Fencing - The Lunge

George Slay: Good evening! I am George Slay, Fencing Instructor with Recreational Fencers of Manassas. Tonights lesson well cover The Lunge and that is how we strike our opponent, when the opponent is little bit out of distance, there are many pitfalls when executing this maneuver, well cover those. But, lets take a look at Don, I am going to ask him to get within lunge distance and then Ill explain some of the techniques that we use to do this correctly.

Don, I want you to advance on Ivan to within an appropriate lunge distance. Were going to this, were going to break it down bit-by-bit.

Do you remember from our last lesson, priority is vital in fencing; that means the arm has to be coming out straight. So, as you think about your lunge, the foot does not come out first, its always the arm.

Don, I want you show that first. Okay, hes done that in fast motion, bring it back up. So, now lets break it down bit-by-bit. First the arm, then the front leg kicks out slightly not high up in the air like this, but again as we did our advance sort of slow down to the ground, the rear leg pushes us, propels us forward.

So, let me come around here and point out a few things. First of all Dons knee should be directly above his ankle. The rear foot is flat on the ground, Dons arm should be straight back behind him and now hes got the distance to touch Ivan, well, Ivan is still a little bit outside of his distance.

Don, I want you to recover, recovering is how we pull back into our on-guard position.

Ivan, Id like you to advance slightly and then lunge. Now, this is an excellent lunge position, lets check to make sure that Ivan has got it put together right. First of all, is that back leg straight, looks pretty good, now the front leg, the knee again should be directly over the ankle, if not youre going to be off-balance, that arm is straight out, the blade is bent and is touching the high inside line, that looks pretty good. Id like you to recover.

Recovery is always last part of the Lunge, particularly, if youve missed somehow and you need to get out of distance you merely shift your weight back and bring yourself into the on-guard position as demonstrated. Please go back to your on-guard lines and lets go through this one more time.

This time, I am going to ask Don to advance on Ivan and at the appropriate moment I am going, he will lunge.

Don, advance!

Good, recover!

So, he shifted his weight back, kicked off with the front foot and brought himself into the on-guard position.

Don, retreat back to the on-guard line!

His footwork looks good, front toe is pointed straight.

Ivan, Id like you to execute a nice lunge on Don!

Hold that position for a moment, it looks good, back leg straight, arm thrown back, that provides extra force and balance.

Now, Ill ask him to recover.

Recover! Excellent!

Now, what weve covered are the basic attacks, there is either a direct attack from your on-guard position or a Lunge attack.

In the next lesson were going to cover the Parry and Riposte. Of course, were not going to simply allow ourselves to be hit by a weapon but were going to try to block the blade and then strike the opponent.