On the Practice of Armored Foot Combat

By John Clements
ARMA Director

Until about the mid-16th century, fighting in armored plate harness made up a significant portion of 14th and 15th century European martial arts literature. Specific aspects of using the dagger, sword, spear, and poleax on foot were all addressed in their teachings. A variety of specific sword types were even optimized to deal with plate armor. There are many important issues surrounding it that should be addressed and for which any serious student of Renaissance martial arts should be aware. While the study of armored combat is hardly my speciality, I understand how there is no way to fully study Renaissance fighting disciplines without also exploring the perfection that was European plate armor.

Functional armor is so much more than mere costume, but today, few practitioners of historical fencing have the opportunity to train in, let alone regularly spar at length in, historically accurate armor. They seldom are able to directly compare and contrast armored and unarmored fight teachings in person. At one end of the spectrum there is practice of armored fighting techniques while not wearing any armor, and at the other end there is practice of armored combat solely for purposes of being able to go full-contact with wooden or steel weapons (even if the armor worn is inaccurate and the conditions applied highly artificial).

The source teachings from the martial arts of Renaissance Europe make it clear that, naturally enough, unarmored fighting is the basis for armored harness fighting. And it is certainly practical to study the basic distinctions of armored combat today even while training unarmored. But this only works to a degree --and historically it was never the standard manner of operating, given that armor was so readily available to fighting men.

However, while almost everything one can do unarmored, one can also do armored, there are things that one can do in armor that one simply cannot do when unarmored. Therefore, merely theoretically working through armored combat teachings does not credibly approximate the experience of actually using armor --let alone sparring both in and against it. On the one hand, you can't properly simulate armored combat without wearing armor, but on the other, inaccurate armor combined with poor understanding of the genuine fight teachings can terribly mislead about its true nature.

In my view, understanding armored combat skills requires, reasonably enough, for you to use armor. You need to be familiar with wearing and moving in armor. Because armor changes your center of gravity, it then changes something of how you step and move, and how you strike and cover and ward. It also changes not just the specific techniques that you can employ, but how you can react to techniques. The more any armor deviates from the historical pattern it's modeled after, the more these issues become manifest --and the more these issues will distort your skill set. That this is not widely appreciated among armored fighting enthusiasts is an unfortunate source of problems for credibly reconstructing the craft (with the question of specialized tournament armors being another matter entirely).

If you haven't trained and sparred at length while armored, both against other armored fighters as well as against unarmored ones, can you really know well enough what it's all about? Even then, it's not only a matter of armored training and armored sparring, but in my view of also  using a sharp weapon in armor to practice target cutting to explore how it again affects the motion of your limbs, your ability to step, to apply force or momentum, and to keep balance. The way that helmets can also restrict breathing, vision, and hearing cannot be ignored.

In armored swordsmanship especially, it's critical to experience how the significant change in mass and center of gravity influences everything having to do with grip manipulation, edge alignment, impact focus, point control, follow-through, and strike recovery. (And none of this even begins to address experimenting to explore what real weapons could and would have actually done to damage or penetrate different kinds of armors.)

While only the most ignorant today still believe the sad misconception that wearing plate armor makes a fighting fighting man awkwardly slow and clumsy or unable to get up when knocked down, there are other mistaken beliefs that persist even among historical combat students. I guarantee that just as with sparring or drilling, floryshing in armor is absolutely different in terms of the demands it places on your energy, your respiration, and your stamina, as well as your mindset, than does doing so unarmored. And this is not to even consider the issue of rough terrain and uneven ground in this. And the effect on weapon manipulation from wearing different gauntlet configurations is another component entirely. Further, just how significantly wearing armor affects the performance of grappling techniques absolutely cannot be understood without practicing them in proper armor.

It's not widely understood that unless produced by an experienced and talented craftsman dedicated to closely following historical examples, modern reproduction armors are generally too thick, too soft, and typically attached improperly to an incorrect undergarment. All of this will adversely affect the integrity of performing the authentic combat actions. There really should not be any doubt that wearing overly-heavy and improperly balanced armor with modern under-padding for reasons of mock combat safety is a sure way to misinterpret, if not outright misapply, the authentic historical combat teachings.

Obtaining good armor today that is accurate in terms of material, mass, weight distribution, articulation, and proper personal fit is problematic. Not to mention costly. Most armored combat enthusiasts must make compromises in authenticity for whatever study approach they have chosen to follow. This then influences what they can do in their armor and what can be learned from doing it (and in turn, influences the kind of feedback given to modern armorers!).

Exploring armored combat therefore requires a strong foundation in studying unarmored fighting as well as considerable effort in safely drilling and practicing in specialized anti-armor techniques. But unfortunately, it appears many practitioners who focus exclusively on either full-contact armored sport fighting or else on choreographed display routines will neglect these important areas.

Probably the most critical element to armored combat practice today is the realization that there are many specialized techniques for dealing with fully armored opponents (such as thrusting into the gaps and joints and delivering "reverse" blows using the hilt of the sword) that cannot be safely used with steel training blades because such techniques are just too dangerous to apply. This is really no different than similar safety limitations and restrictions that are regularly accepted for unarmored sparring and fighting practice in general. But in the case of armor, because so many other actions are "ineffective," the result of reasonably excluding the specialized "anti-armor" techniques can then lead to false impressions about the nature of armored combat.*

I eventually learned of my own false assumptions about armored fighting the hard way through hands-on experience --or rather, to rephrase that: I only learned the proper and historical way. I know that in decades past I held major misconceptions about how historical armor functioned and what combatants were actually capable of doing in it. And then I would be wearing it and trying things and exclaiming, holy crap, you can't do "X" in this. I would also come to realize that some particular strike would assuredly have had zero effect against some portion of harness. I would be hit by a blow and say, wow, I felt that even through the armor --and that was from a blunt weapon no less. What if it had been a sharp weapon delivered with proper force?

Very quickly all of this experience informed my interpretation of the combat techniques within the historical source teachings. It also seriously affected how I examined authentic examples of harnesses in museums. I then became critical of modern efforts at mock armored combat practice that, in the name of making it recreationally viable, were making what I came to understand were quite unrealistic assumptions about how armor worked in actual violence. These are among the many reasons why I therefore try to view all Renaissance arms and armor practice from a broad vantage point.

As a specialist in unarmored combat who has long studied the original teachings on armored fighting and who has worn and sparred in an assortment of armors (covering a sadly disparate range of historical accuracy), I have a contrary opinion on how legitimate some modern approaches to armored combat practice are. Thus, whenever I encounter the assertion that practitioners training unarmored are doing "traditional armored fighting", making certain assumptions about postures, motions, and techniques that would be used against armored opponents or while in armor, I have learned to be skeptical. Although I do admire a host of modern armored-combat sport and re-enactment incarnations, my interest and concern is decidedly on the historical teachings.

I know when I discuss or instruct on the fundamental unarmored techniques, I am still constantly referring to how they would be different if attempted "in armor" --and even then, in different types of armor (as well as if with different types of swords and "anti-armor" weaponry). When it comes to covering specific armored combat teachings while being unarmored, there is a whole world of caveats and exceptions to cover so that students have a proper perspective. If that's not addressed, then I am not impressed.

The thing is, to do it right, and to use the accurate techniques that were employed against armor types from different centuries, is paradoxically less safe than practicing un-armored techniques. That's right. When sparring un-armored you can reasonably limit target areas and control blows, yet still readily acknowledge that the contact would've been debilitating or lethal. But against a full harness of plate armor, the nature of it is is such that when you pull such blows, they can then be considered to either not have been hard enough to penetrate or not accurate enough to have injured. This is due to the restrictions on strength and contact points of blows, as well as the inability to gauge impacts or just simply see and feel hits with your weapon in the same way one can while un-armored. Make sense?

It's pretty easy to develop assumptions about what a concussive blow or a jabbing point would or wouldn't do on one or another kind of armor --right up until you've taken such a hit yourself. Any notion that when you spar with weapons un-armored, it's simply a matter of saying, "Oh, if you had armor on, I would've just made my blow harder and it would have been effective," doesn't address the whole picture. Had armor been involved in any given circumstance, it would've significantly altered the factors of momentum, speed, balance, stamina, and visibility, at the same time it rendered numerous basic fighting actions inapplicable.

On top of this, while unprotected human body parts all pretty much respond within the very small spectrum of reaction to attacks from lethal weaponry, by contrast, not all armors were the same quality of construction nor of equal thickness and hardness. As I will often point out, any material reductionist approach to understanding historical close-combat fails to comprehend that every fight is situational and contextual. Armored combat is not exempt from this truth.

So then, if you are training now in an "armored art" but never applying it in historical armors --to practice it, to experience it, to validate it --are you really doing it? Are you really reconstructing and reviving it? Are you really preserving it? This applies to any historical martial arts study where wearing different types of accurate armors is not a regular component of weapon training. It is even more the case if not ever engaging in armored group battles.

Something else to consider is that while we often view close combat as a binary model, being either completely armored or completely unarmored, the reality is that as warfare evolved over the centuries, combatants might be only partially armored in some way. This partial armor aspect is an area of practice that seems largely neglected by modern students of the subject, despite the wealth of iconographic evidence depicting partially armored combatants. (This is also a reason why I am often surprised by the"informed presumptions" and false conceptions many people will hold about armor that are more or less based on games and exposure to larping.)

Correspondingly, because not every martial culture in the world produced some form of sophisticated armored harness for individual foot combat, many traditional martial art weapon styles completely neglect and ignore addressing armored fighting as if it somehow never existed or doesn't really matter in the realm of traditional martial arts study. While historical armor may not be relevant to modern self-defense situations, in my opinion such ignorant negligence is due to the intimidation factor that Medieval and Renaissance armors present to those traditional fighting styles that obviously have no real way of dealing with them. Additionally, armored foot combat is arguably more misrepresented in popular entertainment than is unarmored combat. Bad depictions of awkwardly moving "knights" in heavy armor have been with us now for more than 150 years now. Such misrepresentations permeate the public consciousness so that misunderstandings about historical armor are in many ways far greater than misunderstanding about historical weaponry.**

Lastly, keep in mind that while there are specific techniques for the kinds of weapons that can target the vulnerabilities in plate armor, when unarmored you have those very same vulnerabilities ...along with a whole mess of others. After all, armor existed for a very long time precisely because it worked so well. No student of this subject should entirely neglect it.

* Think about it: The number one technique for dealing with an adversary in plate armor was to forcibly thrust with a narrow blade at specific target areas --such as the face, eyes, throat, underarm, groin, inner elbow, and back of the knee. Yet, this is the very action that must be excluded when using blunt training weapons and also the very technique most indeterminate when using modern safe weapons.)

** I will often asked people questions that challenge preconceptions they've acquired from popular media and fantasy games: Have you ever put on a hat only to discover it doesn't fit the size of your head? Sure, they will respond. Have you ever put on a jacket or a coat that didn't fit you? Of course, they will admit. Well, the same thing applies to battle helmets and plate armor. Even coats of maile and brigandine that may have adjustable straps invariably have to either be taken in or let out in order to fit the size of your shoulders, chest and waist. It's that simple. You can't just grab armor at random or off the shelf and expect to have it instantly fit you like you found it in the magical treasure vault of a dungeon adventure. That's not how armor in the real world works. Being a highly specialized athletic accoutrement, as a manner of standard operating procedure most armors must be either originally constructed to the owner's measurements or be professionally adjusted to fit the wearer.

Anecdotes to consider: A harness of plate armor armor is hardly indestructible, and they certainly do require maintenance. For example, while visiting the Royal Armouries in Leeds some decades ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to don a colleague's full Milanese harness and put it through its paces. After a half an hour or so of doing various fighting actions and motions, I did a simple roll or two on the ground to experience its agility and mobility. Later, while removing the armor, my colleague lamented with a depressing sigh as he discovered that I had popped three of the major strap rivets! The vigor I applied was apparently not what they normally do in their weekly performances, and he related to me that it was a problem mostly because as a fight demonstration team member, he had to do his own repairs (shockingly they had no on-site armorer on staff!). Anyone who does any type of armored combat or has an interest in the subject has surely witnessed combatants who within minutes of engaging in mock combat had to stop because of problems with one piece or another of armor coming loose --and this is just in friendly bouts with sticks or blunt weapons. Imagine what it would be like if it was in earnest with sharp weapons? Some of these issues have to do with the inferiority of modern replica armor compared to the reality of historical pieces and the softness of the steel typically used today. For example, I witnessed a student of mine training in his newly acquired 15th century Gothic plate harness. He trotted across the grass of my yard only to suddenly stop because one of his sabatons literally warped from the effort to such a degree that he could no longer take a step. Later, another student had one of his sabatons fly part while sparring. Once, giving a demonstration to a group of youth while wearing one of my chest plates, I was asked if armor really did stop sword blows. I answered, "of course it does," and to illustrate my point I took my blunt training blade and simply smacked it twice against my abdomen so that the sound of the impact underscored my reply. Later that night, when I was removing it and putting it in the car, I was shocked to see I had actually caused two 4" long dents in my armor! After years of seeing or reading about such incidents, I am convinced that most of them come from the fact that, excluding exceptional examples, the vast amount of modern reproduction armor is simply not up to the quality of the originals. I also once had the exceptional opportunity to put on an entire arm from an original 16-century Spanish harness, and even without an arming coat underneath was shocked to see that dry and hardened as the original leather straps and rivets were, I still had full mobility with the entire arm.