Handedness in Fencing

We all love fencing, right? But how much do we really know about this sport? Well, to start off, you need a sword (or a blade, as we like to call it). Now the question occurs: left-handed blade or right-handed blade? Your answer could determine your future success in fencing. Don’t believe me? Let the statistics tell you then, Elite fencers have a huge overrepresentation of left-handed fencers amongst them. In the 2006 World Fencing Championships, 12 out of the 24 winners were left-handed. Keep in mind that only about 10% of the world population are left-handed! 

So, what could have caused this overrepresentation? We often attribute this phenomenon to the lack of encounters with left-handed fencers. Even with a huge overrepresentation, left-handed fencers are still few compared to right-handed fencers, with 13-31% of elite fencers being left-handed. However, this theory has yet to be verified in any way. In order to find the “right” answer, we will have to look at some studies.  

In 2020, Witkowski et al. conducted a study investigating the performance of left-handed and right-handed fencers. What they proposed is a link between decreased lateralization and superior performance. As previous studies have shown, left-handed non-athletes often show superior performance in their non-dominant hand than right-handed non-athletes. And fencers have shown similar results in this study, with left-handed fencers performing better with non-dominant hand than right-handed fencers. However, this study finds another interesting phenomenon: left-handed fencers have a faster reaction time than right-handed fencers when asked to hit targets (for the stats people, the difference was significant at a 0.05 significance level). This leads to the researchers propose that reduced lateralization contributes to a better control of movements. Although there are still lacks proper brain imaging studies on this topic, it could be a topic for future investigations.  

Another study done by Witkowski et al. in 2020 provides a different perspective on this issue. In this study, the researchers focused on the perception strategies used by elite foil fencers depending on the handedness of the fencer they encountered. The results show that when fencing left-handed opponents, the foil fencers had more fixations of sight on their opponent’s guard and armed hand, while with right-handed opponents, the fencers fixed their sight more on the upper torso. These results were consistent in offensive and defensive motions. This study supports the previous belief about overrepresented left-handed fencers. According to the attentional control theory, the goal-directed attentional system is impaired under high stress conditions, and the stimulus-directed attentional system takes more influence. In this case, it would be fair to assume that encountering a left-handed opponent, which is less frequent, would pose a higher stress condition than a right-handed opponent. Thus, the attentional system switches from the goal-directed, where the fencer is looking for the target area (upper torso), to stimulus directed, where the fencer is looking at the stimulus (armed hand).  

OK, so what is the takeaway from this article? Become a lefty? No, there is no need to stress about differences in handedness. Just keep on doing what you do best and let the information in this article be something you can flex to your friend about on how much you know about fencing!  

Citations 

Witkowski, M., Tomczak, E., Łuczak, M., Bronikowski, M., & Tomczak, M. (2020). Fighting left handers promotes different visual perceptual strategies than Right Handers: The study of eye movements of foil fencers in attack and Defence. BioMed Research International, 2020, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/4636271  

Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion, 7(2), 336–353. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.2.336  

Witkowski, M., Tomczak, M., Karpowicz, K., Solnik, S., & Przybyla, A. (2019). Effects of fencing training on motor performance and asymmetry vary with handedness. Journal of Motor Behavior, 52(1), 50–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222895.2019.1579167