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Scientists Study Impact of Wearing Medieval Armor
FoolishOwl writes "Scientists at the University of Leeds tested the effects of wearing heavy medieval armor by monitoring volunteers, who were experienced medieval reenactors, as they walked and ran on treadmills, while wearing accurate replicas of 15th century armor. While the suits of armor weighed between 30 and 50 kg, comparable to the weight of gear carried by modern soldiers, volunteers who carried equivalent amounts of weight in backpacks had an easier time with the weight. Volunteers in armor burned more energy and had difficulty breathing. The scientists speculate that much of the additional effort was due to weight of armor on the legs — leg armor was one of the first things dropped in the shift towards lighter armor in the 16th century. While it has long been assumed that heavy medieval armor limited mobility, and that this contributed to the outcome of battles, such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, this was the first study to quantify the impact of wearing heavy armor."
While it has long been assumed that heavy medieval armor limited mobility, and that this contributed to the outcome of battles, such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415
Nonsense. It's well established that being French contributes to the outcome of battles, such as the Battle of Agincourt. The effects of armor is minor in comparison.
There's a reason why good-quality backpacks have a strap that wraps around the waist - the pelvis is capable of comfortably supporting a large amount of weight, and that is why the weight of backpacks is best supported there. Medieval armour supports it all over the body, causing body-wide muscle fatigue. From the article: "We were interested to find out why that was - and one of the main reasons is that if you wear a suit of armour, a lot of the weight is carried on the legs - about 7-8kg of it."
ne miles on a treadmill are you effing joking".
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdfx7l4z5cQ
Who knew scientist suffered from too much game of thrones.
Well, I am going to turn on my brain ( you forgot to, it seems ), and apply logic and reasoning.
Being an experienced medieval reenactor means that person is experienced in wearing and moving around in, medieval armor. If you were going to study the effects of wearing heavy armor, would it not make sense to use test subjects who know how to use said armor, in the way it was used, in the 14th century?
See, how hard was that? Using your brain is not as difficult as you thought, stop being lazy and use it.
Scientists study the impact of wearing a wizard hat while yelling "Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!"
Maybe interest level. "Volunteers wanted for research, wear armor and run on a treadmill!" got no takers at the local McDonalds, wheras they got all the volunteers they needed in 2 mins at a rennisance festival.
Also it probably helps to have people who have worn armor before are familiar with how they're supposed to fit, how they can move in them, how they put it on.
At the -very- least, it's an important methods note. You wouldn't publish a drug trial study and leave out the fact that you used mice.
Disclaimer; the SCA does medievalISH combat with rules and equipment for safety; it's not authentic medieval fight styles, and there are other groups (like WMA) that focus on things like 15th century German fechtbuchs and who have more authority to speak on authentically historical modes and styles of combat.
That said, the SCA does swordfighting at full speed and often with full power (depending on the area), and there are some strong similarities with historical combat. The sticks used (for safety reasons) are roughly the same weight as the historical swords, and there's a strong social pressure to wear armour that is both save and as authentic as possible. Thus, there's a couple things I can comment on from personal experience. First, metal armour on limbs *noticeably* slows down shots. We accept plastic plates as long as they're covered ("best effort to look good" is the standard), so people will fight with plastic covered in canvas or leather, and there is a well-known tradeoff in the SCA between "looking good" in shiny metal armour and having the best possible speed.
I just finished building a fairly close replica of 14th century coat-of-plates armour. I had been using (poorly disguised) plastic before, and the difference when wearing 25 pounds of overlapping plates is quite noticeable. I look much better, of course, but I also work harder, sweat more, and need to take more breaks. The weight's all on my shoulders, so it's not wearing my legs out, but there's a noticeable weight when I'm moving. I recently got metal gauntlets, and they're noticeable as well; the hands move slower when there's a pound or two of metal on them. I hate to reference anime, but you know how Goku wears the heavy arm and leg weights in Dragonball Z? There's some truth to that; even the fat SCA fighters have bulkier shoulders and larger arms. (actually wearing weights around all day will just screw up your joints, by the way; it's the holding-heavy-things-out-from-your-body that does it)
There's a reason armour was attached where it was in the middle ages; suspending legs from a belt takes at least some of the weight off the legs when moving.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
Speaking as an ex-"reenactor" (Society for Creative Anachronism, http://www.sca.org/ I can offer the following firsthand observations:
1. The quality of fitting to the individual is probably the single most important factor in how burdensome a given suit of armor is, from the point of view of the ability to move quickly. Leggings are by far the hardest to fit correctly; they also tend to shift around the most in response to movement, so a good fitting can become a bad fitting very quickly.
2. In melee combat, the legs are hit far more often than any target other than the head. Leg armor may be encumbering, but when it comes to hand to hand combat you can't do without it.
3. When faced with archers, an unshielded fighter takes it in the arms and torso more than anywhere else.
4. Breathing difficulties are usually caused by poor ventilation in a closed-face helm, or a side effect of heat. Which brings us to:
5. Overheating is what is going to exhaust you. You're wearing not just armor, but heavy padding as well. The number one factor an SCA medic sees at a large battle is overwhelmingly heat exhaustion/heatstroke/dehydration.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
No I meant the Napoleonic Wars where France had the whole world on the run for almost 20 years.
"Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents of noble Genoese ancestry", so he was actually Italian not French. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon
Corsica was ruled by Genoa (part of Italy) for 400 or so years, had a 20-something year rebellion, 15 or so years of independence and was then conquered by France shortly before Napoleon was born. Its constitution was written in Italian and Italian was the dominant language long after Napoleon's death.
Before commencer à la flamme please note the ":-)". Yes, Napoleon was born in French territory and was therefore a French citizen.
What's interesting is that modern sports combat based on western martial arts -- meaning sword and shield, full metal armor, but using modern materials -- has shifted over to using things like 6061-T6 aluminum to keep things light. Also Underarmor sweat wicking clothing (seriously). For instance, the SCA, which is interested in individuals or groups meeting in competitive combat rather than a specific battle from a particular time or place. A good deal of effort is put into finding lightweight armor that still protects your bones.
Now comes the twist: It's actually thicker and more durable, because nobody likes to hammer out their armor each week after (or during) fighter practice. So it actually lasts much much longer under a barrage of blows, but is still roughly the same weight. Apparently it's a reasonable weight to fight in, and what you can now take out with modern materials, people are adding back for durability.
Check out http://www.zoombang.com/ for really out there modern armor designed for medieval non-edged combat.
obSemiOffTopic: Deep bruises are just part of the sport -- my wife is very careful to point out early in doctor visits that she's involved in full contact martial arts. Especially as she's 5 foot and petite and I'm 6'3" and huge; we already had one nurse freak out and send me out to have a talk with her about reporting domestic violence. She now carries photos on her phone of herself in armor, holding her helm and grinning happily, just to fend off people who get the wrong idea.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
In Judo one of the higher katas (well, higher than those that I know) simulates(*) wearing japanese armour. And, from looking at the movements, it looks anything but comfortable.
(*)I do not know if somewhere it is actually done while wearing armour, I only saw that with the participants wearing the usual judogi.
Why can't
In theory it means that they are used to the weight of the armour. I call BS, though. A medieval knight would train to fight in armour for 6-8 hours a day since he was old enough to spit. These guys put it on and stand around doing nothing much for a few hours a day. The whole idea that we can tell how well a medieval person supported armour weight by using modern untrained people is very suspect.
While an actual medieval knight would surely have outperformed a modern re-enactor that is not terribly relevant. An actual medieval knight would still have improved his personal performance by switching to a modern backup. The modern backpack doesn't rely on muscle, it relies on a physiological structure that has not really changed in the last few centuries - well perhaps scale has changed but not essential structure.
Scientists Study Impact of Wearing Medieval Armor
And, this being slashdor, I expected to see a story about global warming and the effect that armor had on it.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Yes, however this research indicates one reason why getting a knight off his horse was considered a "good thing" by his enemies.
The standard way of getting a knight off his horse wasn't to politely ask him to dismount, it was to knock him off.
At that point, his ability to jog wasn't an issue, it was more an issue of him flopping around on the ground like a turtle on his back until his squire could come help him stand up again.
It was a "good thing" to knock him off not because he'd be hard pressed to run after you, it was because he'd be hard pressed to run away from you. Or swing a sharp cutty thing at you, for that matter.
Totally bogus, even in heavy plate it's not hard to stand again unassisted. Maybe you're thinking of tournament armor. Tournament armor was many many times thicker than battlefield armor. Because you wouldn't be wearing it for extended periods, you wouldn't need to maneuver, and nobody wants to die in a game. Those are the ones where the squire had to help them up, because the armor weight as much as the knight! A knight on the battlefield could probably get back up faster than you could. Another piece of common knowledge about armor that's wrong is that it's mostly pointless. In fact, 10 plate armored knights against a force of 100 chain and leather clad soldiers would be an even match. Plate armor was incredibly effective. It was even somewhat effective against musket fire unless it was at very close range. Just because the hero can casually slice through plate armor doesn't mean a damn thing. Just because it's barely effective in RPGs doesn't mean a damn thing.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
It controls for experience. Random people off the street might be more or less able to move around in armor, all depending on how quickly they take to it. It could have been possible that wearing armor which distributes weight evenly is no more tiring than wearing a backpack, but because the volunteers weren't familiar with armor, they would expend more energy for that reason.
Also, it's not possible to go out and get real knights, because we haven't finished the time machine yet. Reenactors are the best next thing.
there are no vital organs in the leg, so an injury there is less likely to be lethal.
The femoral artery is the single largest artery in your body after the aortic artery. Even just knicking it, let alone severing it, will cause you to bleed out in about 30 seconds.
And considering modern standards of diet and health care, I think you could find considerably better specimens for testing endurance while wearing armor than among knights from 500 years ago.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'm pretty sure that the motivation for this experiment was to settle a long-standing argument about D&D encumbrance rules.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
'The US wasn't scared of France then.' no they where too busy repainting the White house to care.
Interestingly, US Schools teach that the British torched the White House, but they usually omit that it was done in retaliation for the U.S.'s burning the houses of Parliament in Canada--which is why the Canadian capital was moved to Ottawa.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!