Learn the coulé in foil and épée: a glide with blade contact as an attack or feint. With prerequisites, milestones, rule notes and protective clothing.
The coulé (glide) is an attack or feint in which your blade glides along the opponent's blade and keeps contact. You feel your opponent's blade and read from the pressure what he is doing.
The honest answer to “Is the coulé a trick of its own?”: it is a glide, i.e. a straight thrust with blade contact. I found no study on the coulé itself. The FIE rules know a related principle in the riposte: a “riposte along the blade” hits the opponent by grazing along his blade after the parry [1]. The FIE glossary also names as actions on the blade the beat, the glance (a prolonged, abrupt pressure that slides towards the strong part of the blade) and the pressure [2].
The HFV examination booklet describes the feint as a pretended attack that usually takes place without blade contact but can be supported by, for instance, a beat [3]. The coulé adds the variant with contact (coaching practice).
With the coulé you ask the opponent's blade before you answer.
The straight thrust is the forward movement of the blade by extending the arm [3]. In the coulé you extend the arm the same way, but without moving the blade sideways. Milestone: ten straight thrusts in which the point stays in one line.
Your partner holds his blade still. You lay your blade on lightly and glide forward a little. The contact is light, no pressing. Let your partner raise the pace as soon as you can keep the contact steady, and check whether you feel every change of direction of his blade. Milestone: ten contacts in which you feel the opponent's blade without pushing it away.
You extend the arm further and let the point glide along the opponent's blade to the target. Under the FIE rules the attack is the arm extension that continuously threatens the opponent's target [1]. Milestone: ten glides in a row that end on the marked target.
Only now do you combine the glide with the lunge: extend the arm, glide, then lunge. The order matters, because the arm must extend before the lunge [1]. If you start the lunge too early, you lose attack priority in foil and sabre (coaching practice). Milestone: ten coulé lunges in which the arm is extended before the lunge (phone video from the side).
The coulé can be a feint: you glide along the blade until the opponent parries, and then you evade his parry. The feint forces a reaction if the opponent has to regard the pretended attack as real [3]. Reacting to an attack is not free: in a study with 24 elite fencers, the defensive movement took 0.353 seconds on average [4]. Milestone: against a partner who parries, you get past with a disengagement in five out of ten attempts.
Injuries are rare in fencing, but not impossible: in 809 FIE competitions, 72.4 % of the time-loss injuries involved the lower extremities, and ankle sprains were the most common single injury (25.3 %) [6]. Always wear full protective clothing [1]. The coulé requires contact with your partner's blade, so agree on pace and hardness. Stop if something hurts. This guide explains and motivates, it does not replace supervised training or a coach.
Practise the coulé with your eyes closed from standing. Your coach holds the blade still, and you glide by feel alone. If you can read the blade while standing, it helps you in motion. This is coaching experience, not a study.
A glide: your own blade glides with contact along the opponent's blade to the target. It can be used as an attack or as a feint.
Both are possible. As an attack the blade glides to the target. As a feint it forces a parry, which you then evade [3].
Mainly foil and épée. The FIE rules mention grazing along the blade as a form of riposte [1]. Other techniques apply in sabre.
Yes. You need a secure straight thrust and a sense of distance. Only then do you practise blade contact.
Elite fencers needed 0.353 seconds on average for the defensive movement in one measurement [4]. So the coulé does not win through speed alone but through clarity of line and timing.
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