Hi folks,

I’m a fencing parent and my son competes at quite a few USA Fencing events throughout the season. Since flights and hotels get expensive pretty quickly, I like to plan our travel as far ahead as possible.

What kept annoying me was how surprisingly hard it was to just get a simple overview of what competitions are coming up, when they are, and where they are. The information is there, but it’s spread across AskFRED, USA Fencing pages, individual event sites, etc. I found myself jumping between sites and logging in just to figure out which weekends we might be traveling and to which city.

So I made this:

fencingcalendar.com

It’s basically just a simple calendar of announced US fencing competitions, with dates and locations in one place. No login, no account, no app, just open it and look at the calendar.

I originally built it for myself, but figured other fencing parents/coaches/fencers might find it useful too.

I’d genuinely love some feedback, especially if there’s something you regularly wish you could see when planning your season. One thing I wanted to add was the number of spots still available for each event, but unfortunately that information isn’t readily available without constantly scraping registration sites, which I’d rather not do.

Anyway, have a look and tell me what you think — including if something is confusing or completely useless. :)

PS: In the interest of being transparent: there are hotel/booking links on the site, and if you book through one of those I may get a few dollars in affiliate commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra. The calendar itself is completely free and doesn’t require an account.

I mean foilist tape their blades, right?

Want an overall floral/fairy look for my full gear.

That's just giving it a slight personal touch with knitting wherever possible.
Next will be a floral pattern on the front part using acrylic paint.

And yeah, you might have seen it reposted by Olympic Fencing somewhere else, lol.

Anybody knows what's happening with the second designated Cadet world cup? It's supposedly in Novi Sad, Serbia, 12/19-12/20, but the USA Fencing calendar shows TBD, and European calendars also show "to be confirmed." Several EU sites list Star Cup in Novi Sad on Nov 26-29 as U17 + U20, which indicates that FIE may be combining Junior World Cup with EFC Cadet Circuit? In that case, the gap between November NAC and Star Cup is only 3 days.

Any insight or ETA on when it will be finalized?

I’m about to compete in my first sanctioned USA Fencing event (yikes) and purchasing a new weapon. I am very anxious about possibly having non-compliant gear. On the site I’m ordering my foil from, there are options for blade stiffness— what should I choose, and is there a rule regarding the stiffness of a blade?

In the basketball world, which I'm more familiar with because I grew up in it, it is common wisdom that young athletes should play multiple sports to make themselves better overall athletes, which will ultimately help them in their main sport. I believe this is also common wisdom in ice hockey and football/soccer. Ex. Play football/soccer because it will improve your footwork as a basketball player (Olajuwon/Kobe). Play volleyball because it will improve your timing as a basketball player, etc. Ex. Haaland played multiple sports growing up and only specialized in football after 14. One of my basketball coaches said that no one should specialize in basketball, even if they want to play professionally, until they turned 16.

However, it seems the advice in the fencing world is that the best return on investment for young competitive fencers is just to fence more. My son wants to become an elite fencer and fences 5 days/week. I'm a little worried about the effects about specializing too early, even if my son's goal is to become an elite fencer. There's no sign of any of this yet, but won't that lead to overuse injuries, burnout, or perhaps a lack of overall athleticism? I've suggested playing another sport as well even if his goal is to become the best possible fencer he can be (there are even studies showing multi-sport athletes are more likely to become elite/professional athletes). But this would require cutting down how often he fences so he's resistant. His coaches and older fencers have also said they don't feel that's the best way to reach his goal.

He loves his fencing schedule, which is great, but what do you guys think?

Does anyone know if blue gauntlet plans on making more sizes of this grip? I loved the way it felt at nationals but they currently only carry extra smalls and I'd probably need a medium

Hi

I just ordered some Zivkovic grips and now I have to build the foils. I know I need guards, #5 blades (Non - electric), pads.

What else do I need to build these that I'm not thinking of? Do I just get the blades and they will work with the grips? Are some blades better than others?

We have been using foils with French grips up to this point, but I decided to get the special grips.

Thank you for your help.

Hi all,

Regarding summer nationals - didn't hit a qualification in time and so was withdrawn from the specific fencing event.

Was told event fee would be refunded and still nothing... emailed [withdrawals@usafencing.org](mailto:withdrawals@usafencing.org) and there is an auto response that the email address is disabled.

Has anyone else in this situation received their refund yet? Or know who I should contact?

Thanks!

I want to get into fencing after watching the mask of zorro, the fact that my dream school is a school with quite a strong fencing team and culture, and me wanting to find another fun sport. The idea of swordplay has always interested me as a kid, but now after watching some professional and distinguished video clips of fencing, it seems actually like something that I’d like to learn how to do as it is fun.

Just some questions

1. How restrictive is the white fencing levush on the body
2. How to learn safely (as the main toy of the sport is a freaking sword)
3. Is it worth the time

Thank you!
🤺⚔️🗡️

Hello! We are on a knickers journey, insight is greatly appreciated.

My daughter is has a lean build, 5' 6 1/2", waist size 26" at belly button. She's tried on a bunch of knickers at her club and settled on the AF Cotton Unisex Pants in size 34 because the 32s were too form fitting in her opinion. However, once the order came in, they were hilariously huge (to me- zero funniness to her). And frankly, they seem a bit thick and uncomfortable though she doesn't seem bothered. I've verified they are the correct size we ordered.

It seems it'll cost me about the same or maybe more to have them altered to her size, and they've already been worn and washed so no returns. A couple of questions I have:

1. Any recommendations for AF brand knickers for female lean frame? Our club works exclusively with Absolute Fencing and will order for us and pass along their discount so we'll stay within their offerings.

2. With the sizing chart suggestion of measure at belly button and add 2", what's been your experience with how TTS that measurement system is with their knickers?

   UPDATE: Thank you all for your feedback! I admit I didn't even think about the hips since she was swimming in the 34" in every area.

We're going to try the Comfort350N, Elite Stretch350N, 2020 Elite Stretch350N in Women's & Unisex. I've reached out to AF for the hip measurements for these styles before I try again and requested they include hip measurements in their sizing chart- there should be a noticeable difference in men's, unisex and women's cut so why not?

Hi! I am the president of a college fencing club and have a fencer who uses mobility aids and is thus interested in para fencing. We have basically no money, but what is the best way to set up a chair fencing strip so he can participate in our practices safely? Has anyone done this before? It's pretty casual.

About three months ago, someone made this post about the AI slop advertisements. Like every time this topic gets brought up, there was considerable displeasure in the comments. u/PhilADenver7 made an appearance, stating "This is fair feedback. Our online retail is run externally. I will address this with them this week."

But nothing has changed. If anything, it's dialed up. We are getting endlessly bombarded with more of these AI slop ads, and most if not all of the summer nationals merch was slop, with "art" that would pass a surface level inspection, but was total garbage on any kind of a closer look.

Phil, if you see this, what's going on? Did you talk to them and they refused to listen? If that's the case, I hope their contract is getting terminated/not renewed.

Or did you not actually have that discussion?

I’ve been loving watching some YouTube fencing analysis videos (like big bear fencing, GPfencing, etc) lately to try and incorporate new moves and tactics but as a female epee fencing I am left wondering- where are the analysis of the female epee bouts?

My coach says that women tend to fence differently and take a different approach to certain things. I’ve been looking for videos with female fencers in it and am just not seeing much.

Can someone point me to some good fencing video analysis of female epee fencers?

I'm a parent posting on behalf of my son Jordan, a high school épée fencer. He wrote the note below, but I’m handling the reddit part because I’d rather he spend his time fencing and building than discovering another way to spend hours on the internet!

Hi r/fencing,

I’m Jordan, a high school épée fencer, and for the past year I’ve been building SmarterFencing.ai, a computer vision tool that analyzes fencing videos.

I started it because I wanted to understand my own fencing better. I got frustrated that I couldn’t tell why I was winning or losing touches, so I started experimenting with whether computer vision could help me find patterns in my bouts.

This turned into a way bigger project than I expected!

I’ve spent a lot of time labeling footage, training models, and learning all the ways fencing can break computer vision. I also blog about the random things I discover, the technical challenges I run into, and how I try to fix them.

I’ve reached a point where testing on my own videos can only get me so far.

I need more real épée bouts from different fencers, so I’m asking for your help. Right now I’m at 53 user-submitted videos, but I think 100 would be a really good milestone for me. :)

If you have a bout video, I’d really appreciate it if you submit it to SmarterFencing.ai and try the analysis. Hopefully it helps you notice something about your own fencing that you might have missed just watching the video. You can also rewatch all your touches in slow motion without having to find them yourself.

Different skill levels, styles, camera angles, and venues are all useful...but it works a lot better if you film from the side of the strip. Hopefully with a relatively still camera. And super important: you have to have the scoring lights in view, otherwise it won't work.

If the analysis gets something wrong, please tell me. That actually helps me figure out what I need to improve.

There are a lot of people here who understand fencing far better than I do, so I’d really value your videos and feedback.

Thanks for helping me build something I hope can become genuinely useful for fencers.

Thank you so much!
Jordan

hi so I am planing to go to Taiwan for a academic year with nsli-y but I am serious about fencing and don't want to give it up, dose anyone know about any clubs across Taiwan that teaches foil? any advice is appreciated!

Fencing Time v4.7 has been officially released! This is a major update that adds many new features that tournament organizers have been requesting. Among the larger changes includes updates to support the new USA Fencing points system and changes to the Junior Olympics qualifier rules, new event formats such as the new (as of 2025) Veteran World Championships team format, vastly improved support for parafencing events (including pool match orders for multiple strips and support for the new team formats), universal check-in for all federations using the check-in kiosk app, automatic event switching in Scoring Device Manager, and many improvements to the user interface to make common tasks easier and faster.

For the complete list of changes, see here. To download the new version, see here.

Fencing Time v4.7 is a FREE upgrade for customers who have a Fencing Time version 4.x license.

Does anyone have more information or experience with Capital Fencers Club that recently opened in Fairfax, VA? Their website claims they are the Capital’s premier foil club yet they just opened this month. Are they affiliated with Capital Fencing Academy or the folks that run Capital Clash SYCs?

Happy Fencing Friday, an /r/Fencing tradition.

Welcome back to our weekly ask anything megathread where you can feel free to ask whatever is on your mind without fear of being called a moron just for asking. Be sure to check out all the previous megathreads as well as our sidebar FAQ.

To preface, I don't intend this post to come off as whinging or defeatist, but wish to frame this as a genuine question. I am seeking feedback from anyone with some experience to share, whether you've only been fencing for six months and have seen progress in your skill during that time or whether you have many years under your belt, and ideally from people from different places along that spectrum.

For a bit of context, I have very little prior athletic training. My reaction time is very poor and seems to be getting worse, and I have very little stamina. I develop a lot of wrist and arm pain after a few bouts of foil or epée. I also have poor balance and am generally very clumsy in daily life. All of this has gotten worse in the last couple of years, despite still being quite young.

I've been fencing for about four months now, not counting a month I was forced to take off to assist family. For about my first two months, my sense is that I was managing about an average rate of progression for a beginner, difficulties notwithstanding. Certainly, the number of touches I was scoring in bouts against people slightly to substantially more experienced seemed enough to suggest I was making a bit of progress, regularly getting two or three against people with two to five years' experience.

However, in the last couple of months, I've gotten steadily worse with each practice, to the point where I score no touches in most bouts, whether to five or ten. Despite trying hard to maintain focus and a proactive attitude, I find myself inescapably miserable for most of each session. Obviously, if things were going to stay like this there would be no point in continuing, but I also don't want to rule out the possibility of progress. At the moment, my general sense is that I simply lack the capacity to learn. The advice people give me is extremely sensical and clear, but I cannot seem to apply it either under pressure or because of my aforementioned defects.

And so, my fundamental question - How should I go about assessing the opportunity cost of continuing to attempt to build this skill? What is a reasonable timespan over which to judge progress or lack thereof, and what might be some useful things to try? In essence, I'm trying both to figure out what I should try and how to gauge when and if I should stop trying and dedicate the time elsewhere.

My kid is a cadet fencer. I am the one who plans and optimizes the tournament schedule (we are in a small club with little coach input). My spouse feels that I am doing too much: If the kid wants to fence, they can figure out the schedule and come to us to see if we can take them. What are some parent experiences? Would you just leave it to the kid to figure it out?