Yesterday I had my first actual fencing lesson. It was a lot harder than I expected. In the beginning Our instructor taught us how to stand, it was called the en garde position. Your dominant leg was in front of you with your foot facing forward and your non dominant leg is pointing to the side facing away from you other leg. Your dominant hand is holding your sword in a relaxed position and your non dominant hand is behind you and acts as a counter balance. After we had done our positions for a while, we got all of our gear ready and we worked on the basic way of touching you opponent which is the lunge. You start in en garde position and then you straighten you arm and lunge forward, hence the name. We practiced that for a while. Then we started parrying. So one person would lunge and the other person would try to parry, or block it and then go for a lunge. That king of simulated a real situation in combat in fencing. After that we got to the real fencing. Our instructor made clear that he knew most of us didn’t know how to fence and that it was just to see how far we were. We started fencing. Only then did I realize that the sword that I was using was really heavy and it was a huge chore moving it around fast enough to parry my opponents moves an then lunge right after that. After fencing for a while we realized class was almost over so we had to undress and leave.

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