This is meant to be done in street clothes, and it borrows from both fencing and brawling in an era where neither of those were solely the province of sport. In later decades, this will become a gentlemanly sport, a process which had already begun in Enjolras's day, but that's not the version he's teaching; it's not the version he bothers with. There are no strict rules, not as Enjolras teaches it: this approved, that disallowed, this to be done with exacting and proper form.

Only what works, and what does not, for the serious business of putting down an opponent so that he stays down.