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Bearded axe and lime-wood round shield. The axe hooks shields aside, the rim of your own shield is a weapon. Viking combat is aggressive, mobile, and brutal. Tip: The axe does not need a sharp edge to break bones. Weight and leverage do the work. Fight with the shield, kill with the axe.

Ragnar Lothbrok

🇸🇪 🇬🇧

The great Dane axe -- a 5-foot hafted weapon that could split a man from shoulder to hip. No shield when you carry this. Your reach is your defense. The Varangian Guard used these in Constantinople. Weighted training replica, hickory haft.

Ragnar Lothbrok

🇸🇪 🇬🇧

Group training (8-16). The Viking shield wall: overlapping shields, spears over the top, axes hooking from the sides. When the wall holds, nothing breaks through. When it breaks, everyone dies. Tip: The man who steps back first kills the man beside him. Hold the wall.

Ragnar Lothbrok

🇸🇪 🇬🇧

Mounted combat in the Iberian style. Lance charge, transition to sword, fighting in mixed Christian-Muslim forces. The Reconquista lasted 700 years -- we learned from the Moors as much as we fought them. Tip: Your enemy is also your teacher. Study what defeats you.

El Cid

🇪🇸 🇦🇪 🌐

The naginata -- a curved blade on a long pole, the traditional weapon of the onna-bugeisha (female warrior). Sweeping cuts, thrusts, and the devastating ankle strikes that unhorse mounted samurai. I will teach you the kata and free sparring. Tip: Reach defeats strength. Keep them at naginata distance and they cannot touch you with a sword.

Tomoe Gozen

🇯🇵

Yabusame: mounted archery at gallop, hitting targets on a narrow lane. Sacred Shinto practice and deadly combat skill. Draw, release, recover -- all while controlling the horse with your knees. I will start you at a walk. The gallop comes when the horse says you are ready.

Tomoe Gozen

🇯🇵

Full o-yoroi great armor -- lamellar plates, silk lacing, iron kabuto helmet with menpo face guard. Designed for mounted archery. The wide shoulder guards deflect arrows from above. Heavy but magnificent. I wore armor like this when I took heads at Awazu.

Tomoe Gozen

🇯🇵

High-altitude mountain warfare. Acclimatization, cold weather movement, river fording, maintaining combat effectiveness at altitude. I crossed a 13,000-foot pass in the wet season. A third of my army died. The rest won independence for a continent. Tip: The mountain does not care about your cause. Respect it or it kills you.

Simon Bolivar

🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇬🇧

Bareback mounted combat with lance, bow, and war club. The Lakota fought from horseback as naturally as walking. Hanging off the side of the horse as a shield, shooting under the neck, the full-speed charge. Tip: Your war paint is your identity. I painted a lightning bolt on my face and hail spots on my body. The enemy should know who is coming for them.

Crazy Horse

🇬🇧

Thick buffalo hide shield, heat-shrunk and painted with personal medicine symbols. At proper thickness, buffalo hide stops arrows and can deflect a musket ball at distance. The painting is not decoration -- it is protection medicine. This is a training replica. Respect the tradition.

Crazy Horse

🇬🇧

Training as the Myrmidons trained. Spear, sword, shield, and body conditioning that would make Olympians weep. The Myrmidons were the most feared unit at Troy -- not because of numbers but because every single warrior was exceptional. Tip: An elite unit is not fifty good fighters. It is fifty fighters who trust each other with their lives.

Achilles

🇬🇷

Tulwar sword and dhal shield -- the weapons of Maratha cavalry. The tulwar has a distinctive disc pommel that locks the hand in place for powerful cuts. The dhal is a round steel shield, light enough for mounted use. I rode into battle with both, my son strapped to my back. Tip: The sword follows the horse. Learn to ride first, fight second.

Lakshmibai

🇮🇳 🌐 🇬🇧