Woody Cavenaugh

When one shoots a rifle, the first thing you do is aim. You do this by putting your eye in line with the sights down the barrel so if all goes well you put the bullet where you are looking. The same skills are used when punching the button on the elevator. It is all geometry. Since with the gun you are shooting at something many many feet away from yourself you put the eye as close to inline with the barrel as you can. It makes you more accurate, and the math is easier.

When you push the button on an elevator you are using three points of reference to figure out where your finger needs to go to make the elevator go up the hole. Point one is your eyes, point two is your shoulder and point three is the tip of your finger. As your eye is only about 8 inches or so from your shoulder it is pretty easy to do the math to move the tip of your finger (the bullet) located two and a half or so feet away to the button. Elevator goes down the hole. If you had a tiny little camera on the end of your finger the angle would be the same as from your eye, but the camera would be closer to the target.

Foil is pretty much the same math changing the variable of the "bullet" being an extra meter away from you when your arm is at full extension. When you are enguard, the other point of the triangle moves from the shoulder to the elbow. This is one more reason why you extend before you lunge. Not only do you want to establish right of way, you also want to make the math easier when you aim at your target. If you had a tiny little camera on the end of your foil the angle wouldn't be the same same as from your eye, it would be close, and even closer to the target.

Epee is even more complicated, because the whole body is target. Yes, you can use your eyes and the point of the epee to make one side of a shape that is sometimes a triangle sometimes a polygon. But the angles involved are larger. It isn't eight or so inches to your shoulder anymore it is a foot and a half to your elbow or two and a half feet to your wrist. Your eye's point of view, and the imaginary "epee cam's" point of view are vastly different. Your eye sees the top of the hand, and you will often go for it as a fencer. Your epee however doesn't see the top of the hand, it sees the bottom.

What I hope I am getting across is that if you get your head right with the math, and your weapon's point of view, more of your opponent's target becomes available to you. When you fence, be aware of what you see with your eyes, but also try to imagine what the tip of your weapons "sees". If you get good at this, you will start to get a lot of touches that leave your opponent scratching their heads. You will have hit them where they literally can't see.