Improve Your Feints Without a Partner

Mastering the feint is challenging aspect of rapier fencing in the best of times because the overall success of a feint relies on one fencer’s ability to sell the feint as a real attack and the other fencer’s ability to read it as real or not. In short: it’s Deception vs. Insight. And with COVID-19 severely limiting in-person practices, improving your feints and deceptive game is extra challenging. What we can do, however, is focus on the mechanics of our feints. The closer our feints look to our real attacks, the higher chance those feints have to succeeding. Here are some tips for analyzing and improving your feints without a partner. And to be honest, video analysis work like this is a great tool for improving your rapier-game even when in-person fencing practices are doable. FREE VIDEO TOOLS FOR YOUR SELF-ANALYSIS: Lightworks DaVinci Resolve Filmora iMovie WeVideo Special thanks to ATHENE SCHOOL OF ARMS in Cambridge, MA for us