Viking Spear and Shield Ep.2 : How to do Thrand's Overarm Throwing Spear Slide!

Hey, Ryan here and I'm back with part two of the Viking spear and shield series, or I should just say spear and shield series, because technically the overarm slide, the transitions we showed in the other video where you can transition from underarm to overarm, even behind the shield, are pretty much, I mean, they work with all shields. They'll work with a strap on around like a dome shield, like an aspis. We've seen them throughout history and one of the things that notice in most of the depictions artwork and all the way up into like the 13th century where they're still using spear and shield a lot, you notice the positions they hold the spear are dynamic. It's like if the entire shaft is, you know, a handle, which it is. I mean, on every spear it truly is. You're using the entire shaft. It's not a set grip where you grip in a certain spot and just thrust. I mean, you could do that, but in my opinion, you've got the spear already at a distance and that's it. You've got to try to choke up if somebody comes in and get it in on you and so on, and they see where it's at the entire time. It's telegraphed. It's out there in your face. Well, one of our primary techniques that we believe was a core backbone to early spear and shield styles is the overarm slide, and everybody thinks that that means every time you thrust, you have to use this slide technique. I mean, every time I've got to slide it out there and really pronounce the slide and then bring it back, which of course you can do that, and you can get reach that way. You can get extreme reach that's ridiculous, like way the heck out there, and even stretch out with it and everything, and then bring it back without losing it from your hand like you're throwing it. So what you're basically doing is going through a throwing motion and starting off in a throwing position. You're standing here like if you're going to throw a javelin, yet you're controlling the spear's slide or its motion. You can do it without sliding. I can sit here and put it out there without sliding, even push the spear into the guy and get extreme reach by doing this. Believe it or not. But no, you don't get the full range of it, but you get a straighter angle. It's not like most people believe I'm going to walk up here and the entire thing's going to be, you know, I'm always trying to do this thing, and no, because you have a slide where you just put it out there into the target, but you don't have to slide. I can sit here. Get a really powerful blow just doing that like I'm throwing it. It's throwing motion from back here. I'm getting an extreme amount of force. This could go through mail. I mean, we've tested it. It can actually cut rings in mail. It's pierced into a plate, and yes, you can still retrieve it even though I drove it in there deeply. Matter of fact, it's actually easier than you think overall like this, but today we want to talk about the actual technique and how do you get good at it and how it's used in combat. First of all, when you're in this position, the reason we start off this way, if someone moves in on you rapidly, you can still use your shield in any direction just like you would with one of these larger ground shields, but you have the ability to snap right there if you want, up close. You have the ability to get in really close and thrust a man just like that, like right in the eye. It could be right here, so the entire time you have this ability. You're not hampered in any way of trying to draw back because you're already in that position, but you also have a nice medium range just by doing that. You see the way I threw it into it? I allowed it to be like a shape like this, like holding up so I don't hit people behind me, and I'm just throwing it into the target and pushing, so you get extreme power. So yes, that is a proper technique. You don't have to allow the slide, but now if I want to do the slide, I can be way back here and it just slides right on out. I don't know if you're seeing, but look at where I'm holding a hand right now. This looks like a lot of old drawings and depictions and we've actually got the spear way back as if people talk about trying to get that reach. Getting out here, you've got the same thing. So let's talk about the steps in it. We're going to talk about the starting position of the overarm slide and it's in close. We'll explain why it's for up close personal combat. It can be used at any angle from up here, but we also want to talk about the shield just for a second. I'm using a large Viking round. Most people don't use shields this size modernly. They'll use smaller shields and use them much more like lenticular shields, more like a Saxon shield they converted early on to lenticular. But in that case, it'd be in this kind of position. This gets in the way a lot unless you're in a shield wall and that's all you have is over the top, which this comes in handy. But like our friend Roland Morzeka actually promotes, is that yes, you get more reach with the shield pushing out, like using it like a sword. Like literally pushing out, I get more reach than I do trying to punch out this way. See, I can't even reach it. And it can be manipulated much easier that way, where in this method, I have a little more control over the shield. So yes, we advocate that and all the ideas of using it like a door to go to different sides. We do that in lots of other videos. I'm going to probably lose a shield here in a second. It's different. I will come back later with the Aspis or a Spartan hoplon or a Greek hoplon, as most people would call it, and we'll show how it works with that as well. But I'm going to lose a shield right now because it's not totally necessary for what we're doing. I want everybody to be able to see the technique. And yes, you can start, you're starting off with pretty much a backstance with the shields out in front. I guess it's possible you could be in a position like this, but it wouldn't work as well. Although it can still work, it's not going to work as well as being in the backstance, set up the throat with the actual technique. Anyway, say you're in a backstance, the shield can be flat or you can get an angle if you just imagine as you notice, I step back and I'm holding it behind me at an angle. I'm standing in a back stance with my shield out. So I'm actually storing my energy in its back. The spear point is by my eye or somewhere near my eye or cheek. That way I can aim it much like you would do a bow because it's much like throwing a javelin or a spear. You hold it like a javelin. You could have it straight on if nothing's behind you to impede you, hidden behind your shield, or you can have it up high. It makes no difference. This is step one. Second step, as you go to throw it out, this would be step two. You'd be in a position much like this. You're starting to move your entire body and your hips. Step two, you're about here. Then we have step three. That's where you pivot your hip and it all comes out. Now this would all be done in one motion, so there's really no steps, but as I did it right here, there's no slide. Step three, you can allow it to slide if you so choose. You can step one, step two, pretty much, and then step three, the slide would come out as you're doing step three. This arm, if you want to put it out, is up to you. You can let it slide through your hand and keep your arm back. You can let it go out with it for more reach. It depends on how much you want to protect your arm or if it's in danger. Step three will also bring up, you could let it go. Heck, if you wanted to, you could just let this thing fly. You could have a guy here aim and it looks like you're aiming at him. You end up throwing it and letting it slide. Don't even slide, just let it go and fly into your opponent standing behind you. You could let it go and throw it into a shield at a distance, right on a shield and wait his shield out, switch to another weapon. So that would be up to you. The farthest reach would be just throwing it. Now it's like a throwing motion, so in this step, it's like this would be a probably medium range step here if you just stopped here without the throw. So you're coming from way back here just to start, stop, technically you're not going to stop, but I mean it's in this position you'd be hitting about here. If I want to go farther, I don't need to even slide. I can be back here and by letting my whole body move with it and twisting my back foot, I get more reach and that's just going to be hanging onto the spear like it's a loose grip and throwing it because I'm going to do it much faster than that if I do it in this manner. Another technique we will talk about later is a lot of times you see in the Greek drawings, you see the foot this way, that can add power to the blow what I just did. I twisted my entire body and behind a shield there's no reason I can't do that. I mean we actually believe they might have had applications where they had their shield and stepped offline and then used it to throw back at the opponent. If you see what I'm saying, you could use it as a technique to actually set yourself off center. Let's go with another alternate steps. We're going to start off in this position and the way this would work if you're going to pivot this heel back or you have a shield out here, it would probably be when you're stepping offline. So I'm winding up. This is giving me an extra step where I have more power. So I'd be coming this way so you can step one, step two, step three, and then it just all explodes at four. Yeah then you would have it all that when you hit twist at the back. So that would give you the edge and of course you can either at step four you could let it slide and come way out. You can reach way out with it but remember if you overextend that reach and miss everything, yes you can still end up in a position where it's down like that. In that case we could have other steps where I can only get it to here and I start pairing with this if I have to if somebody tries to come into me so I can retreat. So I mean you end up in different situations and that's why it's a dynamic handle and the spear is a superior weapon. But I hope I've gone through the steps well but once you start off in this position it's like by the eye. Everyone can see this like it's up by your eye so you're aiming straight like a like a rifle. You're looking down the tip even if it's at an angle you can see it still see where the tip is at and that's how you aim to hit your target and it's so easy to do. I hope everybody's understanding this. The recovery is not too difficult either. I'm going to come back to the recovery steps. I have it out here so it's actually been slid through the hand. What I need to do is use a lot of oomph to pull it back, yank and just let it slide through the hand. That's a lot of the control thing that you learn. You'll learn how much actual grip you need to slow it down to get it in the position you want. Of course you don't want to overshoot and have it come back like that but I haven't had any problems with that. I mean using it I haven't had any trouble recovering it to get it back in the position that I want it in. I think that later what we'll do is we'll come back and do the underarm slide which will be a different video altogether and its uses and practicality but this one I believe is the most useful. It can be used at any angle with the shield. You have full range of motion. You can tack any angle. I mean you can throw way the heck out there. You can be here and get somebody that far over. I don't know if anybody saw how far I went over to hit something but I hit something way over there. A branch. You can be here and tack a man over there and it just hits. I've got a really hard target there but I'm just saying you just boom. It's that easy. So it's a technique that once you get used to it it doesn't make the arm tired like people think. It feels awkward at first but you're using the weight of the weapon. So I'll explain this that the heavier the spear and the idea of serratas and longer heavier nine foot spears ten foot spears can be used with and you will get a lot more penetration on different types of armor if you're trying to injure somebody that's all you can do is hit armor. Of course you don't want to hit armor but you end up. Hope you all enjoyed the video. We're going to come back at you with some more videos real soon. We've got some stuff that actually was off of Patreon that we had promised and we should be right back up with that. Hope you all enjoyed this episode of the overarm throwing slide which is the spear and shield series part two. Viking spear and shield series. Farvel.