The knee position is all about distance control, continuation and retreat ergonomics. When your knee is behind your laces, your body is further away, and your have stronger leg alignment to push off of and retreat. This step also finishes faster as you don't have to wait to move through your knee. Sliding deeper and through your knee helps transition your body forward setting up a second continuation. Your centre of gravity moves forward and your body starts to more naturally shift into your forward, into your front leg building momentum. Once your knee is past your laces you can more easily use a push to accelerate forward. The significance here is to use the first defensive knee position to keep yourself safe at a certain distance and without needing to take a step, sliding forward into a different distance. Transitioning in this way not only brings your body and alignment into something that will allow you to attack but it also results in a weird timing and distance to hit that people may not react to as you aren’t actually taking a step. That weird shift often short circuits peoples responses as they don't recognize the change in distance as a threat. Check out some of the older Lucenay(FRA) matches. He is a master of hand touches and uses extreme knee discipline to keep himself safe and setup these hits. Finally, try it out yourself. Fence a few bouts with explicit intention not to left your knee pass the back of your laces. Just notice how this changes the bout dynamics, what types of movement become easier and what becomes harder. Eventually, start choosing to slide that knee forward past your laces and toes into a fleche. See what happens. See how people react.
This move could easily be his own death trap, if his beat-parry would of failed. To recover out of such low body position and overstretched legs would take significant time and strength, while opponent can land several hits at his mask, shoulder or back.
![The Match That Changed Fencing Forever [Epee]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qy-1m5jxYCI/mqdefault.jpg)
Ah, I missed the orange markers, simple yet very educative commentary and good music
Glad you like them!
Thank you for continuing making videos!
Can anyone explain what the significance of keeping his knee back does / extending through his front knee?
The knee position is all about distance control, continuation and retreat ergonomics. When your knee is behind your laces, your body is further away, and your have stronger leg alignment to push off of and retreat. This step also finishes faster as you don't have to wait to move through your knee.
Sliding deeper and through your knee helps transition your body forward setting up a second continuation. Your centre of gravity moves forward and your body starts to more naturally shift into your forward, into your front leg building momentum. Once your knee is past your laces you can more easily use a push to accelerate forward.
The significance here is to use the first defensive knee position to keep yourself safe at a certain distance and without needing to take a step, sliding forward into a different distance. Transitioning in this way not only brings your body and alignment into something that will allow you to attack but it also results in a weird timing and distance to hit that people may not react to as you aren’t actually taking a step. That weird shift often short circuits peoples responses as they don't recognize the change in distance as a threat.
Check out some of the older Lucenay(FRA) matches. He is a master of hand touches and uses extreme knee discipline to keep himself safe and setup these hits.
Finally, try it out yourself. Fence a few bouts with explicit intention not to left your knee pass the back of your laces. Just notice how this changes the bout dynamics, what types of movement become easier and what becomes harder. Eventually, start choosing to slide that knee forward past your laces and toes into a fleche. See what happens. See how people react.
This move could easily be his own death trap, if his beat-parry would of failed. To recover out of such low body position and overstretched legs would take significant time and strength, while opponent can land several hits at his mask, shoulder or back.