Landing first intention attacks

Most people when they start fencing have trouble on landing simple first intention attacks. The key to landing first intention attacks is simple.

Time for you strike to reach the target < time for your opponent to perceive & react  to the stimuli accordingly + time It takes for them to perform a parry / retreat.

As time is relative to distance, this means that to land a successful 1^st intention strike, you have to be relatively close to your opponent. Trying to land it from the very far reaches of your maximum passing distance is doomed to fail. Ofcourse the faster the actual fencing action is, the further away you will be able to land it ( up to a point ).

Obviously as you approach you opponent to get closer, they also have the choice to strike themselves, so getting close enough for the first intention attack to work can be a tricky.

As I see it, there are 2 possible ”tempos” in which you can attack your opponent with a first intention attack. First one is as he comes forwards and second one is when you catch him flat footed and he is not able to evade / retreat from your attack by stepping backwards. Lets look for a couple of ways to set up these situations.

Getting most historical fencers to move forward is actually relatively simple. Just open the distance by stepping backwards, and as you opponent rushes to close it, there is you tempo to attack. Not all fencers though come close enough for a first intention attack ( though nearly all will come close enough for a second intention attack, but that is not in the scope of this article ). With the good ones you need to make them close the distance to much in this scenario, which you can do by making them believe that you are still retreating, and turn your retreat into a half retreat*, and then attack. 

Catching people flat footed is harder. Most people are conditioned to retreat as you advance, so what you need to do is to recondition them in the fight to not retreat. Easiest way for this is to advance with a small jump instead of a regular advance ( though I recommend doing this only in flat surfaces ). A lot of people for some reason are very surprised by this, and lack the ability to retreat in their confusion. Good time for a vorschlag. This works up to a point.

There are a couple of more sophisticated ways to reach the same goal. If you are fencing someone who is very linear in his movement, you should condition them to stand still by moving sideways in a non linear fashion. Even if they don’t stand still, what they will likely do is unconsciously mirror you and move sideways to the other direction. Then move sideways ( or circulary would probably be a better term ) to the other direction. Now that they have been conditioned for non linear movement, switch your footwork to linear and close the distance. You will often find that they cannot anymore move lineary backwards.

Second way to reach the same goal is introduce a pause into your footwork. If your opponent mirrors you and pauses also when he perceives this, you have conditioned him to not be able to retreat, and can catch him flat footed now.

* ( If you step backwards so that you first move the rear leg and then the front leg, it's a full retreat. In half retreat you move only the back leg. )