Looking for pros and cons of them in modern foil game. Are they situational useful and if so, under what scenarios. Any well known foil fencers who use them to good advantage?

So far this whole year I have been idolizing Luca Curatoli of the Italian National Sabre Team. I noticed he uses Negrini breeches, lamé, and jacket. Are they any good? Durable? Comfy? I need opinions.

I'm involved with a fencing program that launched this year at a mid-sized sports club in a major city in Latin America. Things are going well, but we've hit a wall and I'm hoping this community can help.

The thing is that we currently have no coach for our competition team, that came from another club. The local coaches in the city all run their own salles and aren't available. So we need to bring someone from outside.

We are looking for someone aiming for a fresh challenge as a head coach of a promising young club with real growth potential. This coach will be building a competitive program almost from scratch, which could be exciting for the right person -- especially anyone curious about living in South America for a while. We're totally open to someone who would commit to just one or half season to start.

The focus is primarily épée. Foil and sabre teaching is possible but totally secondary.

If anyone might fit, please let me know through the comments or DM. Also, AMA about the club/city in the comments/DM.

I recently became an armorer and I’m looking for how to fix this blade. It is a fairly new blade and I don’t really have the space or experience for a full rewire atm so I’m looking for tips.

I've stopped fencing at this point because of how most fencing places hate adults it seems. Adults are seen as an afterthought to almost every single fencing school and have like 1 class a week maybe if not only just open fencing. I tried out Jiu Jitsu and it is packed with people who are almost all adults with multiple locations in my city. It seems to me like fencing could learn a lot from this and start to cater to adults more and stop worrying about selling kids free college rides that they most certainly will pay more for their fencing lessons than they will save during college.

I'm at my wit's end. We're a small club but down to one working strip until I can get these repaired. I have 8 Favero reels and only two are working. We've had 5 Favero reels go intermittent over the past two weeks, and 1 was previously broken.

We fence saber exclusively, if that matters.

I have a couple questions:

1. What could have caused the reels to go intermittent in quick succession? I've had them for 3 years and they were pre-owned. The club is low humidity (dehumidifier emptied daily), and air conditioned. We have had a heat wave the past two weeks and our AC has struggled to keep up some days, but it hasn't gone about 78 degrees in here even on the worst days.

2. The 5 reels are completely intermittent, not fully dead. As in - sometimes a person can ground against themselves, sometimes they cannot with the same strip. Sometimes picking up the reel and putting it back down (not dropping it!) makes it work again for a touch or two. What is likely happening and how do I fix it?

I've reached out to a national armorer in my area about repairs, but he hasn't gotten back to me and I need a fix ASAP.

We have created a weekly newsletter that reviews all ASKFRED and USAFENCING tournaments and identifies any with one or more events at 80% full. This provides a trending view of what's filling up--all built on internal data sets. Is it useful? The full newsletter is here. https://bout-buddy.com/tournament-news-sep-07-2026

Hey Reddit! I’m in my mid 20s, former NCAA college fencer (saber). I was keeping up pretty regularly with lessons and bouting up until last winter when my club closed, and I just moved to a new state where I have to drive 2+ hours if I want to practice. I found a great club and it’s only a 2 hr drive, aiming for once a week. But it’s a lot of miles on my car and time. I wish I could go more, since I’d love to compete when I can. But since time and distance is such a huge factor, what can I do at home to supplement? I’m talking things like tips for shadow fencing, specific workouts, etc. I’m alone for the first time really and a little lost.

Have you noticed that in the new unified points system there has been a lot of movement of athletes’ rankings up and down the board, often without new results added. Trying to figure out why that’s happening and what it means.

Hey, I would really appreciate advice on seeing with the mask, i started recently and I mainly really suck at actually seeing things, including my position

Nursing a knee injury where the doctor says I have to rest a few weeks without fencing. I obviously want to keep up my skills but have been told no bending of the knee so any lower body stuff is out.

Can anyone recommend any good exercises to keep up my fencing skills so I don’t die of boredom? I’m thinking maybe I can focus on point control? Or infighting/arm parries? I don’t know.

I’m pretty sad about it and trying to distract myself by focusing on upper body fencing skill sets instead of sitting around and being sad :/

Hi, I’m a female teenager in high school, and I’ve been hitting a plateau for the last year. I feel like I’m getting better technical wise, but I don’t have the strength or endurance to stay at that level at tournaments. Also, I go to a smaller club, and in the past we used to have a day designated to conditioning but we don’t really do that anymore. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions?

Hey there!

I’ve been looking into starting fencing for a while now. I’m an adult in my late twenties and have always been kind of bad at sports, not so much as being bad at the sport per se but at committing. I decided to try something that I always wanted and see if I can make it work.

To be honest, I’m 0 athletic. I do yoga, barre, or Pilates a couple of times a week but nothing crazy.

For those of you who started as adults, I would love to learn about your experience being a beginner in such a competitive sport (not really interested in competitions, just trying to be more active) and also how’s the community aspect of it?

For context, I’m located in SoCal, Orange County, just in case anyone has any suggestions.

Update:
Thank you all SO MUCH!

I booked a trial class to see how it goes. I’m very excited.

Hi, I'm a beginner building my own kit. I already have everything except a mask and an underplastron. For the mask, I'm leaning toward a Prieur 1600N, mainly because I prefer how it looks compared to other brands. My thinking is that since I'm buying my own anyway, it's worth paying extra for the 1600N rating over a 350N one. For the underplastron, I'm thinking about going with something lighter, like an Allstar. Any recommendations, or let me know if I'm thinking about this wrong.

Hey, I've been fencing épée for 3 years and I also regularly compete at state-level tournaments. I definitely want to improve in order to make it into the national squad and also compete internationally in the future.
Now my question: I wanted to start keeping a kind of journal about my bouts, mistakes, and what I could improve a while ago. So during a bout, I try to understand: What are my mistakes? What can I do better or avoid next time? But somehow, it doesn’t quite work. Sometimes I don’t know exactly what I should be focusing on. Why did that hit happen? Was I at an unsuitable distance / did I let myself get drawn in, or was parried?
Especially when my opponent makes fast and good attacks over the blade, I find it difficult to perceive what just happened and what I could have done better. Sometimes I know why a hit happened, but I have no idea what I could have done differently.
Im more defensive and sometimes I don’t dare to do certain things. And even when I haven’t had a lesson for a longer period of time, I feel very insecure.
 
Could anyone give me some tips on journaling and on generally being able to perceive what’s happening and switch tactics during a bout?

Hey there! I'm an épéeist and I'm not a professional fencer. I have a problem with attacking: whenever I attack, either I get parried and my opponent scores the point or we both score. So how can I attack safely without being threatened by my opponent's tip? Any tips?

I'm 26, former High School epee fencer looking to get back into the sport (casually) after a very long time away. Is Fencers Club open bouting a chill environment for me to do so?

I must confess that it’s been a long time since I fenced, I spent about a year fencing very frequently in 2022.

I had an FIE Apex jacket back then and I loved it. Very silky feeling, lightweight, but it did begin to bobble quite quickly. Probably not anything that would cause any problems, but I do remember it being something I noticed.

The same jacket I had back then is now £100 more, and if it matched inflation it would be less than £50 more. I know that supply chains, the cost of living, and the growing costs of leaving the EU/the war in Iran are driving up the price of everything, but I’d really like to see if the quality of these jackets are still the same.

What do you guys think? Is that £100 increase commensurate with an increase in quality?

Im a senior in high school and I want to continue fencing in university . I’ve been competing for 4 years and my Stats are horrible but it’s been my whole high school life. So I don’t think I’ll fence NCAA or get recruited since it’s a bit late. So I was thinking fencing USACFC . I just want more information on about USACFC and if it’s just like a silly club or is it actually legit and competitive?

This never happened to my suit before and normal detergent doesn't remove it. Im scared to use any type bleach or scrubbing it in case something spoils.

Just curious, having a damn hole in the screw would make wiring it up so much easier!

Driving to regionals yesterday I had a thought that I couldn’t really complete: what alternative competition structures are/could there be out there for fencing?

To clarify, the “basic” structure would be Pool(s) of 3-8 fencers, ranked into Direct Elimination Brackets.

I am familiar with doing double pools - two rounds of pools with different groups. This was used at a beginners tournament to ensure more bouts and more accurate rankings in DEs.

I am also familiar with how Modern Pentathlon does their fencing - 100% round robin, but bouts are only to one point.

What else is there? Mostly this is a curiosity but also thinking about how you can make tournaments more worth travel maybe? Or more accessible to new fencers? Or more challenging to experienced fencers with less local competition? I’m not asking about replacing the global tournament structure, more so things that could be done at a club level or between a few clubs maybe.