Could have sworn I posted here yesterday but maybe I got distracted.
I used to fence in my University days though I much preferred sabre over foil. Like Rapaire we used the four judges and a director and the electronic stuff was rarely used. stop-hitting was very much discouraged and we spent a lot of time working on parries and remises before we progressed to anything more than the basic lunge.

In latter years I have done some LARP sessions using rapier and dagger, (proper nerf swords weighted and balanced can be obtained custom-made from Eldritch.co.uk) and was delighed to find that balestra lunges and the semicircular sabre parry were still excellent forms of attack and defence.

I moved on to archery about 5 years back as its a more gentle demand on my aging bones.