Thread by @LandsknechtPike

People like to mention the harsh training of Spartans or Romans, but medieval knights trained just as hard. We know this from descriptions of the likes of Jean II Le Maingre "Boucicaut" (1366-1421), French knight and true warrior of chivalry. His training regime (thread):

Much of his training consisted of running, wielding battle-axes and hammers in full armor to build resistance and endurance. He would also train to leap fully armed onto his horse's back. He became so used to armor that he "could do a somersault fully armed but for his bascinet."

His biography states he trained himself that he could leap fully armed onto his courser, without putting his foot in a stirrup and that he could leap up from the ground onto the shoulders of a tall man mounted on a large horse, simply by grabbing the man's sleeve in one hand.

Another one of his techniques was placing one hand on the saddlebow of a great courser and the other between its ears, so that he could vault between his arms over the horse, holding its mane. Such training was very important for knights when they needed to mount horses quickly.

For purely strength and conditioning exercises he would also climb castles walls or climb between two towers which had walls that stood an arm's width apart: "He climbed up them using just feet and hands, no other aid."

He also used ladders for climging exercises and building strength. He leaned a scaling ladder against a wall and then climbed to the top of the underside of the ladder in full armor swinging rung to rung by his two hands. Without armor, he did that with one hand only.

These were just some of the harder exercises he did, of course medieval knights did more basic exercises. There was also a lot of training with other knights and squires. Boucicaut enjoyed throwing lances and was very competitive in everything.

This men did hard hard training. There was no break for them, and unlike modern athletes, there was no retirement for real warriors either. Boucicaut had done it all. His first battle at 16 years old, the last (at Agincourt) at 49. He had fought everywhere in Europe and beyond.

In this 33 year long career as an elite warrior, Boucicaut fought in Flanders, all over France during 100 Years' War, Spain (against Moors), 3 times in Baltic crusades to help Teutonic Order, in the Balkans (Nicopolis, Constantinople, Modon), Cyprus and in modern day Lebanon.

(I phrased it a bit weird here, medieval knights did the hard exercises in armor like Boucicaut AND more basic exercises like we do today, for example throwing rocks around and probably lots of bodyweight exercises)