A. Coaching is provided by:

• Jed Chapin
  • Jed Chapin teaches a "mostly classical" fencing style, influenced by the charm of history but subordinated to competition effectiveness.
  • After formal training in San Francisco (Hungarian influence) and London England (French influence), he was a successful Canadian competitor, achieving an "A" classification in all three weapons, and became Canadian Epee champion.
  • In his non-fencing life, he is a Doctor of Mathematics teaching university Physics and writing computer software
• Duncan Johannessen
  • Certified NCCP Level 1 Foil Coach
  • Coaches the beginner course (Duncan, would you like to provide a little more detail?)

In addition to Jed and Duncan, we have number of members who are involved in coaching, either as assistants to Duncan or providing one-on-one tuition to newer fencers, and a core group of fencers who have taken on the task of leading regular footowrk drills.

A. Not, as you may have thought, by anchoring the fencers with a fixed length of bungee cord, so that the further a fencer travels down the strip, the more effort required to overcome the resistance of the bungee.

It actually works with a system of pulleys, as shown in the illustration below:

The outer, fixed pulleys allow the bungee cord to travel freely with both fencers. Thus, if one fencer advances along the piste and the other retreats, the tension on the bungee cord remains constant. If one fencer fleches past the other, then the tension is increased, but not sufficiently to in any way hinder either fencer. The bungee cord needs to be around 1.5 times the length of the piste. So, for a full-length piste of 17 metres, that's 25.5 metres of bungee cord. Stretching the cord by even 20% - that's 5 metres - won't add more than a few pounds of backward pressure.