EVERYONE STARTS AT THE BEGINNING

IT'S A VERY GOOD PLACE TO START

Every person that fences started exactly the same way that you have.

The Cincinnati Fencing Club is an amateur organization in the traditional sense of the statement. We are a volunteer organization partnered with the Cincinnati Recreation Commission that allows us to offer fencing at a very accessible price, which allows us to offer the sport to all, limiting expense.

This means that we are offer what we can.

Our beginner classes are designed as an introduction to a larger world that will feed into your development for as long as you want to be as part of it. However, it is far from the whole of what the sport has to offer. 

A competitive organization will provide significantly more individual instruction and an accelerated progress throughout the process and there are multiple groups locally that can provide that accelerated development.

The Cincinnati Fencing Club is devoted to providing access to the sport to anyone that is interested in finding out what it's all about.

joining the cincinnati fencing club

All members must have a basic, working knowledge of the sport, to be able to demonstrate that they understand critical safety measures, and that they are capable of working without direct supervision.

This bar really is pretty low and for just about everyone, completing our beginner class through the Recreation Commission is enough to satisfy those prerequisites. For anyone coming from another school or program will likely meet those requirements at all. 

With new members we will take a few minutes to work with you to make sure that you are familiar enough with terminology and that you are ready to move forward in the sport. 

we keep things simple - one and done

Our membership is paid once per year, we keep it on the calendar so you know that renewal is in January.

Members are welcome to use the club equipment, especially when getting started or when trying out a new weapon. It's always better to get a feel for the gear before committing to purchasing something for yourself.

Moving from the beginner class to the club

The Cincinnati Fencing Club beginner program is designed to give a broad overview of the sport to any that want to undertake it. Over decades we have shaped it to provide the most rapid introduction to the terms, forms, and concepts of the sport through the lens of the foil weapon.

From this starting point, the sport as a whole, including the other two weapons,  become available to you as you move forward in the activity. 

Going forward, our organization is dedicated to provide the best amateur instruction at an affordable rate. Our time and availability are limited, by necessity, but our dedication to the sport is absolute. Students who are desiring aggressive instruction that will increase the rate of improvement and work directly towards competitive success, we are happy to refer to our neighbors who focus on that level of training, maintain dedicated spaces, and offer personal instruction.

We run our club activities during the same timeslot as the beginner classes, hopefully making the transition seamless for those wanting to progress. Monday evenings from 7:05 - 7:25/7:30PM, we operate a stretching session and a group warmup with focus on essentials that are targeted to hone the foundations and fundamentals of the sport. After this structured warmup, we have open fencing with a focus on peer based instruction and broadening experience with the sport until 8:45pm.

Currently, and largely, because of the effect of NKY Fencing in Ludlow, KY, the majority of competitive fencers tend to go towards epee, one of the three weapons, because they run 6 tournaments a year that are all epee only events.

The club supports all three weapons to the extent that remains possible, but epee does currently hold the majority. 

our neighbors