Brighton Midsummer Fencing Festival – 2026 – Instructors – Duncan Fatz – Workshop

Instructor – Duncan Fatz, rapier

Workshop title: Sense and Sensibility in Close Measure, Training Two Senses That Can Help in a Tight Spot

Workshop weapon form: Single Rapier

Workshop experience level: 

In an ideal world and the perfect fight, coming into close measure would be like a good plumber arriving at your home: they go in, they do the job and leave swiftly without having to leave you for two days without heating as they go to look for parts. However, we are nature’s fools and normality can become distorted as things shrink ever inwards. This phenomenon is well known in physics and, due to it, for many years Schrödinger’s cat has been in a state of high anxiety, hooked on valium, and has dead-locked the door to its box from the inside.

Such a subversion of normality is also evident in fencing when it is often seen that, as two fencers come into close measure, emotion overcomes them; they forget the expensive swords they have in their hands and they suddenly rush forward to embrace each other. This hugging can go on for some time until they eventually fall to the ground, rolling around in each other’s arms and whispering into each other’s ears such phrases as, “I could have hit you with the blunt end.” Eventually, as a bystander, you feel obliged to step forward and state something along the lines of, “I say, old things, this is becoming a bit embarrassing, could you get up please?” at which point there is a dialogue between them in the order of, “You let go first,” “No, you let go first,” “No you,” “No you,” until at last, shame-faced, they do rise, step apart from each other and normal decorum is returned.

If one wishes to avoid such social embarrassment, as hitherto described, the fencer can aid their cause by training their senses, and specifically the senses of touch and proprioception.

Many might be of the opinion that they are well acquainted with the sense of touch and it has acquired a number of names in different fencing systems all with their own nuances of meaning and, to misquote Sherlock Holmes, many may touch but they do not feel. Understanding, recognising changes in the feel of the blade and immediately processing and acting appropriately upon those changes can help you out of a tight corner.

Ah, but some might cry, “What use is training in the use of touch when there is absence of blade?” The point is that training in the feeling of a blade informs and helps in the training of the sense of proprioception, which is of use even when there is absence of blade.

Proprioception is your body’s innate knowledge of where it is positioned within time and space and is informed by proprioceptors which exist in muscles, tendons, joints, skin and bone and kinaesthesia uses these receptors to inform movement. The interesting thing is that although it is an innate system it can be trained and retrained so that an instantaneous understanding of where you are and what options are available to you can be gained, which is invaluable when time and measure is short. It is also a big factor behind the answer of the how, to the statement given by some experienced fencers of, “I don’t know how I do it, I just do it.”

As a fencer and physiologist I will lead you through this practical workshop and examine the training and understanding of those systems using rapier encounters as the framework and hopefully show you how you can get out of a tight space when death and honour are on the line.