[LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Novembermike

Sorry, my point was that foot soldiers don't wear heavy leg armor. It's possible that I'm wrong, but every example of infantry armor that I'm aware of, from Roman Legionaries to Landsknecht, have avoided heavy armor for the legs.

They still wear boots though, and even boots slow you down in comparison to running shoes.

Just as an example of a data point, I weighed 5 pairs of my shoes on a kitchen scale which was way more accurate than it needed to be, and rounding to the nearest ounce I get the following:

Slippers (Reef) 1 lbs 2 oz
Running Shoes (Nike Free) 1 lbs 3 oz
Shoes (corfram) 2 lbs
Shoes (leather) 3 lbs
Boots (Steel Toed) 5 lbs

[DanHoward]

A good control would have been to conduct the test with leg armour and again without it and move that weight to the upper body so that both test subjects are still carrying the same load.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

A good control would have been to conduct the test with leg armour and again without it and move that weight to the upper body so that both test subjects are still carrying the same load.

It seems that they did, if you look at the abstract:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.o...rspb.2011.0816

"However, the energetic cost of locomotion in armour was also much higher than equivalent trunk loading. "


The reporter who wrote the article wasn't very stringent, but there's no reason for us to think the study itself was shoddy.

[Tzeentch]

-- Interesting article. One note is that the great fatigue loss variables seems to be the breathing restrictions caused by wearing armor (p. 3). I suppose the most GURPS useful bit I saw is in the results:

"The net mass-specific metabolic cost of locomotion (calculated from gross metabolic rate minus resting metabolic rate divided by speed and expressed relative to unloaded body mass; Cmet; J kg^-1 m^-1) in armour was 2.1–2.3 times higher than unloaded walking, and 1.9 times higher than unloaded running (p = 0.009; figure 2). This increase was greater than the average 1.4-fold increase in body mass owing to the wearing of armour. Wearing armour increases an individual’s Cmet at any speed for either walking or running."

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

It seems that they did, if you look at the abstract:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.o...rspb.2011.0816

"However, the energetic cost of locomotion in armour was also much higher than equivalent trunk loading. "

The trunk wasn't loaded with armour though. They tested someone wearing a harness and someone carrying a backpack of the same weight. They needed a control to account for the breathing restrictions that wearing armour on the torso might give. It also doesn't tell us much about Agincourt since the armour worn in that test was at least half a century later and it doesn't tell us much about the outcome of a battle since anyone wearing this armour would have several horses to get them to the battle. It definitely helps explain why infantry ditched leg armour before anything else (half plate).

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The trunk wasn't loaded with armour though. They tested someone wearing a harness and someone carrying a backpack of the same weight. They needed a control to account for the breathing restrictions that wearing armour on the torso might give. It also doesn't tell us much about Agincourt since the armour worn in that test was at least half a century later and it doesn't tell us much about the outcome of a battle since anyone wearing this armour would have several horses to get them to the battle. It definitely helps explain why infantry ditched leg armour before anything else (half plate).

Well, even so, it's something...

Anecdotally I've done some running wearing a mail hauberk and in full battle rattle with a backpack on, it gets pretty exhausting. Running with armor on while wearing combat boots is also noticeably harder than while wearing running shoes.

When we make sugggestions for PTing in armor we tend to recommend that people only run with the armor over PT gear and that they don't run armor while wearing combat boots if running alone because individual perception of exhaustion while wearing armor is often deceptively low and people often overdo it unknowingly.

All anecdotal of course.