He ' s right to an extent . <| sep |> A lot of things don ' t have an apparent use case at first . You may understand how to do a parry four opposition riposte , but actually taking the time to find the situation and use it isn ' t always easy . Plus , a lot of skills take a long time to perfect . It took pretty much a couple years for me to understand when , how and why to flick . I ' m still not great at it . Not helping that , a lot of fencers try to keep the same intense pace in practice , with the same reliance on tactics that have worked before . Instead , I ' d suggest slowing down the bout , maybe letting your footwork take the lead for a bit , then carefully set up the action you ' re trying to do . You ' ll probably lose a bunch of touches that way , but it ' s important in order to improve . A lot of times I ' ll fence the first 710 touches like this . I ' ll try out a strategy my coach and I have been working on , and see how I do . If it works , great ! I ' ll keep on doing this . If it doesn ' t , I ' ll switch up when either the other person gets to 10 touches , gains a large enough lead , or wins one of the set . Then I ' ll go back to the intense , regular tactics . That way I get to practice both the idea I want to improve and my usual tactics too .