The Danger Zone

Here’s a lesson I’ve been going over a lot lately in my one on one coaching sessions that applies regardless of what kind of sword you’re using. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a rapier, a longsword, or even a machete. If you sit still in the danger zone, you’re going to be headin’ into twilight.

When you cross swords with your opponent, the danger zone is roughly the first five inches starting at the tip. If your swords are crossed anywhere closer than that, you’re in the danger zone. What I’ve been teaching is fairly simple, once you’re in the danger zone, you either have to attack or back up. If you sit still, you are in measure and you’re just betting that you can move faster than your opponent. It turns out, though, that this is a great recipe for double kills because if both of you fire, there just isn’t time left for you to react.

Once you cross that that five inch threshold your next move doesn’t necessarily have to be a strike. There are going to be times where your opponent is long enough that you’ll be in their measure without them being in yours. You just have to make a move that will improve your situation. As long as you have the line secured and are moving forwards, you’re safe. The danger comes when people run drills out of tempo where you stop and smell the roses at each and every step. It’s okay to have a momentary pause after finding your opponent’s blade, but once you move in to gain and then to strike, sitting still is a death sentence. At that point it doesn’t even matter if you have mechanical advantage over their sword. That advantage is incredibly fleeting and if you hesitate to make use of it, your opponent is going to take it away from you.

It’s okay to find your opponent’s sword and hang around trying to see what they want to do if your blades are crossed just at the tips, but once you get any closer it’s time to stop messing around. You don’t necessarily have to attack each and every time, just make sure you’re not sitting still in a spot where your opponent can hit you in a single tempo.

Every time so far that I’ve taught someone this lesson, I’ve seen a huge and immediate improvement in their game. Suddenly they go from getting hit and not knowing what happened, to intentionally setting up the game and then having their plan succeed or fail from there. This won’t by any means ensure that you’ll be able to hit someone, but it will drastically cut down on the number of times per minute you get hit. Oftentimes in fencing, it’s the simplest and most fundamental things that make the biggest difference. We tell people not to start in measure, but that’s fairly nonspecific. The idea with the danger zone is to give you a clear measurement of when you are and aren’t in danger of being hit.

As a note, this distance is the same regardless of what guard either of you happen to be in. If either of your points are refused, though, you’re going to have to do a lot more visualizing to figure out where in that line in the sand is.

I’m not much of a videographer, but thankfully someone else caught me teaching this lesson over the weekend after I ran a seminar at Tempered Mettle Historical Fencing’s first ever public event. This whole idea is a lot easier to explain visually, so if you’re having trouble picturing what I’m talking about this should clarify things.

Beehiiv is being weird about letting me share snippets from full videos, so I had to instead just link it to the part of the video where I started talking. So if it seems weird that the video didn’t start at the beginning, that’s on purpose.

In other news, my book is almost ready to publish. I just settled on a front cover with my layout person and there’s just another couple of small things to wrap up. It should hopefully be ready to order within the next week or so.