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Using the Meyer Square


The Basics

Meyer intended this diagram to facilitate fluidity in attacking the four openings. To follow the diagram, we start from low to to high numbers, and work from outside to inside. The first cut attacks the opponent’s upper left from your upper right. The second attacks the lower right from your left. The third the lower left from your right, and lastly, the upper right from your left. The simplest pattern starts with a basic oberhau from the right, an unterhau from the left, an unterhau from the right, and an oberhau from the left, all using the long edge, and all cuts aimed through the center of the diagram.

The second ring attacks the lower left from your right first, and follows as before. Again, this can be done with the long edge solely targeting the center of the diagram. For beginning students, the instruction here should be oriented toward facilitating comfort with the sword and fluidity of movement. The drill moves on from there, cutting toward the opening specified by the number on each ring. There are sixteen cuts in total.

Instructors: Beginners will make mistakes with edge alignment and targeting, some will hold the sword and exhibit bad cut structure. It is alright, for now. The more comfortable they get with the sword, the better and more competent their cuts will be.

Secondly, students should be taught to perform the exercise by cutting to and from longpoint, which will help develop supple wrists and smooth cross-hands work.

Short Edge and Flats

Moreover, since the sword or blade, when it is sent in for the cuts, may hit and connect chiefly in three ways, that is firstly with the long edge, then with the short, and lastly with the flat, therefore it will also be necessary that you can send the short edge quickly to all four openings just as you have done with the long edge; and afterward lastly with the flat.... 1.28r

A second layer of use for the Meyer Square is to follow the pattern by cutting with the short edge and both sides of the flat, which Meyer terms “inside” and “outside,” with the former toward your body and the latter away from your body. Keeping the targeting focus on the center, Ring 1 will start with a Krumphau through the line into Nebenhut. The student should then change their posture to Wechsel, and bring the short edge up along the same line, then bringing the sword smoothly down into right Wechsel and back up with the short edge, and finish with either a crossed or uncrossed short edge descending cut from the left, whichever seems more comfortable for students.

The same should be done using the flats, in much the same manner, and the whole should be repeated, once again, by cutting to and from langort. Lastly, this drill can be done with all edges in play, with the idea of making the smoothest, fastest, most intuitive, most controlling, or with whatever particular objective the instructor has in mind. Advanced students can likely be left to their own devices, but beginners should be offered help if needed.

Complex Targeting

Until this point, these drills have concentrated on the center of the diagram as the target for the cuts. However, Meyer is explicit that the quadrants of the diagram represent openings, and as such there are a number of ways to threaten them. Number 1 of Ring 1, for instance, can be reliably threatened with a zwerchau, with a long or short edge unterhau, or with a mittelhau, to name a few.

Keep in mind that these drills are meant to facilitate fluidity on the attack, and should be done with the idea that you are actively threatening an opponent who will be defending themselves. As such, these drills can be done as a means of practicing provoking cuts - cuts meant to place your opponent into a particular posture.

A credible threat to the upper right may be any cut that appears to be capable of hitting the opponent if they fail to react. The assumption, going forward, is that the opponent will respond to your cuts, and will capably defend themselves from it. What then?

Meyer perceives three distinct elements of combat: The First is learning how to threaten from every posture to every opening in the Vor, which is in part what the Square is intended to teach. The second is how to defend your own openings in the Nach. The Third he describes as “The Craft.”

therefore now comes the Third Element, which is called The Craft, which the art that teaches you, when you realize that your cuts are futile or useless in one place, how you may quickly pull that cut back before it hits, or allow it to go past without hitting, and send it to another opening.

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Meyer describes two different ways to dealing with an opponent capably defending a threatened opening: pulling/Zucken and failing/Fehlen. For this next portion of the drill, we are concerned with pulling.

Pulling

Meyer uses pulling in his Four Openings drill as a method of deceiving your opponent, pulling the blade back before allowing it to hit. He describes a variation of his drill that uses pulled cuts:

In the Onset when you have slashed upward and gathered yourself for the stroke (as I have already taught), then let the first and second hit hard as before, but do not let the third hit, instead pull it quickly back away again in a single motion before it hits, so that you can let the fourth hit that much more swiftly and sooner.

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Failing

If you imagine the center of each diagram to be the location of your opponent’s sword, the line traces the path of your sword through each opening. From the end point, you can then change through to the next posture and send the following cut, again sending the blade either above or below your opponent’s parry.

Similarly, this can be practiced in pairs. A good way to start is to have Fencer A sending the cuts around Fencer B’s static longpoint. After both have had turns, have Fencer B begin moving from defensive posture to defensive posture, forcing Fencer A to fail dynamically.

Please note that the cut paths shown in this diagram are merely suggestions.

As always, it is best to continue this drill through the entire square sequence, instead of just the first iteration.

Wrapping Up

Meyer’s Four Openings drill was meant to be more than a simple static cutting pattern. It was meant to train you to provoke responses from your opponent, and by pulling or failing, to seek out and hit another opening within the same timing.

To that end, practicing hitting in earnest, pulling and failing within the same sequence. The combinations are nearly limitless. It can be practiced solo, with a pell, and with any of Meyer’s weapons.

The drill can also be practiced with opposition, which may be its most powerful training iteration. Set limited footwork and have Fencer A strike a sequence, using whichever parts of the sword they have practiced above, but allow Fencer B to defend themselves mindfully. As Meyer advises,

Meanwhile still pay heed, if he should fall in at your opening, to be on his sword from the pulling at once with a bind.

Fencer B, therefore, should be prepared to take advantage of Fencer A’s pulling or failing to interrupt their action and take the vor with a bind or a slice on A’s arms. This drill will work on both fencers’ sense of timing and help develop critical binding skills.

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