How a SPEARMAN can BEAT a closing SWORDSMAN 

If a Swordsmen closes against a spear any guard, pin or charge used for a staff can also be used with most any polearm or spear. Choking both hands up on the spear point is an additional 6th option to the 5 I believe you mentioned matt, but a dagger is often preferable in the close! Why wouldn't any spear men keep a dagger or even a simple knife on them so preparation option? A lot of the fellow enthusiast I know always thought me odd as I never really bothered with swords for English long staff & knifes are my preference if armed. Staff work also translates to rifle & bayonet which is a pointy boom stick while a spear is a pointy stick. Any stick or knife has uncalculatable tool uses beyond a weapon, but a sword is really just a weapon with a ceremonial authority attached. If I can best 3 Hema sword users with a spear in sparing more often than not as I'm familiar a spear but don't practice 1/2 as much as they do, then it shows how the design is innately greater. Mind nothing is going to beat a nuke except maybe biological warfare or something!

mobile games are a plague, dont play anything on your phone but chess

Technique #6: This is frowned upon in sparring, but is a perfectly valid situational tactic. If you should find your spear deflected low and your opponent charging, stick the spear between their legs and trip them. Even if they just stumble this should give plenty of time to disengage and stab them.

​@@andrewszigeti2174 Yep, that is a very useful specific staff pin. Even if you can't get between the legs to trip have you ever slammed the blunt end of a spear or staff into an opponent shin or knee. Even in full armour or practice gear people collapse or jump up & down from the shear discomfort. Like stubbing your toe but multiple times worse. Turn the spear & drop plunge it into their leg. Me my mates as a lad really had no restraint. dislocated a couple of their knees on occasion but they said not to hold back so? You get what you ask for!

As a White Water and Surf Kayaker. These movements are very familiar to paddle handling skills... LOL

It really is that simple, though. If you are using point fighting, you won't ever win. These pretend taps wouldn't stop an actual adrenaline fight to the death. You would have to really get a lethal blow.

Umm, if it is was that simple then town guards wouldn’t have bet unsarmored and given spears, partisans and halberds for duty weapons. You overestimate the ease you can do damage to unarmored person with a cut and underestimated with a thrust. Hell, in SCA cut and thrust, if you walk into a duel with safety spear, your opponent can plead to the judge to have you disqualified from dueling for using a nonstandard weapon. Even further, sword smiths probably though when creating the rapier, let’s see if I can create a spear which I can wear on my hip.

@@ItIsYouAreNotYour Yes, it that simple. However the execution of that plan is a lot trickier than it is made out to be by those puerile cliches. (And, yes, thrusts win duels. Happened all throughout history. Cuts can win too, but if you get 7" of blade in your gut, you have lost.)

To be fair, "stick them with the pointy end" seems to be the main tactic a spearman uses against a swordsman.

@@dutch6857 Ah, well, I sorry for my pitifull detection of humor.

And with no point fighting, because it's not reality.

@@ItIsYouAreNotYour but thats no fun

@@ItIsYouAreNotYour no blood, no proof!

Against a single spearman it's about binding then grabbing or entangling the haft of the spear, using a cloak or armour to pin it under your arms makes it easier but it depends how quick the spearman is and whether they can see what you're trying to do 🙂

@@ItIsYouAreNotYour in 2022 it's also not reality to fight sword vs spear. It's gun vs unarmed innocent civilians (in America)

It's like judging distance with sabres. Is curved spear the ultimate weapon? Lol

What gets me is the sheer heft of the thing means if the Swordsman survives long enough he can kill the pole arm user by sheer exhaustion alone.

Especially if the spear user deliberately points it at their opponent's eyes and uses slip-thrusts.

Perfect example is in Toy Story, before Andy's party, when the toys are watching kids come in with the presents for Andy.

I meant curved spear ehhh

I think your second best shot is have your mate go round the back of them.

@@hazzardalsohazzard2624 this worked well for a young Ned Stark at the Tower of Joy in Game of Thrones. Fictional event yes but the principle can be employed by modern militaries also.

3rd best bet is to get people with Zweihänders and distract them while you rush in to kill the spear man

Wait until it’s the era of pike & shot. You see that spearman/pikeman? Have someone grab an arquebus to deal with him.

Or maybe get a big shield. As a spearman, I can assure you that a shield changes the game. Very few people are stupid enough to attack a spearman without one.

Or the Brave Sir Robin manouvre "run away run away"

In the napleonic era, most line infantry just run away when the opposing formation bayonet charges them. To the point where there's less than 10 guys dying to bayonets every battle.

I would imagine the first weapon would have been a rock followed eventually by the club.

I always think of the spear in the context of a formation, from the Sumerian spear squares to Greek phalanx to Swiss pike squares, Spanish Tercios etc etc. Used together with hundreds of other soldiers, I imagine the spear's advantages improve by many multiples.

@@hemaccabe4292 I imagine what J M means is a weapon that was specifically crafted as such. Both a rock and a club are things you can just pick up, but a spear is not just any old stick. It has to be long, straight sturdy, at the very least, and then sharpened on one end, which is a deliberate thing to do. Then someone figured out you harden that tip a a little with fire, or tie a sharp bit of a rock to it for an even better point...lo! The arms race has begun! I think Sean's onto something too, though I think it was probably organized hunts of megafauna that brought about the rudiments of fighting in formation. IIRC, our ancestors would hunt mammoths by chasing them off cliffs. That would require a fair bit of coordination between the hunters.

@@iDEATH I would imagine the first crafted weapon would have been a club with a sharp bit imbedded in it. Still, you make well thought out points JPP.

Amusingly, one of the most important advancements in the history of gunpowder warfare was the ability to make rifles and muskets into makeshift spears (the bayonet).

Don’t worry, you can always retreat or slide the shaft.

If that doesn't work you can spin it in a circular motion.

@@aaftiyoDkcdicurak Right, just take Matt’s advice, circle around and attack the next opening.

@@leopoldbloom4835 And if all those suggestions didn't work, don't forget that you can also use the other side.

@@Kiwi9552 penetrating them before they penetrate you also sounds like a good plan. Don't let them slide their sword on your shaft in the first place.

I have translations of two different spear manuals (I think early - mid Ming era) and while being vastly different from each other (south and north seem to even grip differently) they still contained these actions (circular disengage was the first defensive thing mentioned)

Japanese spear forms from Jujutsu are along the same lines too, next to the Yumi bow the Yari spear was the primary battlefield weapon throughout the Sengoku period. Made learning HEMA a few years ago a little easier for me 🙂

All humans are very similar in the way we have hands and legs and our joints and muscles work the same way. As such all martial arts, armed and unarmed, tend to include similar tecniques...

@@Sk0lzky any links to compare?

Why bother, they got the technology and use from Romans and Greeks.

not to mention alot of polearms often have two pointy ends so you can just flip it around if it breaks

if there's a fellow spearman behind you then there is a chance they're pointing their spear towards your opponent too. I'm worried about the guy in back when you rotate the spear to the blunt end.

@@satadenai9182 if you even have to, but in a formation, you my only have to concentrate on poking the guy in front of you. You may not have to worry about special maneuvers until the ranks break.

This makes "move #6" - let the person behind you stab them.

I too have tried this and it helped a bit but still I fail. I attribute this to my low skill level so seeing another having the same difficulty made me feel like less of a scrub😊

I also started using my longknife in my back hand, which allows me to quickly drop the spear and attack with a short arm. However, it sort of discounts using a polearm in the first place. I feel like I should just use an axe with a shield instead.

In formations as soon as the swordsman or ax man starts to close the guy 5 feet to your left or right can stab him from the side.

@@LokiLaughs2 yeah absolutely and I've made that work really really well, there was one guy in particular who I loved working with cos we were on the same wave length, but in one on one is where the oriblem arises

Drop it, run in and use their knife/dagger whilst the opponent is unbalanced by suddenly bearing the weight of the spear in one hand. At least that's what has worked for me in reenactment fights. Often the knife is held in the rear hand too, so the rear hand is holding a knife (pickaxe grip) and the spear shaft

Enjoy the ride.

@@johnsmithe4656 I guess i was not the only weird thinker here.

You'll go blind.

If someone grabs your spear, why would sliding your spear back release their grip? Unless you have lube on your hands your grip isn't going to move or extremely physically at a disadvantage?

@@ItIsYouAreNotYour a bit confused. There a miscommunication here. I didn't say anything about the swordsmen grabbing the spear. Or are you ask what the spear can do if the spear is grabbed?

@@ItIsYouAreNotYour even if you have stabbed to the end of your range you will have a leverage advantage and an already secure grip when the swordsman attempts to grab your spear on the pointy end. It sounds simple in theory, but grabbing a spear while someone stabs you is pretty hard.

For extra points, use that circular parry motion to smack the guy on the lead hand!

@@scottmacgregor3444 yeah, sometimes you don't always need the spear point stabbing. Some times a smack the hands with a big stick works as well.

Based on some of Tod's workshop videos, how the dagger is worn varies massively based on what it's meant to be used for an who is wearing it. Like just some average person carrying a dagger as a utility tool that can obviously be used for defense as well, it could be hung loose and relatively easy to draw either way. If it's meant for a specific use, in combat or out, it'd be set to draw in the way meant to be used. Either way, you can often draw a dagger either way from most positions, it's just much more difficult in the "wrong" position, to the point that drawing it "correctly" and then switching it could be easier.

@@patrickdix772 as far as i know rondell daggers were very often worn on the right side with hilt upwards (at least it seems like a custom for 14th-15th senturies, but i haven't studied the subject so i may be wrong), and it looks like the only way you can comfortably grab it quickly is the ice-pick grip, and switching it in gauntlets in the fight looks tricky as well. But anyway you get a solid point there, so thanks a lot for your answer

AGREE! Better when he doesn't point it out but keeps going like it's totally normal.

On the battle field

With the size spear Matt is using it would indeed be quite cumbersome. Spears intended for single-hand use were probably much, much lighter, though - Sean Manning has some stats here: www.bookandsword.com/talks/get-to-the-point-what-questions-should-we-ask-about-a-spear/ 3/4-7/8" shafts and 5.5oz heads....very few commercially available spears are that light. I'm actually in the middle of making a spearhead right now that will hopefully come close to those specs to replace/supplement my windlass behemoth. Here is one of the best posts on spear-and-shield I've seen thus far, for your entertainment: hirdmenn.blogspot.com/2021/09/understanding-spear-and-overarm-grip.html

@@123elnat I'm aware spears for one handed use wouldn't be this large as I tried to imply in my comment. I suppose that they seem very limiting to me as your hands needs to ideally be close to the centre of mass (limiting the overall reach drastically) so that your wrist can comfortably redirect the weapon. From all of the depictions I can think of, the practical reach of most one handed spears seems to also be achievable by a sword (or it's close), and if the hand is further back of the shaft, they probably become really quite cumbersome in the hand so if the spear is knocked aside, you'd struggle to redirect it. It seems to me that sword and shield vs spear and shield is in favour of the swordsman, which is interesting considering the strength of two handed spears vs swords. Thanks for the last link - it's quite interesting!

@@tommeakin1732 It depends how the shield & spear man fights. There's a good discussion video from the Hellenic Studies Society (if I recall the name correctly) on YT where the reenactor in full hoplite gear) shows how they worked out the best methods of spear & shield fighting - the shield held out, not flat but with the arm extended and the spear resting on the shield edge, using it as a guide. He said that a spear is a light, accurate and deadly weapon - blocking the thrust with a sword is a difficult (and dangerous) occupation as the spearman can thrust and withdraw at great speed, even aiming for eye holes in armour with accuracy.

One of the easiest ways is grab the spear with your other hand. Also realize I said “easiest” as this is not easy. This helps take away 4 of the 5 defenses he offers but you have to be careful of timing, if you miss you die. Second you’re one hand against two, if he chooses to strike at you with the shaft, generally, he will either jerk you off balance or pull the spear from your grasp.

The advice to the swordsman is bring a good sized shield with you and guard your feet.

That would be good!

I don't think Matt has sufficient knowledge in that field but I bet he has friends in those fields.

@@chengkuoklee5734 d'ya hear that, matt? A challenge!

A single spearman might not be dangerous, but imagine a whole formation of them

If there's a ton of other spearmen behind you and the swordman charges, he may be stabbed by your mates. If the swordman gets inside the spearman range by deflecting the point with a shield or a sword, perhaps he is now open to other attacks. There was a video with two guys with polearms (one behind and slightly on the side of the other), and this looked quite difficult to attack with a shorter weapon, as neutralizing one polearm makes you a target for the other.

A single spearman is dangerous, and beats swordsman 9 out of 10 times. Plenty of videos and historical texts confirming this ​@MyHentaiGirlNeko

With the sword of one hand, deflect the spear in a direction other than towards you and grab the axis of your opponent's weapon to drive your sword into the chest or neck.

Back away and disengage

@@infinati and run

I think he mentioned something about a shield, or armor, which would decrease the available striking area for pointed attacks.

This is for single combat.

Or that the opponent is rooted in place.