Some Background...

More accurately, this should be called "notes on the Beck System of épée" - as developed by the founding coach of Tauberbishofscheim, Emil Beck. Because of the influence Maitré Beck had on fencing in his country, often American coaches call this the "German System" and leave it at that. However, this is not the only method of teaching épée used in Germany, and, in fact, is unique to Tauber and Tauber trained coaches.

Who is Emil Beck? What is the Beck System of épée? How does it differ from other systems? What are it's strengths and weaknesses?

"There is no evidence that Beck was . . . trained as a coach"

There seems to be no evidence that Emil Beck was trained as a fencing coach, though he did take fencing lessons for some time. As is often the case with innovators, his lack of training as a coach may have been one of Emil Beck's strengths. Rather than be indoctrinated into one school of thought or fencing system, Emil Beck looked at épée to see what fencers were really doing on the strip. From these observations he put forth a system of training that was somewhat unorthodox and certainly not rooted in any of the traditional fencing "schools". His first club was small, but Beck pushed his pupils to win. Beck became a strong lobbyist for fencing, convincing major corporations - such as Adidas and Mercedes – to sponsor his club and his fencers. By the 1976 Olympic Games, Beck's fencers were winning medals.

In recent years however, the luster of Beck has dimmed. There have been accusations that Beck has mis-managed funds from the German government, including a habit of making payments to his relatives. Many fencers have stepped forward to denounce Beck's system of coaching. Some fencers have claimed that Beck himself was not responsible for the results of Tauber, but took credit for the work of other coaches at the club. At the time of this writing (2004) Emil Beck is no longer running programs at Tauber, though training still continues there.

What is the "Beck System"? Emil Beck observed what happened in a fencing bout, and realized quickly the individual skills of a fencer are very few. Most fencers have only three or four signature moves. It is often the way the fencers put those moves together that makes them so deadly. Early in his teaching career, Emil Beck understood that there were three components to a bout: blade skills, footwork skills, and tactical skills. Beck identified the skills in each group, and then made up a modular system to give a fencer those skills as quickly as possible. Instead of a big elephant, the Beck system gives the fencer a trunk, a tail and a leg at a time, putting them together gradually to make the entire animal. This makes things good for the student and for the coach. The student is gradually introduced to those elements most likely to insure that they win. The coach is given a road map of easy skills to teach, and no longer has a huge body of knowledge to impart to the student en masse. The actions in the lessons are few, so the coach and the student both grow in skill as they repeat the same actions over and over.

The Beck system consists of a progression of lessons. The lessons are a very rigid series of actions that are easy to memorize for both the coach and the student. The coach, knowing the lesson and knowing where the lesson is going, can concentrate on giving the lesson, rather than thinking about "what comes next?" or what they should do with the student today. Creating a lesson from scratch every time takes an enormous amount of energy for the coach. The coach is apt to forget things, or skip over actions. In truth, most coaches don't have lesson plans or a lesson progression at all. They make up their lessons during the walk from the parking lot into the club, or they simply teach the same lesson over and over again with no variation.

The Beck system benefits the coach in its modular approach to fencing. It is very easy to select those actions that play to a student's strengths (useful in warm up before a competition) or to pick those specific actions the student needs improvement in (useful in correcting mistakes). The beginning coach has a road map to follow to tailor the lesson to the student. They can simply select those parts of the lesson plan that the student does not do very well. It is not the best approach, but for the beginning coach, it is better than ignoring the weaknesses of the student entirely.

"Few fencers take the time to do the enormous number of repetitions necessary to make their technical skills polished..."

The student's advantage in this approach to épée is in the small number of technical skills needed to perform the lessons and the large number of repetitions done of these skills in the lessons. Every fencer knows the dictate: "you must practice a move 10,000 times before it is yours". Few fencers do the enormous number of repetitions necessary to make their technical skills polished and automatic. Coaches teach a move over several lessons and then move on, worried that the student will get bored. Worse, perhaps the coach gets bored with teaching the action and abandons it before the student knows it. As a result, the student, who often can execute an action in lesson, when prompted, never does so on the strip during the bout. The student has learned the action, but does not "know" the action. Because the Beck system engages in a large number of repetitions of the same actions, in a variety of situations, the student is more apt to be able to execute a specific action under pressure, in a bout, when it really counts. The student also is taught fewer actions, and so has fewer choices to make on the strip.

The Beck system makes the student execute many of the same actions with different footwork. Many epée fencers can score to the the thigh with a lunge. How many can score to the thigh after making a retreat? or while making a fleche? The number of fencers who can do that are far fewer. For many fencers, the integration of footwork and blade work is the most difficult part of learning to fence. The Beck system makes this automatic, and gives preprogrammed "attack patterns" to the student. This will make the student much more comfortable when actually bouting.

The last advantage of the Beck system for both the coach and the student is that the lesson patterns have a built in tactical progression. Since the Beck system attempts to replicate many of the actions of a real bout the student has an inkling of what an actual bout is going to be like. This makes them much more prepared for competition. If the average student sees a situation in a bout they have not practiced in lesson, they simply ignore the situation. For the beginning fencer, this may be far smarter than trying to force a scoring opportunity when one may not exist.

The Beck system of lessons has four tactics: "attack", "attack and remise" or "preparation-attack", and "counter-time". Unlike the more classical schools of Epée, there is no "counter-attack" tactic in the lessons. In the Beck system, the emphasis is on controlling the opponent's blade at all times, so that the opponent is not "allowed" to make an attack that the fencer has not provoked.

The student's attack is always proceeded by an action on the blade: either a beat or a press. This initial attack is always to the forward target (the hand or thigh). Attacks against deeper targets are done with more foil like actions, and are to be used against weaker opponents. Too often beginning epée fencers ignore the forward targets and attack deeper targets, such as the chest or upper arm. This guarantees that a more skilled opponent will either make a successful counterattack or parry and score against the fencer. The Beck system teaches the fencer to attack close targets first. For the experienced fencer, these attacks have value: the better fencer has the skill to score with these attacks to the forward target. For the less skilled fencer, the attack to the closest target is the start of a preparation that will lead to more successful scoring actions.

The "attack-remise" is another tactic that has advantages for the beginner fencer and skilled fencer alike. Often the beginner will get fixed on attacking the hand. They will miss on an initial action to the hand and then attempt to continue to "poke" at the opponent's hand to score, even if that is no longer an appropriate target. In the lesson plan, there is an initial target, and then a remise. The remise is done to a number of different targets, and is a natural, follow-through action from the first attack. There is an assumption that the first attack (especially if it is to the hand) will fail to score, either because the opponent is too skilled, the attacker has poor technique, or the attacker is using the first attack as a preparation. Once a target is attacked, the lesson moves on to the next target. The student is not encouraged to stand still and "poke" at an inappropriate target.

"Epée is a weapon of counter-time" a coach once told me. In the Beck system, there is a simple counter-time taught. Every new action starts by sweeping for the opponents blade in a starting line. This sweep forces the opponent into a line of the attackers choosing. The sweep is always done in such a way that if the opponent chooses to attack on the student's sweep, the student can make a defensive action. If the opponent does not attack, but simply protects the blade by avoiding the sweep, the sweep has done it's job and the fencer can now beat or press in the pre-programmed line.

Finally the Beck System introduces the idea of a "safety". This is an action done at the end of all other actions. It assumes that the attack and remise have both failed. The opponent is now very close and is about to score. The fencer must be composed, find and control the opponents blade, and score to a deep (usually torso) target.

At each point in the tactical progression, the student is asked to recognize a situation, and act on it automatically, without thinking and without a lot of decision time. Many people have criticized the Beck system as teaching fencing "machines". I am not sure that this is such a bad thing. Often, for the beginning fencer, their heads are so full of advice from coaches and team mates about solving fencing problems that the vast majority of them get hit "thinking". For the most part, beginning fencers enter a bout with too MUCH information. The end result are often poor tactical choices. Making the initial stages of competition automatic for a beginning fencer could be seen as a step in the right direction.

Still, there is some truth that the training in the Beck system does not give the coach much credit, or even much to do! Yet, this system understands that fencing is not about showing off the skills of the coach, but rather, to make the fencer as successful as possible. Gary Copeland, one of the most successful coaches in the United States, writes this about the Beck System:

"In the end, the coach's goal is to have a large number of highly competitive students. The easiest way to do that is to develop a lesson system that is not dependent upon an excellently skilled coach but rather a system of instruction that anyone can teach and which focuses on individual techniques rather than abstract concepts"(1)

With all the strengths that the Beck system seems to have, why isn't it done by more American coaches? Probably the biggest weakness of the Beck system is the number of repetitions it asks for in lessons. Because the system builds skills in such small pieces, the Beck system works best for a student taking lessons every day, or better yet, multiple lessons  in a day. The average American coach, teaching mostly recreational fencers, is lucky to see his or her students two or three times a week . Because of this, progress with the Beck method in a recreational environment is very slow. Students find this very discouraging, and since the coach is in business to keep students the Beck system is ill suited for such an environment. There are coaches, however, such as Paul Soter of the  Golden Gate Fencing Center, who have had good results with the Beck approach.

In addition to this, there is a certain feeling of "not invented here" with the Beck system. It certainly isn't the only way to train epée fencers, and for some students, it can be successfully argued that it  is not the best way. When talking to another epée coach about the Beck system, he told me that the Beck system was too "mechanical" and "artificial" to be useful to him. He found the lessons boring, and so did his students. A student who finds a lesson boring is not likely to apply him or herself, and the coach is correct to find a different approach.

For the average coach who wants competitive results, the Beck system has some appeal. Even if the lesson plans are not followed slavishly, Emil Beck has given a very structured approach to giving an epée lesson that removes a great deal of guess work and thinking. If there are actions in the lesson that the coach would like to add, I have found that the Beck system allows easy on the spot modifications. The beginning to intermediate épée coach could do much worse than exploring the Beck system.

The Lessons...

What follows in the lesson outline below is NOT a word for word representation of the Beck system, as my notes (from two different seminars and three different articles) contradict in naming and describing the patterns and segments of the Beck system. So the labeling and description of the patterns may be inaccurate or incomplete, if compared to the original German.

The beginning student with no training must be able to go on guard, extend, and do simple footwork to start these lessons. From these simple actions, the rest of the lesson is built. The blade techniques of beat, thrust, and parry flow from the structure of the lesson. In some respects, the student has no choice but to execute the next action in the lesson. All actions in the following are assumed to take place between a right-handed coach and right-handed student.

The beginning lesson is organized around the following footwork pattern:

• Standing
• Advance
• Lunge
• Advance (and) lunge
• Jump (and) lunge
• Retreat
• Fleche

And here is the first blade pattern of the lesson:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Safety: opposition in 8 to thigh or flank.
3. There is no remise in this initial, first lesson.

Let us look at the first lesson in detail, along with some of the footwork. The footwork for the example is advance. The coach begins in a high line, without engagement. The student is at extend and advance distance to the coach's hand. The coach drops his blade as if to threaten the student's thigh, and this signals the student to make a search with a slow counter of 8 for the coach's blade. The coach avoids the sweep, and replaces his or her blade in the low line, slightly extending as if to make (or finish) an attack. The student then begins the pattern with a quick, sharp beat in 8 and an immediate extension and advance to the coaches hand. The student scores. The coach makes a late parry of 6 to defend the hand. At the same time that the coach is making his or her parry, the student has relaxed his or her arm back to an on guard position, with the point of the weapon slightly high. The coach should immediately extends his arm again, to attack the under the student's hand. The coach advances to the target. The student holds their ground, makes a parry of 8 to stop the coach's attack, and finishes with opposition riposte to the coach's thigh or flank. Both fencers return to on guard and do the action again, or do the action again with the next footwork pattern.

This is far different from other schools of epée, which would suggest that after the first attack to the hand, the student's point should be left on the target to make a remise, either off the parry, or into the coach's attempt to hit the low line target. The Beck argument is that the student has missed the initial (hand) target because of the coaches defense, either with distance, or with the blade. Keeping the blade on target only allows the coach/opponent to gain control of the student's blade and insure a scoring action. Better to allow the coach to make an attack into a line the student controls, so that the student can gain the advantage over the coach/opponent and finish with a final scoring action.

Consider the same lesson done with a different piece of footwork. In this segment, the footwork is advance (and) lunge. The lesson begins with the coach and student at lunge distance. The lesson's blade work begins the same, with the sweep by the student and the coach avoiding the blade work. However, before the student begins his or her beat, the coach should begin to retreat, opening the distance between the two of them. The student should recognize that the distance is opening very early (on the performance of their sweep) and change the beat of 8 into an engagement of 8, and carry the coach's blade through the advance, releasing it to score to the top of the coach's wrist. The coach engages in whatever defensive action as before (a late parry) and re-attacks the student in the low line as before. The student remains in the lunge to score with opposition to the coach's low line.

"The coach should not wait until the technical execution is perfect before putting the blade work in the context of footwork."

If the student is getting an action they have never performed before, such as a blade take or opposition riposte, the start of the lesson is used to introduce this concept (this is a good use of the "standing" footwork in the lesson, and one of the reasons why every lesson starts with the student standing still). Remember that the lesson will have many repetitions of the new action. The coach should not wait until the technical execution is perfect before putting the blade work in the context of footwork. By doing these repetitions in a more tactical context, the new action will be practiced and integrated with general fencing knowledge at the same time. If the student is really having difficulties, the lesson can be focused on the action the student is having difficulty with in a blocked manner. Always finish by returning to the entire pattern, including footwork.

Once the student has mastered the beginning lesson, it is time to move on the the second pattern. This pattern is:

2nd Pattern:</p

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: bottom of hand.
3. Safety: bind of 6 to 7 to top of thigh.

We see that this pattern does have a remise, unlike Pattern 1. To perform the remise, the student simply stands in place after the first hit. For instance, in the standing footwork, the coach keeps his hand low for the first hit, makes a late parry as the student hits, and the student "rolls off" or avoids the parry and makes the hit on the under side of the coach's hand. The student then relaxes his or her arm, the coach re-attacks and the student does a bind from 6 to 7.

Once the first four patterns are mastered, the remaining patterns should be done with more advanced footwork. This footwork is:

• Standing
• Advance, advance
• Lunge
• Advance (and) lunge (The student carries the coach's blade through the advance)
• Jump (and) lunge (The student carries the coach's blade through the advance)
• Retreat, retreat
• Fleche
• Advance, fleche

Here the remise (if the pattern calls for one) is made on the second footwork. For instance, in Pattern 2, using the advance, advance footwork, the student will sweep, beat and score with an advance. As the coach steps back, the student makes the second advance to score under the coach's hand. Then the student stands still and makes the safety when the coach attacks.

With all of this said, here is the complete list of patterns, below. The list can also be printed out here:

1st Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Safety: opposition in 8 to thigh or flank.
3. There is no remise in this initial, first lesson.

2nd Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: bottom of hand.
3. Safety: bind of 6 to 7 to top of thigh.

3rd Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: top of thigh.
3. Safety: 6 transport to 1 to score on flank.

4th Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: foot.
3. Safety: 6 opposition to chest.

5th Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: bottom of hand.
3. Safety: bind in 6 to foot.

6th Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: thigh.
3. Safety: parry 6, hit flank (coach must close distance).

7th Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: foot.
3. Safety: 4 cross to 7.

8th Pattern:

1. Initial target: top of hand.
2. Remise to: bottom of hand.
3. Safety: opposition 6 to chest

9th Pattern:

1. Initial target: bottom of hand.
2. Remise to: thigh.
3. Safety: parry 4, disengage riposte to chest or flank.

10th Pattern:

1. Initial target: bottom of hand.
2. Remise to: toe.
3. Safety: opposition 4 to chest.

"...the student should always look to finish strong when going to the deeper targets."

Finally the student can be given actions that are very foil like. These actions are used to remind the student that most of the touches in epée occur to the body. They should also be taught using the footwork pattern above. Done like foil, these actions also add a little variety to the lesson, and reinforce that the student should always look to finish strong when going to deep targets. They can be done in place of one of the patterns (using the same footwork as the pattern) or incorporated as a safety or finishing action instead of the prescribed safety for any particular pattern.

These actions are:

• Opposition to chest in 6 or 4, or opposition to flank in 8 or 7.
  
• Beat in any line, attack direct to the chest.
• Grazing beat, coupe to chest in 4 or 6.
• Beat in 4,6, or 8, make a circular disengage to the chest.
• Beat in 7, make a circular disengage to the flank.
• Beat, feint to 6 or 7, and disengage to hit chest.
• Beat 4 feint 4, hit chest with a 1-2.

Some notes for the coach . . .

The student should take lessons in full uniform. The coach may occasionally "punish" the student by scoring against them when the student has made a particularly egregious fault.

Unlike other system, the coach controls the space before and after the cue to hit. This demands attention from the coach to make sure that if the footwork pattern is "lunge" that the student is making a lunge that makes sense in the context of the bout. Do not ask the student to make footwork actions that are unrealistic (e.g. lunges that are very long, or fleches that are far out of distance).

Do not focus on the student hitting the target on every try - especially when that target is the hand. Remember that the secret of the Beck system is that if a target is missed, another hit is on its way. By insisting that the student score against the hand, the student will "fumble" or jab to make the more difficult hits to the hand and foot. This may cause the student to be late for the next action: the remise or the safety, depending on the drill.

If the student misses, act as though they had hit and give the next cue. Do insist that in the safety that the student takes the time to properly take and control your blade.

Encourage the student to relax his or her arm before the safety. The student will attempt to keep their blade far out in front of them - especially if they have learned épée in another system - which greatly handicaps the execution of the safety.

In the use of the fleche, the student should hit on the first action – there is no "safety" in the fleche. The student should be encouraged to make a fast remise, or multiple remises, while going by the coach after the fleche.

Do not try to give this lesson fast at first. You cannot move to the next action in the series until you have been hit (or almost hit if the student is not accurate). Move at a pace comfortable for both you and the student.

Encourage the student to hit firmly. Hits to the body, especially, should be solid, without jarring the coach. Hits to the hand and arm may not always be solid (as noted above).

¹Level 2 Epée Manuel, Gary Copeland, United States Fencing Coaches College, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Last edit: January, 2005