Fighting in MEDIEVAL ARMOR with POLLAXE & SWORD

Hi folks, Matt Eason here at the Armoured Fighter events. Hey folks, Gavin Locke here, Scholar Gladiatoria. Hi folks, we're currently training at the Armoured Fighter weekend in Northamptonshire, having great old steel sweaty time. Right okay, another option which is similar but it goes on the other person's arm. So the way that we're going to create this opportunity is to get the person to raise their arms high, defending with the demi-hash. So if you've noticed that if you threaten a hit here, you get the person's arms up there, okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to threaten the hit there, get the arms up, then you're immediately going to come under with your tail over their right wrist, under and over and break the thing off. And obviously you can follow up with a blow there or go into grapple or whatever, but the main objective is to try to get their lead hand off the axe. If they don't take the lead hand off the axe, what happens is essentially a lock, but they tend to let go anyway, okay. Another option is having threatened up here to get the arm high, okay, as you pass under here, lock, what you can do is then ram the person back through the barriers, okay. I'll show it one more time, so going high, stepping forward with the right leg, step in with the left leg, lock, okay, go for it. All right, okay, stop. Can anyone here think of a counter or two or what you should do in this scenario if you're the person that's just had your right hand popped off your shaft? Let go and grab it again. Sorry? Let go and grab it again. Boom, that's one good option, okay. So Gavin does it to me, he threatens with the right stepping, threatens here, he comes in, starts to do that. As soon as you feel that, let go, grab the axe again and then you can come around the other side of your tail. So, flow comes in, slow, in there, right, I can feel that's going, let go, go straight under and you can deflect with the tail end. Okay, I'll show one more time. He threatens, I raise, he locks, he starts to pop my hand off, I bring it round there and I can come around with the tail end underneath. Okay, next version of that exercise, very similar, we're going to have the opponent doing half speed slow attacks but I want you to purely focus on defending with the tail. Okay, so it doesn't matter whether it's on the inside line, on, whoops, I missed, on the outside line, doesn't, you can come in at legs, in which case you can slip the leg and go for the face, cross, you can drive down, bam, high guard, middle guard, try and use the tail as much as possible. It doesn't matter if you use other parts but try and focus on using the tail to defend with. Okay, good, carry on. A specific technique but a very useful one, this is very good for people with long beaks, you can do it with an axe blade as well but hammers are not very good at this because they're not long enough and not hooky enough. Okay, so this is where you simply get the person to raise their arms up here, you actually come down here and notice you can actually hook the knee more easily with armour than you can with unarmoured. So, faint, down, pull. Okay, give it a try, obviously be a little bit careful if you're using metal ones but otherwise have a go. Try and hook the person's knee armour and pull. Do the old push pushy pulley thing. Right, so both right hand forward, okay, one person starts pulling on your axe. As soon as you feel pull, obviously go in for a little thrust but if they divert it off to the side as Gavin did there, then immediately come in with the back end, okay. So, hook ends together, they pull, you go in, you try and stab in the face. If you fail, immediately come up on the other side. Okay, give it a go. Techniques, just to demonstrate that a lot of the techniques are the same. Okay, so in this case a person is with their axe head, a person is with their axe head forwards, okay. So, in this situation what you probably originally were aiming to do was get a stab into the armpit or something like that, but because you come underneath their axe but over their arm, what actually happens is it goes underneath there. All is not lost at this point, let go with the lead hand, go straight in, okay, and then get them in the lock from behind. If you keep hold of the pole axe, you're all right. Right, so you come under their axe but over their arm, you're trying to get a stab into the armpit but it didn't stick, it went underneath. Immediately charge in, one hand, get your axe from behind and apply a lock on them from behind. Gavin's trying to avoid falling over, but give it a go. Right, okay, right, final thing, final thing. So, this is something we didn't show this morning, but if you end up in what's sometimes known in the industry as a fut, okay, which is a fucked up tangle. If you end up in a fut, whereby the opponent has basically come in to push you back with the demi-hash or grapple you, so they end up up here in your face or even maybe over your head, sometimes they might even put their axe behind your head, trampling you forward, okay. There is a technique here, you stick the tail of your axe between their legs and then you So, it's not so much a technique as advice, but if you get yourself into that position and just stick your axe between there and get the sense of pushing them and them have the sense of Okay, carry on. Once you're there and being careful if you haven't got helmets, same exercise as before, do not do it by hand, same exercise before, looking for gaps and if you get a gap, so Matt's hard because he's got cauldron, but he's going to get one into my mail. Now, what they say is as soon as it's there, touch the sword under your arm and then you push them back. A little tip as it does get stuck, go diagonally to where it gets shoulder there, rather than pushing straight forward, if I step off this way, I can turn him more easily by pushing in the angle. If you're wearing a visor and it ever gets stuck in one of the holes of the visor or the slit, might not go through, but the rules are the same, you couch and you push. A hand clock gives some advice, if someone's really tall, make sure you're pouching up a bit, so that it's going to go to where it can and not just down around the waist and if they're short, as you can imagine, you can point it lower, but he says hold your sword lower, so if you're fighting someone much shorter, rather than stabbing areas you're going to miss, have it down here. So the exercise is to have been firing gently, be cautious of space, once you think you've got an opportunity to get it on, get it in and then push. So start from opposite ends, meet in the middle. So this will vary depending on your armour, but very often an opening presents itself when the opponent stabs towards you, so like this, they might be fairly closed, but as they extend forward, you'll usually notice that this around the back of their shoulder opens up, so sometimes the opening is not about the literal open or close, it's about the opening that presents itself given the motion that they are doing. And obviously you can exaggerate that as well, as if something comes in here and you knock it at all to that side, there'll be a split second in which there's a lovely great opening around the back of there. So look for those moments and look for the openings that suddenly present themselves. ...and others is stabbing the hand. I'm going to try and get my point right in the end of my finger. So if you can get it in now, a couple of things happen. So you might hurt his fingers, but actually one of the other things that happens is if you count and push, it can go through the person's hand and then get wedged in the back of their gauntlet. It's not going to kill them, but it makes it very very useful. We've even seen that happen where it misses the hand but still gets stuck on the inside of the gauntlet, which is the same result, because it means you're pushing against the steel rather than the flesh. So as soon as it's in, and try and do this slowly for people with delicate fingers, as you get it in, couch and push, if it's only doing his face happy days, ideally you're pushing him out. Another alternative if the person has fingers gauntlet is that Martin Hampton says, if you are in that position, grab their fingers and break their fingers and then do the technique. We won't worry about that so much. If you miss and the sword goes past and you get it to there, in itself not so much of a problem. Try and reach the sword out of his hand, try and do something and bring in that follow that you looked at earlier. The other thing I'm sure most of you have noticed as well is that with finger gauntlets you can thrust straight between the fingers and this will, even if it doesn't go through the finger, it will bypass the fingers and go into the hand underneath anyway. So same exercise, and then I'll show you one other hand technique after. So Matt and I have got here, we've found I can't get anything, I'm not getting the joy I need, getting the point on. If I'm controlling his arm I can gently slip my blade out and then push it into his gauntlet from that way. Hold on, so it's going inside the back of my cuff, okay, so just to show that again, and we'll do it from the side, actually from this angle. So I can't get anywhere, if you just turn this way Simon, can't get anywhere, as long as I'm controlling that hand it gives me a bit of flexibility to snooker cue the blade back, push it into the gauntlet. Now depending on your gauntlet, if it's an hourglass gauntlet you might be able to break it, if it's a gothic gauntlet it might not work, you might have to try and get it into the palm of the wrist so there's no protection, but ultimately again you're trying to get it into the palm and then couch. Yeah so this is one of those things where the minute you start fighting with someone, observing what type of gauntlets they've got, fingered, mitten, wide cuff, whether it's less of a cuff on the inside to give them more flexation, or whether it's a German gauntlet which is very close to the arm but is uncovered on the inside line. So those kind of little details can make a difference between, you know, winning or losing. And actually if you're in with a cuff and an enclosed wrist, if the sword does get through there, you can then put in a lock as well. Even if it's now, it's now literally stuck. Yeah so as Gavin says, you stab in there and yeah you might wound them, yeah you might not wound them, but you've now got a leverage point as well. Any point where you get to turn the person to the back, and I'm able at this point, I can't get my fight into him, but he's presenting his elbow to me, so I can break his cauldron unfortunately. Well anyway, I think it's got a double purpose that technique. These techniques are so neat so anyway, we come around, you push. Now different people's armour reacts in different ways. Normally cauldrons are actually harder to do those techniques on because sometimes you can't get your hand slides off, whereas with folders and narrower arms it's easier. But essentially you put your sword in there and you push, you can use your hands as well, if you come back up to here, you can, that's your revenge, you can again just push with your hand as well.