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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

Conversely the phalanx was practically a superweapon of hand to hand combat against the enemies of the time. As a soldier in Alexander's army's you were in relatively little danger provided the phalanx held - this is also true of the Roman legions.

Battles for a soldier were a few minutes of danger, followed by being pulled to the back of the line to rest and recover in relative safety: which makes sense of course. Anyone who's ever tried boxing knows how exhausting it becomes very quickly.

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> Anyone who's ever tried boxing knows how exhausting it becomes very quickly.

True, most people have about 30 seconds of actual fight in them, if that. You really don’t want to go to the ground with someone who does it often, you will not win.

This is true. As someone who has done a lot of sparring, I can go for a long time, but it is only because I have learned how to be perfectly relaxed. Most people tense up their whole body and stay that way. Also breathing is incredibly important. But mostly, it is keeping your body relaxed, which also relaxes the breathing. But that's extremely difficult to do, when one hasn't done it thousands of times.

"anybody" = an office worker that has spent his life behind a desk. We are talking about farmers and craftsmen that has marched on foot for years with their gear. And now days we know that even our fastest runners train 80% of theri weekely training in a low steady state traingins, the kind of conditioning that increases the heart size, lowers the resting pulse and improves your ability to work after rest.

And yet professional boxers regularly gas after 5 rounds of 3 minutes... Now add equipment, particularly armour.

Or look up a Judo match, particularly during tournaments. You can see these guys are often wrecked after a particularly long match, and typically matches last only a few minutes. Just see Judo matches in the last Olympics, guys who typically have 3 to 5 training sessions a day, 7 days a week, for 2 decades.

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