Longsword: Meyer’s “Circle”
A brief video describing the Zirckel (Circle) – an important technique in Joachim Meyer’s longsword system.
A brief video describing the Zirckel (Circle) – an important technique in Joachim Meyer’s longsword system.
The video below shows an adaptation of the Zornhut play described below. “If you stand in the right Wrath stance and your opponent strikes from his right to your left, then with a step of your right foot drive with displacement under his blade and over your head, and catch his strike on your flatRead more about Adapting a Zornhut Play[…]
“Even though this art must be learned chiefly through the practice of the body, yet it is certain and true that as with others, students can conceive it in their memory much better when it is assembled, written out, and placed before their eyes in a proper pedagogical order, and afterwards it can also beRead more about A Taxonomy of Technique: Meyer’s 5 Things[…]
An observation often made of late period German fencing (such as that described in the work of Mair or Meyer) it that it uses a surprisingly large number of guard positions. In fact some criticism can be made that there are in fact too many postures, depending on the fencing background of the reader. Read more about Guards! Guards! Notes on the Many Postures of Meyer[…]
Just a brief post to provide a link to the material presented at Swordplay 2016 this year in Brisbane, covering a selection of material from Meyer’s polearms. Swordplay 2016 Workshop-Fundamentals of Meyer’s Polearms
In an earlier post concerning hand positions in Meyer’s rappier while thrusting I briefly mentioned a comparison to roughly contemporary Italian sidesword styles. While I’m certainly not the first to do this, it seems that the comparison is most often made with Marozzo of the Bolognese method. In this post we’ll veer slightly away fromRead more about Meyer’s Rappier vs Viggiani’s Sidesword: A VERY Brief Comparison[…]
While Meyer’s longsword appears to have had an ongoing practitioner base for many years, his rappier system (which seemed to exist in the shadow of the longsword and dussack parts of the 1570 text) has been rising in popularity quite slowly in comparison. Happily the readership of this part of the text has increasedRead more about Interpreting Meyer’s Rappier: Chambering the Thrust in 2.75V ?[…]
While Meyer is more specific than most German masters on the topic of footwork, there is still a lot left unsaid within his various texts on how and where one should move. Throughout the text, though, he does provide at least some diagramatic assistance on footwork, generally scattered throughout his illustrations. One of the mostRead more about Examining Meyer’s Footwork Diagrams: The Divided Circle[…]
Now that we have established the basics of body movement with the sword we can begin to add a number of the basic guard positions and cuts which help to teach proper motion of the sword through simple cutting actions along the various axes. The learning objectives for this post are: Holding the sword correctlyRead more about Back to Basics 2: Some Guards and Cuts[…]