Thanks! It looks like there is an electric scoring system that is used, do you think it is necessary? If I want to practice at home can I do without it?
A guy that used to live near me in Midtown is one of the top fencers in Houston. Houston also has one of the top fencing coaches in America in Dr Hamza at Rice. He was formerly on the Egyptian fencing team.
Neil Diamond was a pretty good fencer back in his day. Received a scholarship to NYU because of his skills.
The electric scoring is really only good if you are with at least one other person. You can definitely practice without it. Start without it, and then when you start having bouts, you can get some electric equipment. Once you get the electric stuff it can be fickle. You will get touches on your opponent that don't go off, or barely flick them a tap that wouldn't normally be called a point, and have it score for you, but those are the exceptions. Overall the electric stuff takes out a lot of the human judgement. With Epee it takes out almost all of the human judgement, but you still need a human judge with foil fencing, even if you are on an electronic strip. Once you are fencing and you try and lead your opponent into certain moves so that you can counter is one end of the spectrum that is total strategy planning ahead(of course you need to execute the plan once you have it as well.). The other end is making a move totally out of refelx and instinct and being able to score on that. Fencing has it all.
I fenced in college also. I traveled some with our fencing club also. More fun than I even anticipated, and nothing improves you quicker than tournaments. Like FB, I also preferred foil, but I always assumed that's just because it's what I learned first and was better at (and until a foil broke on my chest in a tournament ... it was also the less painful ). Excellent workout, and mental wise I always compared it to chess (not quite that complex, but WTH). Early in a match you try to seriously threaten your opponent to learn their most common parrys and also their favorite parry. Then you plan your attack. If you designed the attack well, they may try 4 or more parrys in a row ... but your counter parrys will mean that they barely even touch your blade as you score a 'touch'. Or you can just lunge really quickly and score.
My sister is a fencer. She's been doing it for about five months now. One of her teachers is a world-ranked fencer, and he started a fencing club. She has a foil for practice, and an Epee as well. I have to say -- I am BLOWN AWAY by the whole thing. She'll show me some of the things she's learned, and I am so impressed with the kind of control she has with the foil/epee. They haven't gone to any tournaments yet, but apparently they're going to soon. She really likes fencing, and she's really improved a lot. It's given her the impetus to start working out regularly, and I'm trying to convince her to join a fencing club outside of school. From what I can tell, it's kind of an expensive thing to get into, with all the equipment. But it looks incredibly neat, and I know that it's really been a good thing for her.
