It's a good end to an otherwise tricky year... When we decided this year to go carbon neutral, we looked for a partner organisation to work with. After researching the huge range of options out there we went with a UK based consultancy, Carbon footprint, who have a team of experts dedicated to the process. They worked with us to appraise, reduce and finally offset our emissions. Initially we worked to become carbon neutral ourselves, meaning we as a company have minimised the carbon that we directly produce and use in terms of energy (type 1 and type 2 emissions) and we have offset what we can ..read more

You will have frequently experienced coming off the fencing piste dripping in sweat and red in the face. Essentially, when we use our muscles, we use energy. But believe it or not, it is a very inefficient process and only 25% of the energy is used for the muscle to contract and the rest is lost as heat. Our body has several ways to deal with this increase in heat. We tend to have a behavioural response such as take off a layer of clothing as well as a physiological response which increases the blood flow to our skin, which is why your face is very red! We also lose heat through processes call ..read more

Here at Leon Paul we have been moving towards a more sustainable way of doing business for many years. We have been chipping away at different areas of the business, a few of the things we have done over the past ten years include: • Switching to compostable bags for nearly all of our clothing. Some items we can’t yet use these for but as the technology improves we will get all of our goods in compostable bags. • Moving to paper packaging tape and then on our latest boxes we have a self lock system that needs no tape or plastic strapping at all. • Recycling heat from our manufacturing processe ..read more

During the COVID lockdown, the team at Leon Paul wrestled with the age-old question, what are the barriers to fencers in the UK to achieving results at national level and more importantly, at International level, and how can we help them.  We spoke to top fencers and coaches from around the world including Olympic Medal winning coaches from France, USA, Hungary & Italy. We wanted to know how they helped produce Olympic medal winning athletes, what was their secret?  The answer we kept hearing over and over again was the need to create a space and culture where fencers from differ ..read more

If you have come across my name before, it was most likely in one of the bottom corner of photograph showing fencers either in action, stood on a podium or having a quirky moment. However, besides photographing fencing and other things, Six years ago I got to try my hand at 'miniature photography' using tiny figurines which normally are accessories to railway modelling that are not even an inch tall. At the beginning most of my pictures were personalised birthday cards, inspired by people who became a part of my life in various ways around that time. I did not always know much about the person ..read more

Paul Davis has for many years been one of the most progressive fencing coaches in the country. His youth program the Paul Davis Fencing academy has created thousands of young fencers since it was founded. Seeking a permanent home Paul has worked tirelessly to get the funding together to build the Hertfordshire Combat Centre in St Albans. He knew he wanted to make it special and so came to us last year looking for ways to make it a truly spectacular venue. The salle had to be a multi sports venue so he took inspiration from both our own light up pistes here at the Leon Paul Fencing centre and a ..read more

When I started this new Paralympic cycle to Tokyo, I never would have guessed that 2020 would pan out the way that it has and that it would have gone down in history as being the first Games to be postponed, with the only other interruptions being the first and second world wars.   Prior to this my training and competition performance has been going very well. In 2017 I started Sabre as a second weapon and it is a decision that I couldn't have been happier with!  Despite the dramatic changes in style, I felt I was able to take to it well and use a lot of my transferable skills from t ..read more

I started fencing Sabre 19 years ago (makes me feel old to know I have been fencing longer than some of the young guys in the GB squad with me have been alive!), I competed at the 2012 Olympic Games and have been on the World Cup Circuit for over 10 years, and for the vast majority of that time I have fenced with one type of blade, or something incredibly similar to it. In fact, nearly all international Sabre fencers use very similar blades to each other. However post Tokyo 2020(1), we will all need to move away from the blades we are using now… At the last FIE SEMI & Medical Commission me ..read more

I have always been a big fan of reading and have accumulated a bit of a book collection over the years. I started reading at a very young age and have since been badly “into” reading. My mum started reading board books to me at 4 months as she had read an article at the time about how premature reading is beneficial to the learning process in children by increasing their concentration levels. By the time I was two, my parents would make sure they took a few books for me wherever we went. I would memorize the stories so I could read them to myself if there was no one prepared to read to me. I l ..read more

What do you do when everything shuts down? Get to work making everything you can better! The downtime in fencing has had one positive effect for Leon Paul, and that is time to work on design and development. In these challenging times, we have tried to look to the future and to spend time making sure that we continue to produce the world's best fencing products across all categories. We have made significant steps forward in our blade production technology, masks, bags and wireless fencing. Here I will focus on sabre blades as we have lots to tell you over the coming months. With the FIE's upc ..read more