Punching with your lance like that,
no. Not good.
You're not going to get anything by throwing a punch
except for a broken wrist or a broken hand.
Hi, I'm Shane Adams,
the owner of the Knights of Valour
full-contact jousting company.
I've been jousting for well over 25 years,
so I have 20 international
jousting championships under my belt.
Today we're going to be looking at horseback fights
in movies and judging how real they are.
They hit, but it was just a glancing blow.
There is no penalty for missing your opponent,
but you're going to be behind in points.
If you hit the target, whether it be
a smooth plate or whether it be a targe shield,
you get a certain amount of points.
And, ultimately, if you unhorse your opponent,
in the full-contact style
that's the maximum amount of points.
There's probably well over 19, 20, 25
different styles of jousting.
Yeah. See that ridge around that shield? Bad news.
You don't want a lip around the shield.
You don't want any spot where that lance
is going to connect and lock into the lip.
You want to be able to deflect the lance
away from your body.
So, completely wrong shield.
The jousting that was there,
it was decent for a theatrical-style joust.
If they were true knights,
they wouldn't be holding their shields like that.
They were leaving themselves completely exposed
from the top of the shield to throat, head.
That scene where the horse actually
does fall into the joust list,
usually it would be the opposite way.
So the person would be getting hit
coming off to the right side.
Based on the fact that we do real full-contact jousting,
we always drop the reins.
So that way there, if you get off balance,
you're not going to be pulling your horse to the extent
that you're going to be pulling your horse
down onto the ground with you.
I'm 265 pounds.
Add my armor, I'm 415 pounds,
riding a 2,000-pound horse
charging at 20, 25 miles an hour
against the same opposing force.
It's a car wreck.
So when we hit, there is a lot of force being generated.
Both guys were not wearing proper equipment
as far as gorgets to protect their necks,
because the lance can hit
and come up and straight into your throat.
You could tell right away,
looking at the tips of the lances,
the Hound's lance didn't have a coronel on it.
Didn't have, like, a tip on the end. It was a sheer point.
Knights back in the olden days,
the nobility were the ones jousting.
They didn't want to go out there and kill each other.
And the ends of the lances had coronels put on them,
again, to disperse the impact force on the knight's armor.
It's like a cast fist put on.
Well, if you don't do that,
you have a scene possibly like this.
And historically that could have definitely happened.
So, I'm a total "Game of Thrones" geek, and I love the show.
However, have to give it a 4.
They utilized just that connection
with the horse without the stirrup.
The stirrup didn't really come into play
until the battle of Hastings in 1066.
A Roman cavalry, it's great riders,
because they're basically riding
just with that feel and connection underneath them.
Where the Percherons are now 17, 18, 19 hands tall,
they would've never been that tall.
They were a lot shorter back then.
As a matter of fact, they were more
almost the size of a large pony, to be honest with you.
14 to 15 hands.
His horse was tripped up.
Down the horse went, and down you go.
How does it feel to come off of your horse?
Well, flying through the air is pretty easy.
It's the sudden stop when you hit the ground
that really sucks, just to be honest with you.
He rolled, so he was fine.
It's muddy terrain.
There's been times when I've come off my horse
that I've landed on my feet next to the horse
holding onto the reins. Stay on your horse.
But if your horse is going to go down,
it's best for you to get clear of your horse,
'cause you don't want that 1,500- to 2,000-pound horse
body-slamming on top of you.
In my jousting career, I have very little injuries
from my full-contact jousting career.
The more injuries I've had
are training horses for the sport of jousting.
You're getting on a horse
in an outfit from "Battlestar Galactica."
Cylon, you know what I mean?
Like, that's going to freak a horse out.
I'd give the whole scene a definite 8.
So, you have two different styles of jousting.
You have Heath Ledger, with a targe shield,
and you have his competitor coming down
in full-plate harness,
more of a northern Italian style, where he had no shield.
Get it in the cradle, get it in the cradle.
Get it in the cradle!
Where they were saying, "Get it in the cradle,
get it in the cradle," before the cradle was the arret.
And on the ends of the lances,
they'd have a small disk of wood
or a ring set in place
to be able to catch this arret.
So when you bring that lance down,
that lance will slide in and lock into that arret.
And so it'll stop the lance from going any farther back.
So all that pressure comes onto your body,
and you're able to give that much more of a forceful hit
with your body to be able to break those lances
and ultimately unhorse your opponents.
Try and hold on to 1,800 pounds of force.
I hate to admit this,
but I broke my hands seven times
trying to learn how to give devastating hits.
And I don't know how many times
that a bone has been sticking through my thumb
in an actual jousting competition.
And even in this movie, you see these horses
completely decked out, but it's deceiving.
So, a lot of people would think,
"Oh, they're wearing that armor to protect the horse."
Well, the horse was never a target.
As a matter of fact, back in that period of time,
if you struck your opponent's horse,
you'd be stripped of land and title.
Why'd they have armor?
Well, it was more of a car show.
They didn't want to bring their Volkswagen.
They brought their Ferrari.
"Hey, check me out!"
And that's what that horse armor was for.
Remove your helmet.
William: I'm afraid the final blow of the lance
has bent it onto my head.
Where it smashed in his helmet and he can't get it off,
it still happened back then
and still happens today's modern time as well.
One of my dear friends took a shot in the helmet
and spun his entire helmet around, breaking his nose.
So it looked like,
literally it spun his head like a top.
Of course we're having problems getting it off
'cause his whole face was all smushed up in there.
Even if the target's down here,
often you do get hit in the head.
Of course, Heath Ledger's helmet,
no person in their right mind
would've worn that helmet.
You do not want the lance to get in towards your face.
This helmet, you'll see a lot of different designs.
This is called a sparrow's beak helm.
It's there because when you receive a direct lance hit,
you don't want a flat surface,
like Heath Ledger received in that hit
where it caved his helmet in.
It's very, very difficult to cave this style of helmet in,
and that's why I use it for my jousting career.
Full contact is probably
one of the stupidest thing a man could ever do.
I'd give it a 7 1/2.
The goblins open up the door, and they charge down.
That's a true maneuver.
That can easily happen,
and them knocking down because they caught them at surprise.
You take 10 guys and put them behind each other
and take speed of horse,
that 2,000 pounds
or 1,500 pounds for a lighter horse
charging into that,
it's a bowling ball knocking down bowling ball pins.
So the question is,
can you keep up that inertia and keep on going?
So, the initial knockdown will knock the wind out of you.
It might not kill you,
but it's the other 50, 100, 1,000,
2,000, 3,000 horses trampling over top of you
just like cutting grass on a Sunday afternoon.
You're going to mow down what's in front of you.
So, very true and could easily happen.
And it did happen historically. Absolutely.
Do you see King Théoden
kind of wobbling off balance a little bit?
It could be the fact that the actor
wasn't comfortable in the saddle.
Picking up a weapon and wielding it on horseback,
again, is that much more attention to the weapon
and less attention on what you're actually riding.
When I train people how to joust,
I always tell them,
from the hips down rides the horse,
from the hips up does the task.
So the upper body can stay glued
and have a good platform to be able to wield that sword
or couch that lance or spear that ring
or whatever your job entails on that given specific day.
All the goblins this time prepped and prepared
with the long pole arms
locked down and locked in place.
It's a truly historical defense
against the heavy horse charge,
to the extent that they actually stopped,
a lot of the knights would stop
doing that heavy horse charge
because that horse was worth so much to them.
If they actually had to fight,
sometimes they'd dismount and run in
and fight on foot and not take their horse.
You can train a horse all your life
to do this one specific job,
and all of a sudden it's go time,
and the horse realizes it's really stupid
and he'd rather you just go and fight yourself
and he's going to go back and hang out with the sumpter.
They had a lot of good historical elements in there
and a lot of good action
that could have been seen on a battlefield.
So I actually give it a 7.
[gunshots]
So, in this situation,
a loud bang would just make the horse run faster.
It's not going to know where that's coming from.
It would shy more of the motorcycles
coming up beside it than it would anything else.
It would not want to be near the motorcycles.
But again, in that scenario,
where you have cars on left and right,
the only way it really can go is forward.
So that horse is steering himself at that point.
If you have a superfast thoroughbred,
you're talking, down a street like this,
easily 35 miles an hour.
[laughs] Great scene.
It looks like Keanu Reeves did all of his own stunt there.
You have to be a great rider to be able to do that,
and he pulled it off.
You know, you could tell he had a stunt saddle on.
It had a really high pommel that he was able to grab
when he put his foot in the stirrup
to go to the side of the horse
to be able to shoot from the front barrel of the chest.
In real life, you wouldn't have a pommel that high
in front of you to be able to grab.
You would find that for stunt riders.
Not to say that a good equestrian can't,
just on a Western saddle, be able to do that.
It was a really good stunt, very realistic,
and could easily happen.
I'd probably give it an 8.
This whole scene is absolutely fantastic.
Back then they didn't have a green screen or just CGI.
They knocked it out of the park.
That is 100% what I believe, historically,
a chariot race would've been like.
A lot of people died in the chariot races.
It was a very dangerous thing.
I drive a chariot.
The more horses you add,
the more power and more dangerous it gets.
The chariots back in that time
were pulled by one, two, three, four horses.
Of course, you see all these cars doing drifting on tracks.
Well, you know, that's nothing,
because we can do drifting with a horse and a chariot.
It's amazing.
Those horses are connected by reins
from the lead horses all the way back
to the driver sitting in the chariot.
In the rider's hands, in this point,
he would have a set for the left horses
and a set for the right horses,
being able to control that.
Some riders would have
every horse reins coming into his hands.
And there is so much power and force
that those drivers, to get those chariots to stop,
'cause there really was no brakes,
would often have to put their feet up
on the front of the chariot
to be able to pull back with all their might
to be able to get those horses
to slow down in front of them.
And no CGI, no green screen.
That is definitely a 10 for a chariot race in my book.
If you have a good riding ability and a good horse,
you can do anything on top of that horse.
How the rider steps off in a flying Y
or switches around for a W, 'cause he comes back up
around the other way and sits back up on that horse,
once you form that partnership with the horse,
again, you can do anything with that horse.
Cool. I wish I was that good.
A lot of trick riding there.
The bow that they have is a mounted archery bow.
They use thumb release, which is, again,
another tactic for mounted archery.
So, historically, a Mongolian archer is not somebody
you want to meet in a back alley.
Absolutely not.
So, yes, it is difficult, but you have to realize
that they've been riding since birth.
I think it's a great scene,
but I'm not going to say it can't be done.
Absolutely it can.
I'd give it a 9.
Let them go!
The style that they're doing is open field,
meaning that there's no actual list.
They stopped having open-field jousts
because the horses were colliding into one another
and they didn't, again, want those injuries
happening to the horses.
These were definitely war horses.
To have two horses charging at one another
is something a normal horse just does not do.
You know, they are fleeing, flight animals.
They are not turn-and-charge-down animals
unless it's a mare chasing off a stallion
or another stallion fighting for turf
with another stallion.
The lances, they could have done a better job.
The lances, you could tell, have a tip on them.
So they were a tournament lance.
It's a cost-saving factor, and they put new tips on.
An actual joust of war would've been a solid shaft
and would've had the pointed coronels.
Like, not the blunted coronel or the flared coronel.
They would've had points on them.
I'm not sure who was teaching them how to joust,
but punching with your lance like that,
not good. You want to hold that lance
as tight as you can to your body,
'cause that's what's going to give that strength.
You're not going to get anything by throwing a punch
except for a broken wrist or a broken hand.
So, when he ducked down, the lance also tipped down
and unfortunately killed that horse.
This is the chest piece for a horse.
The poitrel is what it's called.
Now, again, it would, you know,
there to protect the front of the horse's chest.
It still gives enough room
for the horse to move its legs underneath.
But behind this plate, ultimately, is the horse's heart,
and that's where the heart is,
and one of the vulnerable spots
in warfare to strike a horse.
And that's why they protected it immensely
with these plates.
This is a greave,
and the thigh piece is a cuisse.
Back in that time, the French had the best armor.
So it kind of carried through
in today's modern-day translation as well.
This piece right here, this is, you know,
would go on my left side, my bottom leg.
But you notice there's nothing on the inside.
Well, there's nothing on the inside of my calf,
because that's how I control and feel my horse.
And the reason this is open is so my calf,
the inside of my leg, can feel the barrel of my horse
and be able to give cues,
whether it be left, right, forward, or back.
Man, if they could have not punched with the lances
and had a solid wooden lance,
it would've been a definite 10.
But I'm going to have to give it a 9.
If you enjoyed this video, click the link above for another.