When we started Sydney Sabre there were few guides for teaching adults how to fence sabre. The manuals we found focused on children and the foil: the standard training weapon of civilian duelists for centuries. Rarely did people pick up the sword for the first time as adults; rarer still to do so for fun.
The sabre, of course, was a military sword and taught to soldiers through drills and manuals. But these are minimally applicable to the modern sport.
So we developed our own guide.
The Sydney Sabre Course (hereafter, “the Course”) has gone through about a dozen revisions in the last decade, occasionally snapshotted in print, but more often ephemeral in the minds of the instructors.
Please note that these Course articles are written for the instructor. It assumes the reader knows how to fence sabre and is teaching students who have never fenced before. It is not designed to be read by people new to fencing. Those topics are covered in the book.
The Course follows three principles.
The first is that sabre is meant to be fun.
No one should be training for a swordfight, college entry, or Olympic glory. Sabre is a game, like tennis or chess or Streetfighter Turbo Edition. We teach the most important parts of the game first: how to play and how to referee. We teach the full range of moves and tactics and technical details to the end, if we teach them at all. Those of you who have learned fencing before will recognise that this is the reverse of the traditional approach.
The second is that sabre is a combat sport.
Both combat and sport can only be learned by doing. Underpinning but unmentioned in the notes for each class — the contents of the Course — are the many hours of bouts and mentoring that we thrust students into from their first exposure to sabre. Not for the us the old dictums that a student should only train with the master, perhaps even without a sword, for their first weeks or months or years and only then permitted to bout in the fear that the student would adopt bad habits from too early an exposure to combat.
We disagree.
Better to fight ugly than get thrashed prettily. We can always make an ugly fighter prettier. We can’t always make a pretty poser a fighter.
The third principle is that sabre is diverse and ever changing.
There are many ways to win, and new ways are developed every year. The idea that sabre somehow crystallised into a platonic ideal ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years ago, is wrong. Sabre is combat, and combat is alive.
The sabre is an equaliser. You can always win, no matter how tall or strong or fast you are. You can always do something that will work for you, against this opponent, now. You just have to figure what that is, in time.
Thus the purpose of the Course is to teach how sabre fencing works. It is not a definitive way of teaching sabre, or fencing sabre, or even doing a particular style of sabre.
Each Level focuses on a theme, divided into 10 classes. Each class introduces a new concept or move. A class about a move is typically followed by a class about the countermove. Every class should start from the 4-metre (4m) situation – the start of each exchange in sabre – even if the class is about a different situation.
As long as you can move, you can fence, regardless of age or form. You just have to fence your way.
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Series index:
Level 0: Introduction
Level 1: Distance
Week 1 – The 4m Zone: Advance Preparation with Lunge, Jump-back, and Chase
Week 2 – The Attack: Direct and indirect to head, flank, and belly
Week 3 – The Defence: Parry-riposte from Tierce (3), Quarte (4) and Quinte (5)
Week 4 – Attack: Disengage to shoulder, chest, underflank, and underbelly
Week 5 – Defence: Defensive Sweeps
Week 6 – Attack: March with Skitter
Week 7 – Defence: Counterattack by Stop-cut
Week 8 – Attack: Preparatory Beats
Week 9 – Defence: Point-in-Line
Week 10 – Grading: Level 1
Level 2: Timing
Week 11 – 4m: Advance-step Preparation
Week 12 – Attack: Prep-step Advance-lunge
Week 13 – Defence: Jump-back Parry-riposte
Week 14 – Attack: Double Advance-lunge
Week 15 – Defence: Stop-cut Parry-riposte
Week 16 – Attack: Flying Lunge (“Flunge”)
Week 17 – Defence: Parry with Crossover retreat
Week 18 – Attack: March with Prep-step accordion
Week 19 – Defence: Punch Parry-riposte
Week 20 – Grading: Level 2
Level 3: Trajectories
Week 21 – 4m: Advance-lunge (surprise attack) with disengage
Week 22 – Attack: Low-line Attacks
Week 23 – Defence: Parry-riposte from Seconde (2) and Prime (1)
Week 24 – Attack: Feint-disengage
Week 25 – Defence: Circle Parries
Week 26 – Attack: Feint-cutover
Week 27 – Defence: Counterattack-on-Preparation
Week 28 – Attack: Beat-attack
Week 29 – Defence: Stop-cut with Crossover-retreat
Week 30 – Grading: Level 3
Level 4: Tactics
Week 31 – 4m: Bind Chase
Week 32 – Attack: Bind Attack
Week 33 – Defence: Disengage Stop-cut Parry-riposte
Week 34 – Attack: March with Hop accordion
Week 35 – Defence: Point-in-Line setups
Week 36 – Attack: March with Skip accordion
Week 37 – Defence: Forward Parry-riposte in Quinte (5) and Seconde (2)
Week 38 – 4m: Counterparries
Week 39 – 4m: Draw-cut and Fadeaway
Week 40 – Grading: Level 4
Level 5: Strategies
Week 41 – Watcher: Step preparation
Week 42 – Watcher: Step-bounce preparation
Week 43 – Watcher: Slide Preparation
Week 44 – Grinder: Advance-lunge preparation
Week 45 – Grinder: Lunge-extension
Week 46 – Grinder: Opposition attack
Week 47 – Tank: Double-advance preparation
Week 48 – Tank: Lunge Parries
Week 49 – Tank: Logatchov’s Reaper
Week 50 – Grading: Level 5