Previously, I focused rather exclusively on foot and hip position, first with the upright fencers of late 1500s and then the open hipped, back weighted fencers of the 1600s. This emphasis is a bias on my part- I'm always trying to improve my footwork.
Over time I've come to realise that figuring out what to do with the top half of your body is equally important, especially since it will affect both your feet and your arm. There seems to be two main groups of rapier manuals (other than the Spanish). The first is the forward leaning Fabris, and the second is the back postured Giganti. See here for a more extensive review on the topic.
Having tried both for a bit, I've come to appreciate both for their own merits, although I am sure there are more nuances to the stances I haven't discovered yet.
At first, Fabris' forward leaning stance was a bit odd to me. Typically in sword fighting you don't want to lead with your head. However, what the stance does it puts your body behind your head, and your head behind both the rapier and head-sized quillons. This leads to an extremely limited area for your opponent to target, and what little target there is, is behind a sword. The placement of the hips and shoulders seems to lend itself to passing steps and cuts. His system also minimizes blade contact.
After discussing the guards, counter-guards, measures and tempi, I need to show and explain how to carry your body while delivering a thrust and recovering. While studying this art, you must first learn how to carry your body and deliver lunging thrusts that are as long as the one you see in this illustration. The heart of the matter is the ability to deliver quick, long, strong lunging thrusts and immediately recover out of measure.
To deliver a lunging thrust, set yourself in a solid stance, better if a bit narrower rather than wide so that you may then extend your front foot forward. While delivering the thrust, extend the sword-arm and
bend the knee as much as possible.
For Giganti, the most difficult part for me was lunging out of a back loaded stance. I'm still not extending as far as I should be, nor am I as fast. It does seem, however, that his lunges weren't as deep as others, since he states 'Still, this is a extremely versatile stance, and it allows for a great variety of distance changing, with comparatively little movement.' On the other hand the quote above advises to bend the knee as much as possible, which is typically what I try for in training. I figure that if you train to go deep, you can certainly make a narrower lunge.
The thing that stands out most while training both stances is the importance of athletic ability. Giganti says specifically that until you can do 100 madrittos and 100 roversos, your arm wasn't strong enough for fencing.
I'm still working on that one.
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