Rules

These are the rules of competitive single canne. The original rulebook can be found in french here. The rules as presented here are not coming from a translation of this rule-book. Instead, I made them after spending a few afternoons with Xavier Lejeune (head of the French Apache club), and together writing down the most important rules. If anything is missing or imprecise, it is certainly my fault, not Xavier's.

The rules you see here were introduced in 2018. Before the rules were somewhat more strict, esepecially the rule about the valid lunge. You can check the previous, stricter rules here.

Valid attack

An attack is valid, if

• it is preceded by a valid armé movement (valid armé movements are different between each attack, describing each attack here is too complicated, therefore I only enlist them later. It is best to learn the attacks from personal teaching or a video)

• the armé movement and the hit together form a continuous movement, without any halt

• during the armé movement the hand is behind the so-called reference-plane. The reference-plane is an imaginary plane, which passes through the attacker's spine, and perpendicular to the plane drawn between the two fighters' spine

• at the moment of the hit the arm, and the stick forms one line.

• the hit is done along a vertical (brisé, corisé tete, corisé bas, enlevé) or a horizontal (lateral hits) plane. This needs some more refinement. First refinement is that instead of saying vertical we should say that the arm and the stick should be parallel to the ground during the whole hit. Or, if you like more formal definitions, we can say, that lateral hits have to seem horizontal from a coordinate system attached to the hips. When you attack the leg, you start your attack from a straight stance, and during the hit go down to a lunge position, therefore the plane of the hit won't be horizontal at all, it will be a slide. But this slide is the result of bending your legs, during the whole hit your arm is parallel to the ground, tough descending all the time. The second refinement is that you can diverge from the horizontal plane (in the above sense) in order to hit a valid target. When e.g. you attack the abdomen or the lower leg, it is allowed that at the end of the hit your arm is not parallel to the ground, instead closes an angle, so that your stick reaches your opponent's abdomen (or lower leg).

• So all in all the rules above says that during a hit you are allowed to diverge from the "ideal" plane. There is even a rule which tells you the latest time you can start such a divergence during the hit. If you diverge from the "ideal" plane during a hit, you have to start that diverging motion at last at the reference plane. So you can hit a lateral so that in the first part until you reach the reference plane your arm and the stick is parallel to the ground, and when you reach the reference plane, you start descending your stick. Such change of a direction is allowed only once during a hit. (This supplementary rule is the base of the hit which is called by the Slovenians 'deadly lateral').

• the hit is done with the first quarter of the stick
• the stick hits a valid target. Valid targets are the front, the top, and the side parts of the helmet, the abdomen (the body between the chest and the hip around except the spine), and the lower leg (between the ankle and the heel). When attacking the head, the hit cannot just "scratch" the helmet, if has to be "deep enough" so that if there were no helmet if would still hit the head.
• the hit is not too strong
• when attacking the leg the fighter goes down to a lunge position (similar to fencing lunge) or to a crouch. The purpose of the move is to lower the hips to make the trajectory as horizontal as possible (and less diagonal). During the lunge (or the crouch) the fighter has to lower her hips at least as low as it would be during and "ideal lunge" Characteristics of the "ideal lunge":
  • ideal lunge:
    
    • the thigh of the front leg closes a 45 degree angle with the ground
    • the shin of the front leg is vertical, or the knee is above the heel
    • the rear leg is straight

• So while in the ideal lunge the rear leg has to be straight, during the real lunge the leg does not necessarily has to be straight. However the hip has to be as low as it would be during and ideal lunge.

  during hitting the head or the abdomen it is not allowed to go down to a lunge (or even to a half-lunge)

Comment

A few things which are allowed (not forbidden by the rules):

• It is allowed to start an attack from a lunge or a crouching position. It might not be easy to do a valid armé, but certainly allowed.
• It is allowed to change the height of a lateral hit by moving up and down with the leg.

Valid defense

• Defense with the stick must not be too powerful and
• defending by pushing the opponent's stick far from the guarded region is not allowed (it is known as a "parade chassée" - a blowing parry).

The priority-rule

The priority-rule (or parry and ripost rule) helps to decide what happens when two fighters hit more or less simultaneously. More or less simultaneous means: one starts an attack, and the other also starts an attack before the first finishes his/her attack, and both fighters finish their attack, and both fighters manage to hit a target.

To put the priority-rule very simply: the one who started first has priority and if one was doing and immediate ripost, that one has priority.

More precisely:

A fighter can gain priority by one of the following ways:

1. Starts an armé movement, while her opponent does not attack

2. Makes a ripost, which means defends with the stick, and with one continuous movement starts an attack on the same side where he defended

3. Makes a ripost with a dodge, which means dodges from her opponent's attack, and immediately attacks back.

A fighter can lose priority by one of the following ways:

1. Finishes his attack

2. Her opponent riposts to his attack (see point 2 above)

If during the fight fighter A has priority, and fighter B has no priority, and

• Both A and B hit a valid target, than A gets a point and B makes a fault (not respecting the parade et riposte rule)
• A hits a non-valid target, and B hits a valid target, than B still makes a fault (not respecting the parade et riposte rule), while A also makes a fault (by hitting a non-valid target)

As a consequence of the rule above, if both fighters start at exactly the same time (which is very rare), they both have priority. If at the end of them movement both fighters hit a valid target, none gets a point.

If one fighter gets a hit, she is forbidden to start a new attack, untils she manages to defend another attack of her opponent (either with the stick, or with dodging), or until a certain amount of time (about the time of an attack) passes by.

It is also worth noting, that the priorty rule does not forbid you to make counter-attacks (attacking during your oppnent's attack). To put it briefly, you can do counter-attacks, if you are carefull enough not to be hit.