Rapier Exercise: Visualizing Your Fencing Measures

Many historical fencers when trying to work through actions in various measures (aka misura, or distance) take way too big of steps forward or backwards, getting either way too close or getting too far away to properly attack their opponent or defend against attacks. It often makes for messy attacks or huge cavaziones (disengages) and other blade actions. This is especially true of new fencers, in general, and shorter fencers who are trying to bridge the gap between their opponent’s measure and their own. However, big steps also means BIG tempos, with means big opportunities for our opponent’s to try to strike us in. Often the distance between one measure to the next is relatively small. But getting people to understand that can sometimes be tricky. Measure, after all, isn’t a very tangible concept in Italian rapier. So my Beginner & Intermediate Rapier class at @Boston Academie d’Armes tried to come up with one. This video shows one way you can create a visual