About fencing

Fencing is not the most well-known sport here in NB so we have some videos here to help introduce people to the sport so they can have an idea of what to expect when they come in. Just remember, all the videos in the world can't show you what it feels like to step onto the fencing strip, blade in hand, and to face your opponent. You'll have to come in to the club for that!

This video below gives a quick overview of the sport as whole, including the 3 weapons: epee, foil, and sabre.

Beginners in the club start by fencing epee, which is the easiest weapon to understand at the outset, but has a lot of depth and room for personal style.

After fencers get a good grasp of the basics, they can also fence sabre, the fastest weapon and the only one allowing hits with the edge of the blade. Unlike epee, sabre has rules for who has priority when hitting.

Want to know how fencing became the sport it is now? Check out this video below for a bit of history.

If you want to understand how priority in sabre works, this is probably the best video for it.

We do use swords, but fencing isn't swordfighting like you see in the movies, it's a sport abstracted from it. Not everyone likes that it isn't "real" swordfighting, but we think that making swordfighting into a game brings out the coolest aspects of it. Here's a video that talks about that.

The video below goes over lots of the reasons fencing is a great sport, but this one really rings true: "you are battling another person, which means you are battling another mind."