Flow work is a form of training where you move the sword seamlessly between postas (guards, in Italian literally positions) and strikes. This type of work seems performative, but actually it’s a huge training tool that helps us as fencers feel comfortable moving from different forms. It helps us stay flexible, it trains our muscles to repetitively move into and out of stances and attacks, and lastly it punches these movements into our muscle memory. The last benefit is truly the most important. Retaining that muscle memory is essentially what divides a hobbyist from a competitive fencer. Because when you have microseconds to read a situation and respond, the truth is your brain is slower than your muscle fibers. You need to have movement committed to memory. What’s great is when you stamp some movement into your body one day moves just happen automatically. That, that is when training becomes addictive. This is something you should constantly chase in your training. Ok back to flow work, there are many different routines and I’ll be creating pdfs and videos for the many flow drills that will be part of subscribed content later on. For now check out these examples:

This is a core, chest and arm exercise that is a great addition, fight sport specific, to your normal fitness routines. It’s called a landmine which we turn into a push press. To do landmines, put a barbell in a corner, start very small, just the bar or 10 pounds to get the feel. You want to pick up the barbell at the end, spread feet about shoulder with apart, and just like a fendente or a lunch in boxing, start with your heal, twist your leg and knee in, turn up to your torso, push your arms out and when your hips can’t turn any more stop, the rotate the other direction. You want to keep your back and has engaged, don’t over twist, and don’t lose your structure. Imagine you’re doing a fendente with a follow through. This will shred your core, strengthen stomach and back, and add a lot of pushing force to your cuts and thrusts. It will also teach you to keep your footing under awkward weight resistance. The next step when your core is exhausted, is turning your landmines into push presses. This time as you rotate your body, and come to center, let go with one hand and push with the outside hand. Catch with the other hand, then grab it with both hands rotate to the other side, return to center and push with your other hand. Repeat until you can’t anymore.

Decresere is essentially stepping back, retreating. In Italian Decresere literally means to decrease, and so it can also refer to moving your arms back or out of the way as well. When you retreat it’s often to keep a distance and measure, measure is the distance you want your opponent at to actually reach and strike them. One of the tools we have as swordfighters is committing to actions even when retreating. That means not only can we parry, but riposte and attack as well. It can be difficult as you must keep good footwork so you don’t lose balance or strength, the timing must be perfect. You can move into an action as you’re stepping backward, but the bind, strike or parry (contact) must be executed when both feet are on the ground. This gives you the strength to actually carry out the action. Practice fendente’s and thrusts, as you retreat, to interrupt or even take down your opponent. This video shows an aggressive thrust from me that got effectively defended, however then as the opponent in red pushes forward and applies pressure with a cut, I (the fencer in black) turns my parry into a cut, which then turns into a thrust! When contact with the opponent is made, I then stood my ground, ended the Decresere and the fencer in red ran himself through my blade. Practice action in your retreat slowly, controlled, then go faster. Understand you need to have these moves memorized in your body, otherwise you may have a tendency to flail or lose control during the retreat. Retreat is not losing, it’s resetting, and even in a retreat, you can set your opponent up to lose!

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When distance is locked in (you can’t really move in any direction to correct your course, whether because of your posture, or your opponents strikes) there is a sweet little trick from the Italian method. It’s a rapid change of attack direction mid attack, or even mid defense. This can be either a fendente to sottano (downward strike to upward strike) or vise versa. This video shows a fendente to sottano. I struck downward from my weak side (fendente reverso) then when my blade was low and passed the opponent, I turned the blade so my strong side faced upward, and did an upward cut from my strong side (sottano mandritto). I may have hit with my fendente but two things caused the sottano. One I didn’t think I hit hard enough that a judge would see it, second I had a threat here from my opponent and used the sottano to keep me defended. I had no time to move, and my blade was low. This switcharoo must be fast and clean. Practice this combo slow and clean first, then work on getting faster and faster. Commit it to muscle memory and it becomes a powerful tool!