In case you don’t know what Fencing is, Fencing is a unique sport where your goal is to stab your opponent a certain amount of times to win before your opponent stabs you first. While it sounds dangerous, it’s taken seriously to where nobody gets hurt, and everyone wears the required gear, such as a mask, a jacket, a chestplate, and much more.
Fencing is such an original sport due to the 3 different sword types, the individual and team tournaments that you can compete in, the movements you can make, and the ratings you can achieve.
- To dive into originality, there are 3 different sword types.
- Foil: It weighs about 500 grams, and is a mix of both Epee and Sabre in a way.
- Epee: It weighs the most out of the 3 weapons, and you can stab everywhere on the human body. While in Foil and Sabre, there is right of way; in Epee, that rule doesn’t apply.
- Sabre: it weighs less than Foil, and is the most unique in fencing. It looks a lot like a pirate weapon that you see in all pirate movies, and instead of stabbing your opponent, you swipe and slash. Sabre also has right of way, just like Foil.
- Another way fencing is unique are its maneuvers. Fencing has a lot of unique movements in a bout.
- Advance: Advancing is moving forward on the strip.
- Retreat: Retreating is moving backward on the strip.
- Lunge: Lunging is making an attack, falling into a warrior pose.
- Parry: Parry is when you hit their blade to defend yourself from being stabbed. You also parry to give yourself the right of way.
- Right of way: For Foil and Sabre, there is something called right of way. It’s just like having manners. If one person takes a parry, they have the right of way to stab their opponent. You also get right of way if your opponent misses their attack. If both opponents stab each other, whoever has the right of way gets the point.
Now to the actual reason why fencing is the best sport. Like I said before, it’s unique, fun, and challenging. It’s original, due to the movements and weapon choices. It’s fun. You get to make friends and even be able to compete in team tournaments with them. It’s challenging. It can test your stamina, strength and your patience in multiple ways. Every weapon can feel like its own sport; in one sport.