Ki-fi,
“I’ve been fencing for almost a year now, and I’m also interested in this subject. One thing I would disagree slightly on is the amount of power generation in fencing—I wouldn’t say it’s always neglected.”
No it isn’t, but it does not hold the importance that power generation does in CMA. Lunges are your tool for power in Fencing, and the “attack” in saber.
“To be sure, with electric fencing, and with the flexible blades and the advent of “flicking”, you can occasionally score points without having much power behind it.”
Flicking is a dirty trick used to score points. In my experience though (and from what I’ve heard other say) flicking can only work against an opponent of lower experience/ability than yourself. For a flick to score a number of things have to remain constant from the time the flick is initiated, to the time it lands. For the flick to sound , those things cannot change at all - and if they do, the point will not sound.
"At my fencing club though, they’re pretty traditional in regards to classical fencing form. "
I made the mistake of assuming that they were all like that.
“For a properly executed lunge, your knees should already be bent, your sword arm extends first, and then your rear leg straightens to propel the whole weight of your body behind the lunge”
Correct.
At my club they’re pretty critical if you use a bent-arm attack, or if you just step out with your front foot for a lunge instead of pushing off your back foot.
There are reaons for that too - a lunge with a bent arm does not give you the full range of the weapon - and limits your hits to targets closer to you.
“In CMA, I’ve mostly studied Taiji saber, and I don’t find too many correlations between that and western sport fencing. As has been mentioned, one of the big differences is that the left hand has a much more active use, either the palm supporting the blunt side of the blade for more power and control (watch those fingers!–I learned that the hard way, fortunately only with wooden weapons :)), or using the left hand to grab the opponent/ opponent’s weapon. Also, as I was taught you really get the legs supporting the power, and you want to draw the blade along the opponents body to really slice deeply. And saber is definitely a close-in weapon–power and ferocity are emphasized. Some of these differences I’m sure are due to the fact that sport fencing has eliminated some of these type of things—I’m sure if you look into more historical European swordsmanship you’ll find stuff like this.”
Interesting. Another little note - Saber fencers are know for being a little more rough that their other counterparts.
“Although I’m speaking from limited experience with both these weapons, it seems to me that the CMA straight sword usage is very similar to western saber fencing. And I mean a well trained saber fencer, who has really learned point and blade manipulation with foil and epee first. Just from the saber fencing I’ve done, with the wrist cuts, disengages and small circling and combinations of cut and thrust—it seems very similar. Except, as mentioned, the linear set-up of western fencing would limit the circling of the CMA swordsman.”
Very nice. Is the cicining constant in CMA. Like the up and down of the strip Fencing?
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