Every coach I have known emphasizes the importance of footwork to their students. However, most lower level students, and even many intermediate to advanced students, approach fencing from the perspective of blade work. On one level, footwork solutions take hard work to execute while blade work solutions require much less physical effort. Most of us are lazy, so we look for the easiest solution instead of the most effective. On another level, I believe there is a disconnect between the methods many coaches use to teach footwork and the role of footwork on the strip.

Before launching into a discussion of teaching footwork, we need to first define the role of footwork on the strip. I have been part of numerous discussions of footwork, its definition, and how to use it. In almost every one of these discussions, somebody has defined the role of footwork as “to control distance,” an idea echoed by many fencers and coaches because it is what they were taught. Most have never questioned what it means to control distance. If they have, they think about distance as static, i.e. the two fencers should be at advance lunge distance. Therefore, when one fencer advances, the other should retreat to maintain distance.

Even when coaches articulate more nuanced understandings of the role of footwork, I often see a disconnect between these understandings and the design of lessons and drills. Many students are taught footwork as a set of motions that exist for their own sake. They repeat movements up and down the strip with no thought about context. Line after line of advance, retreat, and lunge. A coach watches them and makes corrections based on some ideal of how big an advance or retreat should be and how a lunge should look. This approach is repeated in lessons where the student follows the movement of the coach while executing blade work actions. The same coach can then be observed at tournaments yelling “DISTANCE” at their students whenever they get hit. This is the epitome of a static approach to distance. This is a poor way to approach footwork and distance on the strip for two main reasons. First, it is reactive. Fencers who approach distance this way move because their opponent moved. This means they are already behind the tempo of the action. Secondly, it is predictable and thus easy for the opponent to manipulate.

I prefer to think of footwork as the method by which a fencer controls who has the opportunity to hit at any given moment. This is contextual and based on the abilities and action choices of both fencers and is judged by its effectiveness, not by some abstract standard. I try to keep this concept in mind when designing lessons and drills. In epee, I think of distance as either expanding or contracting. A fencer is either trying to get closer to the opponent or farther from the opponent. When a fencer wants to get their opponent to attack, they need to either collapse the distance to where their opponent thinks they are close enough to hit, or make the opponent think they are allowing the distance to collapse. The fencer then expands the distance so their opponent is attacking from too far away. By standing still for a moment, the fencer can allow the distance to collapse again until they are close enough to hit the counter attack, then expand distance to escape. In this way, footwork only exists as a mechanism for controlling which fencer has the opportunity to hit and at what moments.

Coaches can train fencers with this idea of distance right from the first lesson, even before ever discussing the concept. For example, when a student is working on counter attacks, the coach needs to make a strong enough attack that the student will get hit if they do not open distance after hitting the counter attack. With a beginning student, this attack can be slow, but it needs to be long enough to hit the student. To make the drill more proactive, the coach can have the student begin with a half advance to draw the coach’s attack. Get the student to make the half advance and then immediately retreat (aka check back) so they are in position before the coach’s attack starts, thus expanding the distance and then allowing it to collapse until the student has the opportunity to hit the counter attack. Even the most beginning students can execute this action, yet it puts the counter attack into a more useful context than hitting the coach and retreating when the coach steps forward.