Justin Aucoin - Historical Fencing

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Justin Aucoin - Historical Fencing

His life-long love of athletics and swashbuckling has led him down the road to studying and practicing historical fencing.

Historical & Classical Fencing Coach
⚜️ Founder of Boston Academie d'Armes
⚜️ Provost at Arms, Italian Foil, Saber & Epee, SSU FMCP
⚔️ Rapier | Saber | Foil | Smallsword | Spear
🤺 Private Lessons & Group Classes Justin (aka Remy in the SCA) is the product of when a five-year-old boy who fell in love with Zorro and The Three Musketeers grows into a mostly functional adult. He is the founder and head coach of Boston Academie d’Armes. His fencing career started in 2006, first as a foilest at Boston Fencing Club before joining the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in 2010. For more than a decade, he has studied 17th Century Italian rapier fencing systems and it’s offshoots found in France and the German states, as well as Italian dueling saber, dueling sword/smallsword, partisan (spear), baton-a-deux bouts (jaegerstock), and classical Italian fencing with foil, epee, and saber. As a competitor, Justin has won numerous rapier tournaments in the SCA — both in singles and in group melee — including Carolingia’s Baronial Rapier Champion, East Kingdom Crown Rapier Champion, and named 9x to the Pennsic Champs team. He is the 15th member of the East Kingdom’s Order of Defense, the SCA’s highest fencing award. He is also a member of the Order of the Golden Rapier and Order of the Silver Rapier for fencing prowess. Similarly, he is a member of the SCA’s Order of the Laurel, Order of Silver Brooch and the Order of the Maunche for his historical martial arts research, and holds a Silver Wheel and Silver Crescent for his coaching service to the SCA. He’s also a member of the Company of St. Jude, a group dedicated to the study, exploration, and practice of historical martial arts within the SCA. He’s currently the Consort’s Arts & Science Champion for his research and experiment in the armor protection a wool cloak gives against attacks from a sharp rapier. Outside of the SCA, Justin is a HEMA medalist in both rapier and dagger, and military/dueling saber. He previously taught rapier at Athena School of Arms and has taught numerous workshops at HEMA events such as WMAW, Iron Gate Exhibition (IGX), Lord Baltimore’s Challenge, and American Smallsword Symposium. He is available to teach workshops at other events and as well as private historical fencing lessons. He is a certified Instructor at Arms in Italian Foil through the Fencing Master Certificate Program. He is also a Level One student guide & apprentice instructor through Academie Duello, and a personal trainer through NASM. You can follow his historical fencing research at Justinswordfit.com.

09/20/2026

Fun day at River Wars yesterday. Some fun fencing and melee, but happy to be back home with the doggo.

Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)

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09/16/2026

Cloaktober is a fortnight away!

Here’s some rapier + cloak training with Lance. He’s a beginner fencer that’s really taken with sword + cloak.

We started playing around with this second guard from Fabris; it also appears in his sword + dagger section with some light circling around the opponent’s outside line.

In this video, we worked on defending against attacks to the cloaked-hand or outside/over the cloak arm.*

It’s not an attack the masters of y’ore seem to be super worried about — most likely because it’s a high risk, low reward shot (see my paper on cloak vs sharp rapier).

However, depending on the rule set you’re playing under — such as the SCA where the cloak supposedly gives no “armor” protection — learning how to defend against hand shots is important.

So we worked on a cloak parry that redirects the attack to the inside line and is joined with a counter-thrust.

Footwork is customizable to the situation — if weight is on left foot, attack with the right; if weight is on the right foot, attack with the left. Also possible to land a shot and most need any footwork at all but this twisting action.

After this, we put it into a simple choice drill which I’ll talk about in a future video.

Great effort by Lance!

*Typically the invitation is under the sword or to the inside of the cloak.

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09/15/2026

Had a great time running a Renaissance Duel workshop at the Reading Public Library last week. We looked at posture and movement, basic offense and defensive actions, plus some fun, specialty actions.

Also huge thanks to several of my Boston Academie d'Armes folks for showing up to help demo and TA the event.

📸 Jocelyn Gould

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09/14/2026

Italian Dueling Sword or smallsword or smarra or whathaveyou training video with Eli.

First lesson back with Eli after a short summer break. We did a lot of fundamentals and then started adding on some fun actions to one another.

⚜️Blade in line (stiff) ➡️ Flanconade of 4th with offhand support
⚜️Attempt to engage in 4th ➡️ Disengagement to the external arm and then disengagement to the body

Started off with doing a few reps without mobility and then added in the footwork.

What’s tricky I’m with this is that each cue has an attack with a different amount of touches and targeting. So it takes a lot of brain power to keep track of, respond in time, and manage the proper distance.

Perhaps a smidge mean to throw at him after a break, but we had a good time with it.

This was mostly to up the challenge rating of training than it was to work on a specific tactical challenge or scenario he’s running into.

We have a tournament coming up in a couple of months so expect a little more smallsword/dueling sword videos leading up to that.

(note: in the video I say “disengagement to the off hand” but I meant external arm; just too lazy to re-record the VO but I fixed it in the caption)
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09/10/2026

Did a rapier demo at Reading Public Library yesterday evening.

🧸 vs ⚔️

Boston Academie d'Armes
readingpl

09/09/2026

This past weekend at Falling Leaves (a local SCA event), Donovan and I hosted a sharp sword demo.

The SCA talks A LOT about blow calibration and what would/wouldn't injure someone — but for 99.99% of folks, we’re making some sweeping assumptions.

We obviously don't want folks going out and st*bbing each other, so we aimed for the next best thing -- a ballistic gel torso dressed in a wool doublet and linen shirt.

This was aimed to be an interactive demonstration and not hard-core data collection. Our goal was to have SCA fencers test their assumption about calibration and let folks get a sense for how a sharp sword feels upon impact.

🔗 Link to the blog will be in the comment thread (because Facebook)

Second photo by Lauren Dubois
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09/07/2026

It do be like that sometimes…

Happy Labor Day, friends. Hope y’all are getting the rest you all deserve.

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09/02/2026

*Bonk*

These passes against Isabel in the rapier finals of Boar's Tooth were really enjoyable (my dual-quad charlie horses aside).

I always love the blade exchange game against people who fence in the style of Thibault. Win or lose, I get to use a wider array of fencing skills I otherwise don't always get to. It's always extremely satisfying.

Isabel is a talented fencer who demonstrated a ton of skill and joy for fencing in her passes. They also came to check in on me after our bouts -- as I was dying on a chair chugging as much Gatorade as I could -- which I truly appreciated.

📸 Luke Newman

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08/31/2026

I enjoy it when a fencer comes in with a specific problem to solve.

For Alexis, it was struggling with an opponent who charges in hard or bull rushes.

We approached the problem a few ways, starting off with arresting the opponent as they step into wide measure with a normal lunge.

We then looked at doing the same with a reverse lunge or half-retreat (shown here), mirroring an opponent who got a little too close, so we want to snipe them while recovering some distance and breathing room.

We kept this light on intensity to focus on technique. As I step forward, Alexis strikes with opposition while reaching back with the rear foot, and then recovers.

Doing it in the half-step back is to help maintain distance on the recovery so she’s not handcuffed or caught in a grapple situation she might not want to be in.

Tricky bit to look out for is making sure the fencer recovers into their normal width stance and doesn’t get too wide or too narrow.

We also did the same for both variations of the drill with a disengagement in time before moving on to a more game-based, energetic exercise.

Great effort by Alexis!

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08/28/2026

Not gonna lie, I had a stress dream leading up to my Fencing Masters Certificate Program provost exam that Maestro Mank (Red Sun Classical Fencing) had pre-written "rapier lunge" on my test rubric before the exam even started.

No idea why I'd have that dream. 😅

He would've been accurate to have done that, though.

(Un)fortunately, he wasn't on my board this time. But deep in my heart... I know... 😇

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Address

Cambridge, MA
02142

Website

https://justinswordfit.com/, https://bostonacademiedarmes.com/

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