en garde

Today I had my very first lesson in fencing.

Quite random really. I just came across a voucher a few weeks back for a discount on four beginner lessons and decided I would try it. Now I know very little about fencing having only seen the tiniest amount on tv. But that was part of the draw. Try something completely different. So I arrived at my group lesson at Fighting Fit Fencing today not really sure what to expect.

After a bit of warming up we started with some foot work; en garde position and how to step forward, backward and lunge. Then we donned the smelly shared safety gear and began to bout. I felt a bit pathetic. I still felt I had no idea what I was doing. After a bit of a go our instructor talked us through some of the scoring. You need to get your priorities right. He he. That is, you need to understand who has priority. In the case of a dual touch, the person with priority gets the point. I'm going to read up on how to score before I go again next week. It was a struggle to get it all straight. But after he explained the priority and scoring it began to make a little more sense and gave a little more focus to our bouts. He also explained how to parry (knock the foil--aka. practise sword--aside) and then we did a few more bouts.

Hot work but I'm eager to head back next week to understand it better and give it another go. And it's fun to do something I've never even considered before.