The flick is an extremely fast
attack technique used in the sport of fencing
, most typically with the flexible foil
A little context: the most common attack made in fencing is called a thrust: a quick, forceful extension of the arm with the weapon held out straight and level at your opponent's target area, driving the point of the weapon onto your opponent's body and scoring a point. There are many, many variations on the basic thrust, but almost all attacks in foil and epee fencing rely on one form of arm extension or another.
The flick attack does not rely on arm extension, but rather is accomplished by applying a whipping action to the weapon so that the point of the blade is "thrown" towards your opponent's body:
Imagine that you take a half cooked noodle in your hand and hold it out straight. Now bend your arm at the elbow as far as it will go, so that your forearm and the noodle point straight up in the air; quickly extend your arm from the elbow and abruptly stop when your arm is at the 45 deg. postion: you'll notice that the noodle will whip forward and will actually bend quite a bit. This is how the fencer accomplishes a flick attack -- by whipping the blade, causing it to bend (up to 180 deg. of arc in some cases) very quickly.
When used properly, it is a very potent attack for two primary reasons. First, it is hard for your opponent to see where the blade is, how fast it is moving, and where it is headed (since you usually infer the position of the opponent's blade by watching the bell guard, a cue which becomes irrelevant when the blade is bent to such a high degree.) Second, the blade can be made to bend around parts of the opponent -- his blade, his arm, his shoulders, or even his whole head, in the case of the devastating back-flick.
It is not without its problems. First of all, fencers that know only how to flick (there are surprisingly many) will be successful against only novice opponents, since most intermediate and advanced fencers are able to avoid the flick if they can see it coming. Second, it can cause damage to the weapon if performed too many times.
Most importantly, there is quite a bit of controversy regarding how the flick fits into the rules of fencing.
WARNING: read Right of Way
before you read the next paragraph, really
. . .
In the official FIE rules
of fencing, a fencer claims right of way
by initiating forward motion
of the weapon tip in a way that threaten
s his opponent's target area
. A standard thrust attack has not problem satisfying this requirement, but a flick does: in order for a fencer to initiate a flick, he must first bring his arm and weapon back
(remember the noodle?) and then
fling it forward. In this way, the flick is initiated by a backward
not forward motion of the tip; according to a strict
interpretation of the rules, this initiation does NOT
establish right of way.
But some people disagree -- and this is not just an academic argument. In a fencing match, the final decision over who has right of way and who doesn't is made by a judge, a human. Thus, depending on the country, and even the region of the country you fence in, the judges you encounter at official tournaments may or may not consider a flick attack as taking right of way. This has been known to cause no small amount of friction in US national fencing circuits, particularly in the Northeast, where a 45 minute's drive can make the difference between what sort of judging can be found.