Where To Feint

 So, I’ve been diving back into feints lately as I’ve realized I again need more to my game than just counterpunching. I spent a good couple months working on leaning all the way forward both to extend my range and to give a clear visual cue that I’m coming forwards and that my opponent needs to do something about it, but even with all of that there was still something that just wasn’t clicking. I could do things in the right tempo, at the right measure, on the right line, but I still wasn’t getting the responses I wanted. So, what did I do? I went back to the beginning and opened up the books and there I found my answer.

 Giganti, my favorite of the bunch, gives us just two options. If they’re holding a dagger he shows us some additional ways of how to out-feint the dagger.[1] This is helpful, but most of the folks at my practice aren’t all that reliant on their daggers for defense, so that plan was only so helpful. With the sword alone, though, he gives us a much more direct path towards victory. When throwing a feint-direct[2], aim it right at their face.[3] Even with masks on and in a stance that has us leaning all the way back, there’s just a certain engrained human instinct against things coming right at our eyes. One of the things I like to do when I’m running a workshop is once we’ve been going for a while, I’ll wait until people start putting their masks on. Right as that’s happening, I’ll up and throw my glove right at someone’s mask and you can see their whole body tense up as they flinch. Even though that person might consciously know that their mask can easily hold up to a an empty leather glove, the urge to close our eyes as something comes right at us is incredibly strong.

 This is a pretty solid plan evidenced not only by people hundreds of years ago who ran a giant unethical Darwinian experiment to see what did and didn’t work, but I’ve also found it to be effective in my own practice. That said, sometimes it’s helpful to have a second option. Especially when your opponent is a giant and they can tell that there’s absolutely zero chance of you getting anywhere near their face with your first intention. Thankfully Fabris, who I’m guessing was on the shorter side, has our back.

 He teaches us that, “Another rule for good feints is that the initial target should be a near opening: otherwise, if you go for one that your sword could never get to (because of the distance or because it is well defended), you will have endangered yourself for no possible gain.”[4] If you’re starting at the edge of measure and your opponent is in an upright or even a back-weighted stance, this probably means you’re going to want to feint at their hands. While I’ve only been working on this concept for a couple weeks, I have found that I get more mileage out of Fabris’s suggestion than I do Giganti’s. That said, it can be really nice being able to switch between the two lest my opponent start to figure out the one thing I’m trying to do.

 Ironically, Giganti and Fabri’s ideas here line up quite well with how the Bolognese masters teach us to feint seventy years prior. As my friend Stephen Fratus (the translated of the Anonimo Bolognese) likes to say, Bolognese fencing is either you attacking to the hands and striking the face or attacking to the face and striking the hands. I even built a whole drill around this concept for my Bolognese longsword book which should hopefully be out some time this fall.

In other news, you might have noticed that I have a new logo. I commissioned the work from my friend Emily Kardamis who does a ton of truly wonderful graphic design work for all sorts of clients. Please feel free to check out her work here: https://www.emilykardamis.com

[1] Giganti book I plates 29, 33, 34, 35.

[2] A feint on the same line you’re already on, done when you’re the one controlling the line. The other option is the feint by disengagement where you feint with a cavazione as they move to find your blade.

[3] Giganti book I plates 8, 9, 10, 11, 13.

[4] Salvator Fabris, page 21, translated by Tom Leoni.