Yes I think I might be doing that in my efforts to tuck the chin and tilt the head forward a little--I think I am shrugging my shoulder to make it easier for the chin and shoulder to meet. And to bring my arm/shoulder "higher;" my brain thinks "arm parallel to the floor" and my body responds by lifting my shoulder. Working on practicing very slowly and consciously over the next few days to try to correct this.

I don't think the shoulder and chin have to meet. I think it's a perspective artifact in the illustrations. I'd actually be quite happy to hear other people's ideas.

One way to tell if you are hunching and you are working alone is to use a wall. At the end of your lunge, relax the arm and see if you can extend it any further forward. The shoulder hunch will be robbing you of a couple of inches. Don't let the torso move forward during this test, just try pushing the hand forward a little bit more. Do this so that you stop an inch short of the wall, and then if you have the extension, you should be touching the wall. Get used to that, and then, starting from full extension touching the wall, recover back and then lunge forward. You should just be touching the wall at full extension. Don't forget, you start the lunge by extending the arm first.

Richard

No - I don't think the shoulder and chin need to touch either. Maybe in some circumstances, really tucking it in makes some sense, but on the whole, unless its stated explicitly otherwise for a particular master whose work you're working with, I'd say you should focus more on keeping the chin up/head level with the ground, and not tilted to one side or the other.

You can also learn to feel where your muscles are and what they're doing. Go stand in front of the bathroom mirror... reach across your chest with one hand, and put it on the opposite shoulder. Now, scrunch up the neck muscles, lifting your shoulder upward. relax. Then move the shoulder forward with your pectoral, then back with the deltoid. Then move the arm forward and back, isolating the shoulder out of the motion. Lift the arm outward to the side, also isolating the shoulder. Lift the arm up with the shoulder joint only, like chambering a mandritto fendente. Your other hand will be able to feel and provide feedback for what the shoulder is doing. Bring the arm back down, and back up, this time, using the neck muscles and activating the shoulder that way as well, so you can feel the difference. Lunge - check your position, feel the shoulder/neck muscles. Try the same sorts of exercises as before, but from the lunge. The whole point isn't that they'll help your fencing, but they will help you gain awareness of the body position you're in.

Also, one thing I've found very, very helpful with students over the years, is to have them put the index and social fingers of their offhand under their elbow while on guard. Then, use those two fingers to push the elbow upward to extend the arm. That is a very effective way of isolating the shoulder muscles out of the extension, as probably the most common upper body lunge problem is people extending with force, as though they're punching, instead of being relaxed, extending, and then delivering the thrust with the feet. When I teach directly, I put one hand on the student's shoulder and neck area, inside the actual shoulder joint, and the other hand under the elbow, and then lift the elbow to make the extension, in order to really make the point about isolation.

Richard and Chris:
Excellent suggestions for how to monitor and correct my shoulder position; this will be helpful.

Also my thanks to Steven for posting the lunge videos in the "Fabris trouble shooting" thread as they have been extremely helpful.



I feel like I am aware, intellectually, that the shoulder and chin don't need to touch--in other words, that is not what I'm actually intending or attempting to do. I believe it is just something I've been doing in my efforts to hide my head behind the sword.



Ah, and I am really showing my ignorance here... I do believe that I may be extending more forcefully than necessary in my efforts to be "crisp" in executing the extension. While I wouldn't necessarily equate it to a punch (if I'm punching I want the movement to begin from the hip, and unless I'm missing something big I think the extension of the rapier should only involve movement in the arm and supporting shoulder/back muscles), I think I can see what you are trying to say here.

I'm having awkwardness with footwork as well but you gentlemen have given me so much to digest here I think I'll save questions on that for a later time.

Hi Nicole,

Whenever you are ready. I don't know about Chris, but one of the main reasons I know all of that is because I got worked over by a Maestro di Scherma, who was a stickler for correct form. I had those problems and more beside myself, which were corrected (read gleefully beaten out of me) by the Maestro. My class mates have still not forgiven me 11 years later for asking if we could work on getting the lunge right that one fateful night at training.

It would be an exceptionally rare individual who hasn't experienced the same problems throughout the course of their fencing career. As I keep saying to my own students, "you're not a dummy, it just takes a lot of work to get it right, and it took me a long time to get it right as well!"

Richard