Big Shields

[Lanceari]

The Roman fighting style is hiding behind you shield which covers almost your entire body, and when you see an opening stab with your gladius and then do the same over and over again. If you hit the belly then thats one opponent less because of the nasty wounds its able to cause.

If you have a long narrow shield, the best way to cover your body behind this shield is to stand sideways. Furthermore, if you want your shield to protect you, you must find an effective way to hold it and keep it where you want it to be.

I have no problem with underhand attacks. They could be executed just as easily with the stances and techniques I described above. However, some ancient soldiers had armor protecting their torsos. If your opponent had armor protecting his torso, but his face was exposed, it might be best to strike overhead. Also, some celts used long body shields that protected the lower body (if properly used of course). Again, if your opponent's shield protects the lower body, it might be best to attack the unexposed face. The techniques I suggested can be used effectively with both underhand and overhead strikes... even though the overhead strike might have been a bit easier to execute.

As far as fighting in a formation, I fully realize it would require linear techniques. The stances and techniques I described in the charts above are linear, so they would be well suited for fighting in a formation. The karate clip I posted included non-linear techniques, but I was hoping you would be able to parse the linear and non-linear techniques and use your common sense to figure out which among those techniques could be relevant to our discussion.

You are right to point out fencing was developed centuries later, and martial arts evolved for one to one fighting. However, the human body behind all these fighting styles is the same. Our anatomy has not changed much in the last 2,000 years. And the principles of hand to hand combat remain the same.

The back stance is effectively used by fighting styles developed so widely apart as western fencing, Okinawan Karate, and Chinese Kenpo. This tells us a few things. First it tells us it is an effective fighting stance. Just from watching these guys you can tell people can move with great speed while using this stance. It also tells us it is versatile, it can be applied to extremely different fighting styles. Finally, since we know people from different cultures adopted it independently, it is reasonable to expect others might have adopted it as well. In fact, it is quite common and some martial arts beginners adopt it without even realizing they are doing so.