The first part of the series: the ground everything else stands on. The video-book combines an e-book with the text of the first three chapters of Meyer's 1570 treatise and a playlist of 16 videos filmed directly from it. How the openings are defined, what the parts of the sword are and the work belonging to each, and above all the guards and positions. There is little point going further without this.
Meyer does not open his 1570 treatise with techniques. He opens it with the things without which techniques make no sense — and that is exactly what the first three chapters contain.
Chapter one defines the openings: how the opponent's body is divided and how you tell where to strike. This is the language Meyer speaks for the rest of the book. Without it, everything that follows reads as a list of movements with no reason behind them.
Chapter two takes the sword apart — its individual parts and the particular work belonging to each of them. It sounds like a descriptive passage, but it is the core of the whole system: most of what Meyer teaches later rests on knowing which part of the blade is doing the work at any given moment.
Chapter three is the most important of the three. It covers the guards and positions, the stances from which all fencing proceeds. Everything that comes in the later chapters — the cuts, the onset, the work in measure — refers back to here.
How the video-book works
The video-book is two separate products and the link between them: a PDF e-book with the text, and a playlist of 16 videos on our streaming platform. The videos are not a loose extra — the instruction in each one follows the original text as it stands, passage by passage. Every move and action is recorded from several angles, so the student cannot miss how it is actually done.
That link is the real value. A fencing source describes movement in words that made sense to people who already knew the movement. The modern reader comes at it the other way round: text first, movement afterwards — and usually a great deal of time spent guessing what it was meant to look like. The video-book cuts that step short. You have the text and its performance side by side, and can study the teachings of the old masters comfortably and at your own pace.
What the video-book contains
Who it is for
For anyone who wants to study Meyer systematically from the beginning rather than in fragments. For newer fencers it is the way in; for experienced ones it is a chance to check terminology they use daily against the source it comes from. And for instructors it is dependable material for introductory lessons.
All videos are in English. The instruction was recorded by Petr Turya.
The video-book is not a substitute for training or for an instructor's guidance. The performances follow Meyer's text and keep to its reading.
J. Meyer 1570 Longsword — Chapters 1–3 · Video-book
29,00 €
