GHFS - Spear sparring, Roger & Mikael

Spear sparring based on techniques in German medieval manuscripts. Mikael in white shoes and Roger in black.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• hema
• wma
• spear
• staff
• mair
• medieval
• martial
• arts
• historical
• bo
• quarterstaff

[DeathsFavorite1]

but my style of spear fighting is not german either and i have not seen the manus that you have seen so maybe you are doing it by the book and if it worked for them then go for it.

I just would not use the style because it is not flexible enough foe me. Your stances do vary from mine as i said but we do come from different cultures who fight completely diff.

[Hroarr]

Well our techniques do not really reflect what we try to do.

And for safety reasons we go very easy on strikes. The oak bo staffs are simply too heavy, as you can see at the end of the video.

In total, there are about 10-15 guards in the german tradition, of which several are intended for strikes. In the videos here, we basically use two thrust guards only.

Sparring easily gets messy though. :)

Out of curiosity, what tradition are you training within?

[DeathsFavorite1]

I think the thrust were ok but i am not to keen about your stances.

[Hroarr]

Please elaborate. :)

We are pretty much beginners when it comes to sparring with the spear, although we have a fairly solid theoretical basis to rest it on. We just need to get it into our reptile brain...

This is the second time only that we actually spar with spears, so there are lots of problems with parries etc.

[DeathsFavorite1]

Your thrust are pretty straightforward and they are easy to master, but your stances have a opening if you are against a thinking enemy (me) i would go in on your heels side making it harder for you to turn to my position while i keep the striking for my self open. at first you lead foot is forward which is good but i noticed to often you would switch it and both of your feet were facing the same direction which makes it harder to use your left/right step. I am not good in explaining more showin

[Hroarr]

When you mentioned stance I thought you were talking about the whole stances, including the back, the arms etc. But we may differ there, depending on traditions.

[Hroarr]

Oh, and I expect you to move towards my "heel side". That is the side we both want to gain an advantage on. That is why we mirror each other, with a left leading foot against a right, and vice versa. Thereby we open our opponent and attack his "inside" while keeping his weapon on the "outside".

[DeathsFavorite1]

my tradition is in the Chinese spear and african spear fighting. i put both of them together.

[Hroarr]

Hi Robert!

Yep, we will take more care with the blows especially. The thrusts are ok, with the rubber tips.

We both wore throat protection, but I hit the mask straight on the "chin", which stunned Mikael. We were both pretty shaken in fact.

I figured the clip could help people understand how powerful staffs really are, and what the natural consequences of that fact are, when it comes to safety in spear sparring. So, we will go easy on the blows and wear more protection from now on.

[Leondrian]

hey guys! slow down...This could have gone really bad. Guess Mikael had a throat protection gear? Slow fighting 'til you get the hang of it. Remember that you have at least four months of basic training in longsword before you do any sparring. The leverage is mad when you use spears.

/Robert "the GHFS nurse"