Fencing - The Disengage

George Slay: Good evening, I am George Slay with Recreational Fencing of Manassas. In tonights lesson, well cover the Disengage. In the previous lesson we talked about Parries. Parry of course is to prevent the blade from touching you. We covered two. There was the Parry six and the Parry four. We are going to focus a little bit more on the Parry four tonight and how to avoid it, especially when you know your opponent will deliberate. Again, just to remind you that Parry four will bring the blade across the front from my right to my left, I am a right handed fencer.

We know this is going to happen. We can avoid that and Ivan and Don are going to show us how that works. Essentially, were going to move our blade around the other away, below the opponents Foil. We are going to ask them to show it slowly for you because this is more; now, we are getting into the semi-intermediate area of fencing. Gentlemen, lets move a little bit closer to one another, advance to within a close distance, lunge distance is fine. Don is going to first slowly execute a Parry four. Now, if Ivan is expecting this rather than continuing forward, hell dip his blade below Dons and strike him. Lets see that one more time. So, again, both neither party has a priority, neither has an arm strike, lets dip, okay, recover. So, again, Ivan is planning on attacking. Neither has a priority yet; watch for that straightened arm. Don is expecting an attack to the inside. Ivan will try to fool him and continues to bring his arm straight in and around the bottom of the blade. It works as well with a six, Parry six as well. Lets see that one more time. Again, we are trying to fool our opponent. We make him think that were coming to hit the outside instead we hit the inside, alright.

Now, lets see try that fast, very good, and lets try disengage from the Parry four; quickly, ready, go, very good. So, there you saw a good Parry four and in even better Disengage with a hit. Gentlemen, you can return to the on guard line. In the next lesson, we are going to cover some of the more advanced Parries, intermediate I should say, and those are the circular parries, again, a circular parry four and a circular parry six.