It's fast, calculated, complex: Fencing blends mental, physical strength

Only six sports have been a part of every Olympic Games, including fencing, a sport that blends mental and physical strength. But if you blink, you might miss all the action.Inside Chesapeake Fencing Club in Towson, Maryland, you hear weapons, buzzers and Jacob Gordon."It looks so cool, the blades clashing together," Gordon said.He comes by his enthusiasm honestly."I was coming home from preschool, my dad just randomly took me up to the fencing club and put a blade in my hand and said, 'Today, you're going to learn how to fence,'" Gordon told sister station WBAL 11 News.And, did he ever.Gordon is now an instructor for a centuries-old sport that's taking off.Then, there's Andrew Weber, who is the "Star Wars" equivalent of "Luke Skywalker" to Gordon's "Obi-Wan Kenobi.""It's not only brute force. You don't have to run in at full speed all the time to try to hit them as hard as you can. You can also take your time and use your cognitive ability," Weber said."All the magic that 'Star Wars' has, you know, where you see these big things start glowing and they smack into each other — 'Luke, I am your father' — and that sort of stuff, it brings a lot of people in," Gordon told WBAL. "But then, they get here and they realize, 'Wow, it's way different than what I expected, for sure.'"It's fast, calculated and complex."There's so many different little (aspects to consider): 'Oh, you need to have your hand here at this moment in time. If something changes, you've got to change where that hand is. You got to change where the weight and balance is on your feet. You got to understand what it is that your opponent likes to do,'" Gordon said.Just about anyone can succeed behind the mask and jacket."Depending on how you're able to use what you have, you're able to do well — (even) with being short or being tall, being fast. Even being slow can be an advantage," fencer Rachel Gordon said.