Does fencing help in self-defense?

Factual Questions
41

As a former fencer with very little training in other martial arts, I’m a bit torn. Fitness issues aside, what fencing teaches is balance (low center of gravity), the ability to keep out of striking distance in a controlled manner, and how to read the tempo of an attack. The problem is that under a strict definition of the OP, it won’t help, as the fight will end as Darth Panda describes.

The only way for me to turn fencing skills to my advantage is to change the conditions. My first rule of unarmed combat is to get armed. Even a chair leg or broom stick can give you an advantage in reach, and once your opponent has a reason to stay back, you can control the tempo of the fight. From there, the key is to lure your opponent into striking distance, and hit him hard enough to stun him. Then be ruthless and keep hitting till he’s unconscious.

Unfair? No such thing in a fight, right?

42

I didn’t realize the “average fit person” part of my question was so ambiguous, but I see that it is, for which I apoligize. All right, we’ll say that the “average” person I spoke of spends as much time swimming and on the bike as the fencer does practicing. Does that help any?

43

An unarmed fencer wouldn’t have any special advantage over someone who does other activities, in my opinion. Put them up against a physical twin who did football or rugby, and there’s no question who would win the fight. Give the fencer a stick, and there might be a slight advantage to the fencer. But even there, he wouldn’t have much of an idea of what to do other than poking the other guy in the chest a couple of times before he gets rushed and bodyslammed.

I dabbled in fencing at college, having done some old-style Japanese martial arts for about 3 or 4 years at that point. We did weapons work at my dojo, so I had both armed and unarmed skills.

Modern sport fencing is very, very different from any kind of practical combat. There are complicated rules about right-of-way and precedence that may—at one time—have been meant to substitute for the lack of danger involved in fencing with very flexible edgeless blades, but are now next to useless.

To give you an idea of how far removed from reality fencing has become, Ota one of the world’s top-ranked fencers, favors a whipping over-the-shoulder technique that wins surprise touches. With a real blade, it wouldn’t work at all because the blade wouldn’t bend that much, and even if it did, the hit would be useless for combat because you’d inflict at most a light cut while your opponent has a chance to skewer you.

In modern fencing, getting the touch before your opponent is the only thing that matters. He can “run you through” while you tap him on the shoulder as long as you hit a valid target area with enough force to depress the button on the electric foil a fraction of a second before he gets you.

I had huge problems fencing because I was trained in stuff that worked for real fights, including grappling and disabling or killing techniques. I’d instinctively want to go off-line, bind a poorly balanced opponent and throw him, force a poor guard, cut exposed areas; all things that are absolutely not allowed in foil fencing. The instructor said he didn’t teach epee at all until you were an advanced foil fencer, though epee would probably have been a better fit for me. It didn’t take me long to decide that I didn’t like fencing anywhere near enough to commit to overriding reflexes devoted to real fighting.

I had the same kind of problems with kendo, so Western fencing isn’t alone in being far removed from its roots. Sport fighting is not combat fighting.

44

TO answer the OP: not really.

I Had a roommate in college who was a fencer. He was excellent in sparring and would almost always manage to land a strike before I could. The problem was the few of his strikes would be incapacitating in any meaningful way. Beyond that, while he was giving me flesh wound, I had closed the gap and landed a killing blow. Fencing is a beautiful and deadly art, but it requires a blade. Without one you have some great footwork which is excellent training for avoiding blows by an opponent, but it doesn’t teach you to retaliate unarmed.

MMA has a problem in that it is severely restricted. A REAL no holds barred, all out fight between to trained MMA fighters wouldn’t kook anything like what you see in the ring. It would most likely be a lot of feints and blocks until someone landed a devastating elbow and the match is over. In the interdisciplinary form I train in we learn to do whatever it takes to end the fight as quickly as possible. That means that most of our sparring sessions don’t extend beyond a small amount of exchanges. I’ve found in real world altercations that this holds true as well. Usually the attacker has an advantage, but if he is facing a skilled opponent and doesn’t drop him cold, he is screwed.

45

I disagree with your assessment. People overestimate the ease with which a single strike can disable an opponent. A “devastating elbow”? Please. Unless your opponent has a glass jaw or you manage to crush their skull or break a major bone, it’s not a fight-finisher. People are tough as hell. And frankly, aiming a killing blow is pretty darn tough since people instinctively protect those areas. You can throw all the devastating elbows you want, but most people with a bit of grappling skill are going to shrug off one or two big hits and choke you out or break your limbs via a grapple.

Look at the prevalence of people getting shot or stabbed and not instantly falling over dead or unconscious. An elbow strike isn’t going to put out nearly that amount of injury, nor will it incapacitate faster, no matter what your martial arts teacher tells you.

46

I would also mention that elbows (both standing and on the ground) are legal in the UFC, and unpadded.

ETA: The biggest difference, though, is that people in the UFC are used to getting hit, and people in the normal world aren’t. Getting punched in the face sucks - and it’s pretty hard to describe if you haven’t felt it - and most people, myself included, lose all sense of reason when it happens - making any “battle plan” go out the window when it happens. It’s all adrenaline afterwards - but the pro fighters stick to their fighting techniques even when they’re a bloody mess.

47

My experience in fencing (a couple of classes) basically taught me that I was mortal. I was OK, but the other guy would win just as often as I did. And if those things we were waving at each other actually had points and edges, I’d be dead. Which means that what fencing taught me is that if trouble brews, I should run away just as fast as I can, because there’s a 50% or better chance that I’m about to lose big time.

48

It’s almost certianly just anecdote, but I remember hearing that in samurai duels that the outcome was basically 1/4 of the time one guy died, 1/4 of the time the other guy died, and half the time, both died.

Probably not based on good data collection, but it gets the point across - neither person has great odds.

49

Just a side not in response to a previous comment - getting hit in the face doesn’t (in my experience) hurt that much. A broken nose = ouch, but not much more. Unless you’re looking for a definitive knock-out, body shots are the way to go.

Old wrestling adages:
Control the hips, and the body will follow.
Control the hands and they can’t attack
Legs are the stump of a tree - they can’t live without them.

Bottom line: Never let anyone touch your head, hips, hands, or legs (unless you want them to).

50

Really? You’ve honestly been punched at full force by a full grown man directly in the face and didn’t find it to be very painful?

I know that people vary wildly in how they experience things, but this is really off base from my perceptions of what classifies as unpleasant.

ETA: my previous post, though, really wasn’t meant to focus on how painful it was, but rather on the type of adrenaline response that it creates

51

I agree with Sleel. Sport fencing IMO is useless for anything but sport fencing. I was in an SCA style group for a few years. Fencing isn’t even that useful against other people bearing swords- unless they are also fencing. Using a second weapon, or a shield or fighting dirty changes everything.

In a real world situation, if my opponent assumes a fencing stance then I will take up one too. I will then kick him really hard in the genitals.

52

What a coincidence: most of my impromptu bar fights have been in drafty old castles with open stone stairways leading behind the well-anchored tapestries.

But seriously, have had fencing training since the 90s, as part of an excellent club that uses everything from folis to broadswords.

And we have a little saying to keep us humble and remind us that our finely-honed swordsmanship might not help much in real life:

A rusty Smith & Wesson beats the best rapier.