The Monty Two-Step: Learning the Fine Art of Timing, Feigning and Showing Off

"Lunge, damn you, boy!"

This was the third time I heard Monty yell that same line during our first bout together. Each time, his voice got louder and more exuberant as he fenced circles around me. I got the distinct impression that this crazy old man enjoyed teaching the younger fencers like myself some humility. And with each of my Herculean lunges, he let out a hearty, South African laugh as his foil swooped down and clashed with mine. After my last lunge, he playfully glided around me, aiming his foil for my ribs, laughing all the way while doing it.

Show off.

I whirled around in a panic, parrying against his blade and opening up his torso, just as I had learned. With a flick of my wrist, I circled my foil under his and aimed straight for his heart in my best attempt at a disengage. This was truly a battle between Zorro the Astronaut and...well...just plain Zorro. My God, I thought. This stuff really works!

As usual, I spoke too soon. Monty lithely feigned back, smoothly parrying my blade to the side. In a fit of frustration, I disengaged again around the other side of his blade and angrily forced my foil through, but before I could even blink, I found the tip of his foil planted squarely in my chest, just below my neck, as he gently pushed me back out of range.

Crap, I thought. At least the teenagers aren't here watching me get my ass kicked.

I've been sparring with Monty for only half an hour on this sunny Saturday morning. I've always considered myself to be a fairly good athlete, having grown up around martial arts, a regular weightlifting routine and a healthy diet. But today, I was drenched and exhausted while Monty, who was easily twenty years older than me, was hardly breaking a sweat. Indeed, fencing was introducing me to a whole new level of fitness (and fatigue).

I peeled off my mask, feeling its cushiony edges soaked through with perspiration. I exhaled as I ripped the cap off my bottle of Gatorade and sucked back a huge gulp of blueberry-flavored electrolytes and vitamins. As I plopped myself down on a nearby stool to watch his pal Arnold fencing with another adult in the adjacent lane, my quadriceps and calves cried out in exquisite pain.

"Not bad, rookie," Monty hollered jovially as he slapped me across my back, sending Gatorade shooting up my nostrils. "Thanks," I coughed. I looked up to see Monty waving his foil wildly in the air as he excitedly goaded on a mumbling Arnold. Age is nothing but a number, I thought, recalling my instructor's pearls of wisdom.

"So," Monty smiled, finally sitting still for the first time today and settling onto the stool next to me. "How did I beat you?"

I replayed the final seconds of our match in my head. "You blocked my blade, and I tried to disengage twice around it, but you saw them coming." Monty nodded in acknowledgement. "True," he said. "But what was it about your last disengage that tipped me off?"

I thought about this for a second. "I don't know."

Monty offered me his hand and yanked me off the stool. "Let's go over it again, and I'm going to show you a little trick that I call, 'The Monty Two-Step.' " I mulled this over for a moment. "Okay, but if we're dancing, I lead," I joked. "Ha! You kids are great," Monty yelled, slapping me again across my back and sending another flood of Gatorade shooting up my nose. He was clearly getting a kick out of this. As I wiped blue snot from my face and put down my drink, Monty led me back into the fencing lane next to Arnold, who was engaged in a whirlwind of steel against his own opponent.

"En garde," Monty bellowed. How strange it was to hear these words coming from someone other than my instructor. I assumed my stance as Monty approached and slid into the most elegant fencing pose I had ever seen. While my sword arm was nervously bent at the elbow and my back ramrod straight, Monty's sword arm was fluidly outstretched as he loosely rocked back and forth on his slender legs.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go back to the last move. You had parried my blade...." He suddenly shot his sword hand forward, and I smoothly parried his blade as I had done during our match. "Good form," he observed.

"Now," he continued, "after that, you disengaged." I nodded, circling my blade under his. Just as before, he feigned back and parried. "Here's where it got tricky," I noted.

"Well, here's what happened," Monty said. "You were impatient. If I block your disengage, you don't immediately try to disengage again, as you did before. That will telegraph your moves to me, and I'll see it coming from a mile away."

I replayed this scenario in my head. "But," I pondered, "I can't just stand there and let you strike me."

"That's exactly what you do," Monty instructed. "But, the trick to defeating me is in the timing. Step One: you wait. By waiting for me to counter, you are forcing me to stretch out my arm and open up my torso, but without allowing your foil to get blocked and without giving yourself away. So, instead of trying to be the bull-headed aggressor, time your moves. Use some finesse. Wait for me, and then comes Step Two: at the last second, parry and hit."

I was amazed by how Monty could remember every detail of our bout. For all his bravado in the fencing lane, he was turning out to be a very observant and insightful tactician. Truly, this sport is just as much of an exercise of the mind as it is of the body.

With that, Monty's foil slid out of my first parry and made a beeline for my chest. I waited until the moment just before the tip of his foil reached my chest. At the last second, I feigned back, as Monty had done. Monty's sword arm stretched out even further as he tried to reach me, exposing even more of his torso.

Now I was beginning to see what he meant. With his entire torso exposed, my opening became clear. I parried, stepped to the side of his blade and pushed mine forward into his exposed chest. "HA," he laughed triumphantly as my blade struck him with a satisfying THUD. "Well done! I do believe your instructor owes me a pint."

"What," I exclaimed happily as I straightened myself back up, exhilirated that I landed a hit on the legend of the Fencing Academy that was Monty. "Well," Monty explained, "your beloved instructor and I made a bet. She didn't think that I'd be able to teach you anything. I bet her that, if I could prove her wrong, she would buy me a pint."

For the next twenty minutes, we went over the Monty Two-Step five more times. Despite the burning pain in my legs, the thrill of learning my first strategic pattern encouraged me to continue. Each time, I felt my timing becoming slightly more precise and my disengage being executed more smoothly. And once again, as my forehead broke into a heavy sweat, Monty stood there looking like a million bucks, goading on a mumbling Arnold while teaching me the finer points of timing, feigning and....

Show off.