THE BIG PICTURE

The reason it’s important to have good footwork, at the most fundamental level, is so that you are able to play these games with your opponent. As we’ve seen, even though there’s nothing wrong with going fast, your own tempo really only matters in relation to your opponent's tempo. You want to be the one controlling the tempo and in control of the distance so that you can hit when you choose. But, since your opponent is trying to do the same thing, you also need to be able to react when they try to do something you weren’t anticipating. And as you get better at controlling the tempo and the distance, you will get better at forcing your opponent to commit to an action when you want them to—by closing the distance, making them think they have an opportunity to score, and then opening the distance again (or parrying or doing some other action to beat them).

If you watch high level fencers, you will see they are playing this game all the time, constantly changing tempo and direction, opening and closing the distance, accelerating and decelerating, often subconsciously. They can speed up, slow down, and change direction smoothly and effortlessly—making it much harder to predict their next move until after they have already made it. Part of this, by the way, is simply by making their steps smaller—this helps ensure they have both feet on the ground and are ready to react more frequently. It’s hard to catch someone off guard in the middle of their step if their step is fairly short. Your own steps don’t need to be tiny, but keeping them on the smaller side is generally a safer bet.

In short, you need to both be able to control your own speed and be aware of your opponent’s speed. You want to make sure your opponent never gets comfortable with the distance, and you want to be able to react quickly and correctly when they do something you didn’t predict. It’s always important to be aware of your own tempo, but, remember, your tempo is just a piece of the bigger picture. The real key is knowing how the distance between you and your opponent is changing as you both try to catch each other in a trap.

HOW CAN I WORK ON THIS?

A lot of people practice footwork by doing advances or retreats up and down the strip several times, or doing five lunges, five advance lunges, and five double advance lunges. There’s nothing wrong with these sorts of drills; done consciously, they’re a great way to improve technique, or even just to get warmed up for more complex drills.

However, one of the best things you can do is distance drills with a partner to really fine tune this skill. Drills that force both partners to be alert are the best, because that’s the most like real fencing. You can have the leader attack on the follower’s signal, for example, or let the follower lunge whenever they want and force the leader to move back and pull them short.

Even if you don’t have a partner, it can be valuable to do footwork where you don’t have a set pattern. Do ten long attacks that all have different rhythms, or start out with the same preparation (fast double advance, for example) and then try to do as many different variations after it as you can (long attack changing tempo, slow double retreat, fast lunge, etc.). Or just move back and forward for a certain amount of time trying to change tempo as much as possible.

You can even record a voice memo on your phone of yourself giving various commands at different times (“slow… fast… change direction… advance lunge…”) and play it back while you’re doing footwork to help yourself work on reacting smoothly. At the end of the day, the more you work on changing direction and tempo, and practice correct reactions, the better it will be for your fencing.

What are some drills you use to work on your distance and tempo in your footwork?