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Learning to Speak Italian: Part 2, by Rod Fleming
Just what is it that makes an orthopedic grip (whatever flavor) superior to the French or Italian? If we go back to when orthopedics were invented, you had French and Italian grips on all weapons. Those were pretty much the only two games in town. There was this guy who was a partially disabled vet form WWI who wanted to fence but due to a hand injury acquired during the war, he had a difficult time with either of the existing grips. Then, a doctor with a good knowledge of hand anatomy designed a grip that he could use and he got that grip approved by the fencing establishment. That should be our first clue about what an orthopedic grip does.
The second clue comes from the modern game of fencing and how it’s played over the world. Once orthopedic grips became widely available (and they’ve been multiplying like rabbits on Viagra) they began to be used in tournament play and while they didn’t do much to enhance the subtlety of the game, they did allow fencers to use more strength without too much loss of control. Then came electrical scoring. A synergy began to develop between orthos and electrical equipment. Flicks became part of the game. Rules changed to enhance use of the flick while orthos became more able to deliver a flick. Fencers began running at each other with bent arms and the first one to score got the touch, right of way be damned.
In fact, I’ll throw another heresy on the table while I’m at it. The modern game of competitive fencing has taken what every fencer learns in beginning classes and thrown it out the window. Subtlety is gone from the modern game and it is now as dependant on strength as the Italian school ever was. If you tried to fence exactly the way your first instructor taught you, it would be impossible for you to get past the first round of D.E.s . You’d either be flicked to death or the director would never give you right of way even though your opponent has a bent arm all the way through his attack.
Let’s look at the mechanics of a flick. In order to flick an opponent, we have to cause the blade to bend in such a way that the point lands on target when the elbow is at full extension. The force of extending the arm is what causes the whippy foil blade to bend in this manner. If your opponent is in the right place and you have sufficient point control to hit the lame, you score.
Notice that using a foil in this manner makes strength mandatory. Can you therefore flick with a French grip? Well, yes you can. But as we said before, the French grip is very unforgiving and a strength move like a flick is not the strong suit of a French grip.
The Italian doesn’t have that problem. You can flick with a vengeance if you want to. But the Italian is capable of a few more tricks and those tricks are derived from the Italian school of fencing that developed as a result of the grip design. My main point here is that the orthos make the fencer more dependant on strength, exactly the same thing that made people decry the Italian in the first place. What’s more, since the Italian has a lot more history behind it, a lot of that deriving from actual combat. This means that pitiless and bloody natural selection had a lot to do with defining both the grip and the school.
There’s one other point that needs to be made and that has to do with the balance of a weapon. The livelier point of the Italian is due to where the center of mass of the weapon is. With all that metal behind the bell guard, it seems obvious that the weapon is going to be more back balanced than an ortho. I did some simple measurements of an Italian and compared those measurements to orthos I have in my collection. I’ll reproduce the data if somebody asks for it, but the long and short of it is that the Italian balanced further back than either of the two types of pistol grips. The orthos both balanced over an inch in front of the bell guard. With the Italian, the balance point was just in front of the bell guard and the measurements I took were to the nearest tenth of a gram and the nearest millimeter. This is what makes the point so quick.
Believe it or not, the quicker point requires more point control than needs to be used with orthos. This means that your game is going to be a little different than it was. Not much different, but you will need to get used to the mass and balance of the weapon if you get an Italian. Otherwise, your point will go into the next county when you try a hard parry. But the real beauty of that balance point is that the physics of the grip let you have your cake with the quick point while handing you a fork by letting you use your arm strength for binds, croises, and beats. I could draw diagrams and do force vector analyses to show you this, but that would make this article look like a page from your freshman physics book.
I do have one caveat, however. I have not given up orthopedic grips. They still work and work well. It’s just that I now have a new weapon in my arsenal and that weapon is more effective than I thought it would be. In fact, as I learn more about the grip, I can see that it does a few more tricks that an ortho and that is very useful on strip. What I fence with is going to depend on my opponent. If I have the time to observe a potential opponent’s style, and I see that his game rests on strength, then I can pick up the Italian with confidence.
Now, a quick word about vendors. If you’re going to try an Italian, get one from Triplette. They’re far nicer looking and far easier to deal with than Santelli or AFS. In fact, Santelli’s version of the Italian is just a little bit shameful given the ethnic origins of that particular vendor. I ended up reverse engineering almost every part of the Santelli grip to get it to work. I broke out soldering torches, drills, hacksaws, and a lot of sweat just to get the weapon to a point where it was practical to assemble without trashing the wires.
Another interesting thing is that Italians are so damned rare in competition that you’re likely to get some sand from directors and even the FOC. I took two Italian foils to Nationals and the pool director told me flatly that they were illegal. I told him that he’d have to prove it. He calls over the FOC and the FOC says the same thing. They’re illegal. I stood my ground and told them both that they were going to have to bring out the rule book and show me just where Italians were illegal. The FOC scuttled off but was back in about 10 minutes and told me that I could use them. The only rule in the book on Italians is that the quillions cannot extend past the bell guard.
One last thing. You’re going to get a lot of sand from your fellow fencers. When I hauled out the Italians at Nationals, I got a chorus of stuff like “What museum did you get those from?” or “Get a pistol grip!” I ignored them with dignity and so should you. Let your blade do the talking. All you have to do is unleash one monster parry or catch an ortho-gripped flicker in a perfect croise or put a massive bind on an opponent and the jeering will stop. Oh, and you can flick back, too. Only you can do it from a LOW LINE because you have the arm strength to do it with. When they leave the strip in defeat, just remember to say “Ciao, sucker!”
Epilogue
There you have it. My two lire are on the table. I have Italians in my gear box and I use them. There is one thing, however, that I want to make sure everybody understands. The Italian school and the grip are two different animals. Sure, one came from the other, but if you were to get instruction on Italian fencing, probably from one of those historic/classical schools like In Ferro Veritas, you would probably be appalled at the wrist positioning and numbers that went with it. You would also be appalled by how close you would have to get to an opponent to do many of the things that the Italian is famous for. If you were to try to use those skills in modern competition, you would probably have your head handed to you by some little squirt who’s been fencing for less than a year. The reason for that is the fact that the Italian school simply doesn’t apply to modern competitive fencing.
But the grip is another matter. It’s still out there with its own inherent qualities quite apart from the school that gave rise to it. Putting it to use in the modern game is a puzzle that I am still investigating. The weight of the weapon is still a problem. Since I did a lot of weight training in my earlier days, I’ve got more arm muscle to move it than most other people. But, with modern materials, the weight issue is easy to cure. What the Italian really represents is a back balanced weapon that allows for a very efficient grip, and hence, the ability to use strength in your motions. This is the opposite of ortho gripped weapons that tend to be forward balanced. It is the balance of the weapon that is the real joker in the deck and how that fits into modern fencing is a very interesting question.
One thing is for sure. The Italian fell out of favor long before the modern game developed. I maintain that nobody has the first clue about how the Italian really performs in competition. Moreover, no one knows how to defend against it for the simple reason that almost no one has ever seen it before. Sure, they know about it, but they’ve never fenced against it.
The bottom line here is that a new Italian school will have to develop to take advantage of the inherent qualities of this ancient grip and apply it to today’s competitive environment. Somebody is going to have to sit down and sweat through the thought process of harnessing this old horse so that it can really show its potential. That somebody will be a lot smarter than me but until that happens, just remember. You heard it here first.
Learning to Speak Italian: Part 1
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