One of the most common questions I get is some variation of “what is the correct distance in sabre?”
There’s a lot of commentary out there, some of which I’ve added to over the years in various forms. It can be overwhelming: the sheer volume of text out there, some of it contradictory, and in this age obfuscated further by large language models providing plausible but wrong answers.
At the risk of further adding to the well of information, here is how we teach distance in sabre.
There are 3 ‘correct’ distances in sabre, corresponding to the 3 phases of a sabre exchange: the 4m zone, on the defence without priority, and on the march with priority. Just as each of these phases have their own timings, techniques, tactics and strategies, so too do they have their own distances.
In the 4m zone, the distance from your opponent is measured from the end of your preparations. For example, if both sabreurs make an advance-preparation, the distance is measured from their back-foot positions after their preparations but before they make their action (e.g. lunge). This distance is typically around 4m (~3m from front-foot to front-foot) but can vary from under 3m to almost 5m depending on what the sabreurs do.
The correct distance in the 4m zone is the distance at which:
a) you are far enough away for your action to succeed; and,
b) you are close enough that your opponent believes your trick or feint.
If your distance is too close, your actions won’t work: your parries will fail, your attacks will overshoot, your counterattacks will not time out your opponent or enable you to close out their blade in opposition. Success then typically falls to the stronger and/or taller sabreur who can overpower their opponent at close range, or convince the referee that they have done so.
If you distance is too far, your tricks won’t work: your opponent won’t believe anything you show them. Then it is as if you have made no trick at all, and success then falls to luck.
The correct distance, then, depends on both you and your opponent. As a general rule: if your opponent makes a deep preparation, you should make a shallow preparation. And vice versa. 3m is usually close to the correct distance; this has each sabreur’s back foot on their start line.
The nuance comes from the preferences, strengths, and weaknesses in relative terms between you and your opponent. For example, against a twitchy opponent who is deeply afraid of your attacks, you can use a shallow preparation to set a longer distance – they will believe your fake attack or attack-on-preparation from far away. Against a capable opponent who has a strong parry but weak attack, you can use a deep preparation to set a shorter distance, to better your chances of going around or through their parry.
You can even switch distances from point to point to point, depending on what your intent: I will often use a deep preparation to shorten the distance when executing feint-attack chase; then in the next point, switch to a shallow preparation – long distance – to fake-chase stop cut.
In the end, however, remember: the correct distance in the 4m zone is when both your tricks and actions work. When one or both of these fail, adjust your distance.
Having the correct distance is more crucial when you are on the defence against the march. This distance is measured from the defender’s front foot to the attacker’s back foot.
In principle, it is the same situation as for the 4m zone: you must be close enough for the attacker to believe your tricks, but not so close that your actions fail. It is more crucial because priority rules give the attacker a substantial advantage: compared to the 4m zone where neither sabreur has priority, as the defender you must be closer for the attacker to believe your tricks – e.g. fake counterattacks – and further away for many actions – e.g. parries – to work.
Unless you are substantially taller or faster than the attacker, it is unlikely that you can find a ‘correct distance’ that satisfies both of these conditions simultaneously. If you are close enough for your trick to work – e.g. a fake counterattack – you are also probably too close for an action such as fall-short to work. If you are far enough away for the fall-short to work, you’re probably far too far away for any tricks – fake counterattack, fake stop cut, fake forward parries – to elicit anything more energetic than a raised eyebrow.
So in practice, the correct distance on defence is transient: it is the correct distance for your intention at any given point in time. There is no ‘correct distance’ that you should maintain for the duration of your defence against the march.
There are a few implications and subtleties here:
Distance depends on your intent: You will at times move closer and at other times move further away from the attacker, often, during the period of your defence. You will move closer when you need to fake a counterattack, and further away when you need to execute a fall-short. You will move further away when you need to fake a parry, and closer when you need to execute a stop cut.
Note you don’t always close distance for a trick, or widen distance for an action. Some tricks work better at close range, others at long range – the same applies to actions: forward parries being an archetypal example of an action which works best at close range. Sometimes you will compromise the distance for either the trick or the action: you may execute the fake stop-cut from too far away then close distance for the forward parry. Or execute a fake parry at the correct – long – distance but execute the counterattack too close and rely on opposition to survive.
Distance depends on closing momentum: At low speeds, you need to be closer to counterattack and and further away for parries; the attacker is closing distance slower and has more time to see the counterattack, and can accelerate more dramatically to finish their attack. At high speeds, this is flipped: you should counterattack from further away (and let the attacker impale themselves), and parry closer because the attacker’s finishing speed will not be much faster than their marching speed.
It comes down to closing momentum: if the closing momentum is high, counterattacks need to be closer and parries further; if the closing momentum is low, counterattacks need to be further away and parries closer. You cannot predict the closing momentum directly, but you can use speed as a close proxy: low speed = high closing momentum; high speed = low closing momentum.
Perceived distance is as important as actual distance: this applies to the 4m zone and march too, but is particularly important when on defence because there are no easy ways for either sabreur to accurately perceive distance (unlike in the 4m zone where the piste markings provide a reasonable measure). Most attackers judge distance by the proximity to the tip of the defender’s blade.
This means the defender should always hide their true distance. The common ways to do this are to extend the arm – thus appearing closer than reality – when setting a long distance for parries; and keeping the arm close when setting a close distance for counterattacks. You want to look like you are closer than you really are, or further than you really are; you never want to look like you’re at your actual distance. In practice, most defenders should keep their arm mostly retracted: this makes it easier for them to opportunistically counterattack, or to fake the counterattack as a setup for the parry riposte.
Remember the broader context of defence in sabre: you need to make the attacker make a mistake. This mistake can be unforced or triggered.
The correct distance on defence is to be far enough away to parry most of the time, and close enough to trick when you want to trick. You’ll need to move between these, ideally while hiding your true distance, over the course of your defence.
By contrast, the correct distance when you are attacking on the march is much simpler: you want to stay far away, outside the defender’s ‘danger zone’, for as long as possible. As with the situation on defence, this distance is measured from the defender’s front foot to the attacker’s back foot.
Correct distance for the attacker is therefore a range – it is every distance from the edge of the defender’s danger zone and further. The attacker should always stay outside of the danger zone during the preparation phase of their march, until they decide to finish their attack to hit.
The danger zone is the range of distances that the defender can reach with their blade, whether for a sweep or a counterattack or a point-in-line or any other action. It thus follows that if the attacker can accurately estimate the defender’s danger zone, it is relatively simple to stay out of it. Hence why it is important for the defender to hide their distance and thus their danger zone – see discussion above in the defence distance section.
The other thing a defender can do is to come forwards and envelope the attacker in the danger zone. This exposes the attacker to the defender’s actions, e.g. counterattack, and makes the defender’s tricks believable. (The attacker’s actions, of course, also works at this distance; but in relative terms, the attacker and defender are much more equal at this distance which should not be the case). When this happens, the attacker should either skitter back out of the danger zone, or finish their attack before the defender can set up whatever action they had in mind.
A complication arises when the defender has much more range than you the attacker. This can occur when they are much taller or much faster than you are. Their danger zone in this situation is relatively long, and this becomes a problem when it is so long that you cannot finish through the danger zone within one count – i.e. the defender can pull away faster than you can finish.
There are various techniques to deal with this – accordion to shorten the defender’s danger zone, increasing momentum to increase the attacker’s finishing speed – but sometimes you’ll need to deliberately deviate from ‘correct distance’ and enter the defender’s danger zone. This is when you’ll need to rely on moves like binds or beats or guards to survive the danger zone, and execute tricks at the edge of the danger zone, to finish the attack.
As a general rule then, the correct distance on the attack is to be as far away as possible. What’s possible depends on the length of the defender’s danger zone. The shorter the danger zone, the easier it is for you to stay far away; the longer their danger zone, the more you’ll need to stay near the edge of their danger zone to trick and minimise the time you need to protect yourself while traversing the zone to finish.