[king catfish]

I teach fencing at the Fencing Academy of Philadelphia, the modern Olympic-style fencing mentioned by Wheelgun. I fenced sabre for a few years and now I'm getting into epee. I teach mostly foil.

In direct application it's not very useful in the real world, but indirectly it is precious training. Fencing is one of the very few modern martial arts that allows full contact all the time in training. This is a very important point.

In any sort of hand-to-hand combat, a sense of timing and distance (the most important factors in a fight) are heavily emphasized in fencing.

I have studied several asian and eastern martial arts and have black belts in Kobujutsu and SHotokan, and I have found that with a good base in an asiian martial art, fencing is the best fight training around.