Joachim Meyer’s Longsword: Exploring Absetzen

Late last year I had shoulder surgery so haven’t been able to put together any videos; I did manage to patch together bits of video footage I’d previously captured to explore and interesting technique; Absetzen. Meyer’s longsword Absetzen is starkly different from the classical version in earlier Liechtenauer glosses... or is it? By unpacking the versions provided across both Longsword and Rappier (and variations on them) we’ll explore an approach to both Absetzen, and Meyer’s system as a whole, that takes large simple to learn movements and refines them into a more linear system suitable for cut and thrust. This highlights my own take on Meyer, and is a great way to train, and also makes Meyer quite effective in a variety of contexts.