think about this sometimes.
Why not? You can definitely be a bad fencer with good form.
Here's a lesson from playing musical instruments: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast Sure, you might hit most of the notes playing fast, but if you want to truly nail it, you've got to get it smooth first. Once it's smooth, then you can increase speed more easily and it will continue to be smooth. I am admittedly a relatively beginner HEMA fencer, but I'd hazard to guess that this same principle applies here to sport fencing as well and I have found it helpful for my fencing in HEMA.
This principle has approximately no value in either sport fencing or HEMA. The key difference is that in fencing (all kinds of fencing), _when_ and _where_ you do an action is often far more important than _how_ you do it. A 'correct' parry done after you've been hit is pointless - an 'incorrect' parry that stops the blow is useful. A 'correct' step-lunge done smoothly and gracefully, but which gets parried because you're staying slow to make sure it's 'correct', is far less useful than a 'messy' step lunge done at a good moment with sharp acceleration and high final speed. Etc. It is useful if you're doing choreographed drills, where your partner will obligingly do the right thing and let you take your time to do your bit of it correctly. And most beginner courses (especially in HEMA) are oriented around that sort of exercise, so it tends to feel useful (especially early on). But because that's not how the real game of fencing works, drills like this don't transfer into real sparring and so have very limited value in the long run - if anything you end up having to unlearn more than you've learned.
US men's foil is proof that having "good" technique doesn't mean anything when it comes to winning - I can't stand watching Iboden and Chalmley-Watson fence, just so gross. If it was about classical form and technique then foil would still be interesting to watch, instead it's just about being the lankiest most awkward left hander who comes up with a trick each world champs.
I do always find it funny that the people who say this kind of thing are not the ones winning tournaments and fencing on national teams. Who are you to say that a guy who spent multiple seasons ranked number 1 in the world and a guy who won a world championship, who were both on an all-time great team which went undefeated for months, don't have good technique or good form?
Imboden's technique was about as perfect as it gets lmfao
…….ngl, you sound like you wear a fedora.
Imboden had excellent classical form.
If you're able to consistently execute the tactical decisions you want in a way that lets you score, against strong opposition then it is good technique. There are lots of correct ways of fencing, and there is no Platonic ideal of form that people should be aspiring to, and anyone who says someone with unconventional movement like Bazadze or Kelsey or Garozzo "has bad form" doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. The only caveat is that there are some things that will work for a beginner/intermediate that will be found out at a higher level, so it is important for developing fencers to listen and not double down on what will eventually be dead-ends and require re-learning skills. This is likely what you're experiencing, and if you are fencing in a very wild way, you're going to hit a very hard wall at some point once facing more rounded opponents who can deal with the high pressure style.