Learn the Art of Combat - Pike techniques #2: Thrusting basics
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ต.ค. 2021
- In this video we want to compare the different thrusts of the Landsknecht pike. These range from really simple to more difficult to extremely unusual techniques. Particularly in terms of target accuracy, there are significant differences in some cases. Therefore, some thrusting technique requires a lot of practice. But is it worth the effort? Why make it difficult if it can’t be simpler and more precise? To answer this question, let’s take a closer look at all the thrusts to draw a conclusion at the end of the video.
- กีฬา
These videos on Meyer’s work are fantastic! This series, along with the one on the halberd, were extremely informative - so far the best I have found on TH-cam. Thanks for making these, and looking forward to your next video!
These pike videos are just fanrastic, thank you! The charging thrust from the field guard reminds me of something written by Machiavelli in The Prince: he muses that italian infantry should learn to fight like the Swiss, holding the pike in the middle and charging forth! On the matter the matter of skill and tecnique, i would add one thing to what you said: to my mind, Renaissance masters also take showing off into account. I mean, building social capital through (some) flashy use of tecnique was a big deal for these people, and constitutes an important cultural component of their art.
Absolutely right. "How does this master stand out from the ordinary fencer?" Anyone willing to pay for manuscripts or tuition would ask this question.
Do you think flashy moves may also be a way to get them to maintain their practise. I imagine when a group has practised the more basic thrusts regularly, they are fairly adept at them. To then introduce a flashy move would tend to renew thier interest and motivate their continued practise. Those, of course, without the imminent prospect of battle to motivate them. (I'm convinced this is a reason for some flashy moves in other Martial Arts.)
Finally! Was dying to see this weapon revived!!!
Incredibly interesting, thanks.
Unglaublich interessant, danke.
Danke das kann ich nur zurückgeben. Ich mag mir Eure Videos ebenfalls gern ansehen :)
Beide eure Kanäle sind top. Ich denke ich würde mich auch gerne an HEMA versuchen.
I really appreciate this channel and it's more rare content
Looks like you've done some target practice since last video, it really shows! Also, great target construction! The one-handed thrusts seem tedious but so awesome when they land.
Since some of the last comments said I wouldn't hit anything, I've taken a goal for it. With the fundamental video, I just didn't pay attention to thrust accurately. I was more concerned with technique.
I love the pike, thank you for this series 😁
This is incredibly insightful and interesting, thank you for uploading!
What a great series ..every weapon showing the actual use on the battlefield ..from manual to you tube ...bloody excellent ..😊
I loved this and it is, so far, my favorite of your videos. :)
Better to have technique and not need it than to need it and not have it.
I saw clips from this somewhere else and I am happy to have found the original video.
Love this contents
Thank you, great video.👍
Thank you for doing this video. Sancho de Londoño's manual has detailed instruction for how to thrust with the pike in formation in the field. If I recall correctly, the starting position similar to the upper guard shown here but the thrust involves sliding the pike shaft through the front hand so the hands meet. The one-handed thrusting technique with the point on the ground also appears in George Silver's pike instructions for single combat & Joseph Swetnam mentioned it as a battlefield technique. Pike sources contain various surprises!
Thx for your insights :)
Superbe chaîne ! 👍😁
thank you so much
Very impressiv
I have an appreciation for swords and martial weaponry. I enjoy your videos and I have learned a lot.
Thx for the kind words mate :)
@ You are welcome
I absolutely love these! Just discovered your channel and been binging your content!
Is there any chance you may cover a base spear? I would absolutely love to see what you have to teach, because I feel that a spear may be simple to learn. But, in the hands of someone more advanced it can truly enlighten others in just how versatile and terrifying it is.
excellent final commentary
liked a lot the "voice" part of this video, good summary
Wow! That weapon is really long. o.O
Good pike techniques video.👍
Amazing! It would be so awesome to get two Haufen of like a hundred reenactors/Hema fighters/volunteers and other such Volk and see how things play out in formation fighting.
I have read a lot about the Spanish Tercios researching renaissance political art and there was a lot of pride in the skill of fighting with pikes - the Queen of the battlefield someone wrote. Moreover, its visibility as a weapon made it iconic in art as a show of strength and that the men were well disciplined, as the pike were carried tidily and in numbers. I can't remember which manual it was, but there were instructions by one Spanish tactician to always step forward, especially for musketeers mixed with pike - how would that have worked? I had thought that the pike were defensive to deliver the halberd and shot to tactical locations by keeping the cavalry away, but your demonstrations of techniques makes it seem much more nuanced. Thank you these videos give really superb insights. For me it would be interesting to see how mixed weapon groups worked together, rather than individually; assuming they did work together leveraging the strengths of different weapons. I can only imagine battles were very messy affairs from what you have demonstrated. Thank you!
I heard that the rise of the Pike in the Middle Ages started with the Swiss being able to use them, not just as static defense, but offensively in a charge. The charge of a Pike Formation could rout enemy formations on its own, much like a heavy cavalry lance charge.
Wonderful demonstration! Would be amazing if you could get some friends to form a file, and demonstrate thrusting like this as a group.
despite how slow an awkward a pike thrust may seem, the wobbly shaft makes the tip near unpredictable when its facing you
Pike is the perfect COVID weapon to eliminate your enemies and keep a secure distance between you and them.
very interesting, seem really hard to master. Have you try to put some "languettes" near the spearhead in order to increase the stifness and decrease the "wobble" effect of the pike ? where did you find the references used to build your pike (size, weight...) ?
Hey bjorn, absolutely love the vids, been a huge fan for ages and your videos were what taught me my first longsword skills. Quick question, where do you get those fabulous pants?
Hey Jack :) you can buy those pants at highhillpants.wixsite.com/index/catalog-en
@ amazing thank you, how many slashes does yours have? They look really good
@@jackberry893 8 :)
Absolut Klasse euer Kanal :D
Danke :)
Ancient Greeks and Macedonians achieved a better thrusting balance by adding a weight on the rear end. The additional weight increased the effective length of the weapon without increasing the actual length of it.
I wonder if these pike techniques were different from Successor Kingdom era's pike techniques...
i am somewhat surprised, now that i see this, that meyer doesnt also include a one handed spear lunge from the rear hand
where you step forward with the rear foot and hand, but the forward hand lets go of the weapon resulting in you lunging forward with a surprising amount of power, and also the absolute maximum reach
this move , naturally can leave you extremely vulnerable as it has a slow recovery
but those one handed parries and recovery thrusts would cover that gap
In a pike formation, did the men in the back ranks also attack with their pikes? If so, what attacks did they use and how did they not strike the man in the front rank with the shaft of their pike?
From manuals, we know that the soldiers at least few ranks back did attack with their pikes. We don't know exactly how. Sir John Smythe went into some detail in this regard. He claimed only the first five ranks of a pike formations had any ability to engage an enemy outside the formation, with the points of the fifth ranks only projecting a little bit beyond the first rank. He recommended that pikers fighting other pikers advance in tight formation & each give a single powerful thrust as the got close enough. If this didn't breaking the enemy formation, the pikers in the front rank or ranks would drop or throw their pikes to draw swords & daggers in order to continue attacking. The alternative he listed & strongly criticized was enlarging the formation to give the first rank of pikers the elbow room to fence at the length of their pikes. Here, pikers past the first or second rank wouldn't be close enough to their opposing counterparts to attack. While Smythe railed against this approach, the fact he did so indicates pikers used it at times. Smythe complained it gave nothing for the rear ranks to do, but it's likely a formation using this approach would have rotating soldiers able to engage. I think of the two techniques as differing based on intensity & risk. Smythe's quick advance would either scatter foes with less resolve or lead to a horrific slugfest where pikers butchered each other up close with swords & daggers. We know the latter happened when high-morale piker formations fought: causalities could be very high, such as over 90% for the front rank.
@@b.h.abbott-motley2427 Thanks. That was extremely informative.
How long is that pike?
Do you think a formation of soldiers holding a shield on one hand and a long pike in the other right below armit (like cavalry) would work? They may be able to harm the enemy by pushing forward even though they could not thrust.
I don't think it would be as effective. Already the way to fight a pike is to get past the point. If you were walking or even charging with a static held pike, it would be one moment of danger, and then you were past the point. And the force would only be of your forward momentum.
Whereas jabbing with both hands uses both arms, as well as your body momentum to create a more forceful blow. And it allows you to strike multiple times in multiple ways, putting more pressure on the opponent to avoid your strikes.
Man you would need to be in some serious physical shape to do this in battle. That POV clip at the end was terrifying. Can you imagine having to face not just one pike but having a bunch of those thrusting at you?
"Why would anyone need to know how to block with a pike using one hand? Because most of the people watching our video are LARPers."
Joking aside, if someone manages to close the distance and attack you, you will have to draw your side arm and dispatch them. Once they're been dealt with, you now have to one hand the pike until you can put your side arm away.
Throwing a parry and a counter thrust is a great way to apply some pressure and create an opening long enough for you to re-sheath your side arm.
In both instances, you can just drop one weapon to use the other with both hands, but the ability to be able to transition quickly between both without having to abandon any of your equipment while continuing to hold the line is what separates the veterans from the amateurs.
this man will single handidly win the zombie apocalypse.
Now I want a loooong pointy stick!
Watch chen taichi long pole techniques and it might make something click with these moves.
5:07 surrounded? You mean target rich environment?
How pike is made and what kind of wood is good?
Mostly ash...like mine but some historical letters tells us that they are also made of spruce some times :)
@ Thank you .. my ancrstors where ottoman Deli calvary (sauth slavs) , Deluler, Delije, crazy heads .. in short suicide beserker ottoman squod.. they use extreme long lances on horse. Delije where precursor for Polish Winged Hussars (hussar is from word gusar is sauth slavic word is name for pirat or bandit) all equipement, boots, trausers, lances, maze, warrhamer, shield, even saber , predatory cat skins , wings are based on our ancestror equipement. I have no idea what material they use for lances, but they where extra long.. manny time they use them for ritual of self mutilation and stub lance trough their belly skin and pulled out on other part of belly 20 or 30cm away... they newer use bows , armor it was seen as not brave enough. Theirjob was to brake lines of enemy and made total caos..room for heavy sipahi calvary.. They where not part of ottoman army at siege of Wienna.
How long is that pike anyways? 12 ft. to 13 ft?
16ft :)
Trailest thou the puissant pike? Henry V Act 3 Scene 3
sooo.. I have to build a Pike now, right ?
Any thoughts on why one-handed pike thrusts would be used, primarily?
My main thought is if a hand is disabled, or if for some reason you want a hand free to draw a sword or such. It can also give you another 0.4m of reach, roughly, so you could surprise an opponent with that. The Makedonian pezhetairoi might find it useful, when they wanted to manipulate their shield more skillfully.
I don't think they would be used all that often. There are one handed thrusts even with longswords, but you sacrifice quite a bit for that extra reach, so it would probably be something carefully utilized.
Interesseting.
Personally I’m not to big on pikes, the problem? Too long and can hardly go anywhere
this one is a three parted prototype :) easy to carry!
@ well that’s convenient
@ oh wow, I never found a good way to do that. What are you using?
At the end you say people that are able to fight like this would make up the first rank or 2 of a pike block. That makes sense in terms of professionalism but how would you envisage this working as a pike block, you standing out in the front rank whipping the pike around is going to hinder your own men I can't see how that would help....
Yap thats a thing...a lot of techniques are difficult to perform or just not possible in a dense formation. But also when you forced to use simpler stuff you will perform much better when you are use to all concepts and the full spectrum of possibilities. Its especially for field-wafare that you should trained over the top to be at 100% when you get into the battle. You cant use everything, but you are more versatile, flexibel in choices and the chance is little to be overwhelmed by the stressful situation. And who knows, suddenly you have the room to be way more fancy...and you can immediately increase your efficiency :)
teach me senpai.
Would a real pike be so floppy?
No it would probably be made of Ash, it would flex a little but for a good thrusting weapon you need it to be a little stiff
why i am watching this at 4 am ???
6:45 Can you talk more about that? I'm so fed up people telling that if you just practice fighting with weapon, it's not historical fighting. And it's so silly for people to think that HEMA manuals is how everyone fought and not just very minority of elites. Like look at Kingdom Come Deliverence, it's just dumb that every peasant/soldier knows guards and all attacks are techniques lmao. In 500 years people would say insinctive fighting didn't exist and depict all soldiers/civilians use karate/kickboxing and other martial arts and say absolute majority fought like that because it's more effective lol.
Looks like an incredible pain in the ass
I don’t think single hand grip pike will work in real battle, single hand grip spear may work, but not pike.
Not my idea :) Its from a contemporary fightbook and this technique is not a marginal side-note.
too soft...
this thing is useless if being alone.
There are treatises covering one on one dueling with the pike actually. It's obviously not as good as a poleaxe or a halberd, but it's not as useless as you'd think.
it never meant to be. if you take something out of it purpose context it was designed for ofc it's gonna be useless. a muscle car is useless under the sea, same thing