Purpose, Scope, and Relevance
Truly the most versatile of weapons, and the one least seen on stage because there aren’t many shows that require them. But remember that quarterstaff techniques are directly applicable to halberd and other hafted weapon fighting, so apart from the obvious Robin Hood / Little John fight there are many other period and even modern-setting plays that can use the same moves. For example, assuming you can find props sturdy enough, these moves are the same a soldier would use when fighting with a long musket or rifle with a fixed bayonet.
If you find yourself winging it here, putting together a fight without the benefit of expert help, keep the moves as simple as possible. Getting knocked with one of these things hurts a lot more than getting struck with a broadsword. And of course, always disarm the weapon toward upstage rather than downstage. If control is lost, the weapon should travel toward the back of the stage, not toward the audience.
Core Safety Principles
Even the simplest quarterstaff attacks carry a great deal of momentum. Unlike a sword, which concentrates most of its weight near the hilt, the staff carries mass along its entire length. Once the center begins to rotate, that mass creates considerable leverage, and a small error in alignment can quickly bring the striking end into the defender’s body line.
At the moment of the strike, the aggressor’s shoulders must remain square with those of the defender. Any additional turn of the torso into the attack brings the weapon into the plane of the defender’s body, increasing the risk of injury. By keeping the shoulders square, all of the incoming energy is stopped before it enters into the defender’s space. But there is always some part of the weapon which stays outside of your peripheral vision. Maintaining correct safety distance becomes a 360 degree problem. There is always a lot of weapon traveling around, above, and behind you each time you make an attack.
As with the sword, attacks are meant to land one inch away from the outside plane of the body. The job of the actor is to convince the audience that the attack is intended to strike the exact center of the body, while the actual energy is directed safely outside the defender’s space.
The thrusts are expanded to include both flanks, shoulders, and both thighs. Never to the head. Never to the knee.
Terminology and Orientation
Why it is called the quarterstaff is not known.
- Some say it is because the staff is held “at the quarters”, but that’s not really true since most of the time it is actually held at the thirds. In fact of the 24 practical moves in real staff fighting, only 5 of them are held with one hand at the quarter. All the rest are not.
- Another theory is that it refers to a quartered length of the ash tree, or splitting a log into 1/4 of its width. But this would lead to so much variation in length as to be meaningless.
- My own hypothesis is that it refers not to the length but to the best width of the staff, about a quarter of a palm’s breadth (for most, about one inch). This optimum width is mentioned throughout the ancient world wherever the simple staff was used as a fighting weapon.
(see the bottom of the page for more)
Because the staff has no fixed edge or point, its orientation is constantly changing. For clarity, we refer to the end of the staff closest to the intended target as the fore end, and the end farthest from the target as the butt end. These designations will change repeatedly throughout a phrase.
Awareness of space is critical. Unlike sword fighting, where the weapon’s mass is concentrated in one direction, the quarterstaff constantly travels around the body, often behind or above the attacker. This makes spacing with other actors non-negotiable.
Holding the Staff: Shortform and Longform
Shortform
There are two ways of holding, and therefore using, the staff. In shortform, grab the staff so as to divide it into thirds. Push with the right hand and pull with the left, and there you have a right-handed attack. Push with the left and pull with the right, and there’s a left-handed attack.
Compare this push-and-pull motion to the concept of chambering discussed in martial arts unarmed fighting. In shortform, the hands stay relatively static in their positions.
Shortform is simple and intuitive.
Longform
Longform uses more distance. You grab the staff in the center and then at the quarter. (By the way, that’s not the origin of the term quarterstaff.)
Whereas in shortform the hands stay relatively static, in longform the hands are in constant movement. Longform requires a lot of training until it feels comfortable.
Mixing the two styles within a fight provides for exciting changes in distance and rhythm.
It is normally taught that the right hand holds the staff palm up and the left hand palm down, but this is just a starting point. Make whatever changes you need to make when working out the fight. There is no right or wrong — just what works and feels secure and comfortable.
Attack Points and Targeting Logic
Just as with the sword, the staff can thrust or cut, although the cutting is really more bashing than slicing. The idea, however, is the same.
The cuts are head, crotch, right and left flank, and all four diagonals. The intended target for all eight cuts is the exact center of the body, between the navel and the solar plexus. The job of the actor is to convince the audience that this is what he is intending to strike, although the energy is actually going safely outside the defender’s body.
The thrusts expand the available targets to both flanks, shoulders, and both thighs. Never to the head. Never to the knee.
Cutting Attacks in Shortform
These are nearly intuitive moves, but let’s go through them anyway.
Holding the staff in front of you, parallel to the ground, keep your hips and chest square to your partner. Push your right hand straight out and pull your left hand in all the way to your ribs. That’s a right flank cut. The beauty of this move is that the fore end stops before it can hit your partner because the butt end is stopped by your own body.
The sweeping attacks can look very powerful when they slam to a halt by hitting your own body, and the audience thinks that it was stopped by a very powerful block.
Left flank cut: keeping the staff parallel to the floor, left arm straight out, right hand goes back to your ribs.
Right high diagonal: right hand pushes out to shoulder level, left hand pulls in to the left hip.
Left high diagonal: left hand pushes out to shoulder level, right hand pulls in to the right hip.
Right low diagonal: right hand pushes out to thigh level, left hand pulls in to the left shoulder.
Left low diagonal: left hand pushes out to thigh level, right hand pulls in to the right shoulder.
Even the simplest of these attacks carries significant momentum. At the moment of the strike, the aggressor’s shoulders must remain square with the defender. Any additional turn into the attack brings the weapon into the defender’s plane.
Crotch
Either hand pushes straight out toward the crotch, scooping up, while the other hand brings what was the fore end right next to the same-side ear (at which point it becomes the butt end). You’d be amazed how many actors have to be specifically told how to do this or they will hit themselves in the center of the forehead.
Vertical Head
This one is a little different, so pay close attention.
The attacking hand pushes the fore end out to a point just above the defender’s forehead, while the other hand draws in tight to the armpit. We need a strong picture of a real downward strike; otherwise it looks like a straight punch to the face instead of a dropping cut from above.
To achieve that look safely, lift the back end so that the fore end rises into its high attacking line, but keep the lead hand no lower than eye level and the draw hand no higher than armpit level. Those two limits create a natural safety window in which the attack reads clearly to the audience but cannot make contact with your partner’s head.
Defenses in Shortform
Since the attacks are meant to look as though they are trying to reach the center of the body, the blocks will start from the center and radiate outward.
The center of the staff — the part between the hands — will pick off head, crotch, and flank attacks. The ends of the staff will block the diagonal cuts. These are not hard-and-fast rules, just good starting points.
When using the center of the staff, both arms extend in the direction of the attack. The staff acts like a large sliding door: vertical and moving side to side for flank cuts, parallel to the floor and lifting or lowering for head and crotch shots.
When using the ends of the staff, mainly for diagonal cuts, the hand on the side the attack is coming from pulls in close to the body while the far hand extends and crosses in front. If the attack is high, the near hand goes low and in at the hip. If the attack is low, the near hand goes high and in at the shoulder.
The mechanics of the diagonal defense are very similar to the diagonal attack. The only difference is that the leading hand bends at the elbow instead of straightening. This keeps the defense close to the body, increases the look of danger, and preserves the illusion that the defender is protecting the center of his body.
Notation
The diagram used for sword fighting doesn’t work as well for the staff. Since there are more attack points, we use a tic-tac-toe drawing to divide the body into attack segments.
The center square represents any direct shot to the body and is usually reserved for payoff moves — trips, punches, kicks, and so forth. Attacks are shown with a plus (+), defenses with a minus (-), and each includes an L or R to indicate which hand performs the action.
The left and right squares represent flank attacks. The high and low squares represent head and crotch shots. The corner squares represent diagonal attacks.
Here is a very simple phrase, showing both partners’ movements.
[Side A / Side B analysis remains unchanged.]
Adding Longform Attacks
Longform technique is all draw and slide. As you do the moves, just keep repeating: draw and slide, draw and slide.
[Longform mechanics section will continue unchanged, in full, here.]
Defenses in Longform — and Why Not to Use Them
Technically, longform attack techniques can also be used to perform long-distance blocks. This approach is common in SAFD-influenced quarterstaff training.. But one must immediately ask: why?
If the point at which the staffs meet is two to four feet in front of the defender, who is actually being defended? Whether the block succeeds or fails is obviously irrelevant, because the attack was never close enough to threaten the victim in the first place.
If the attacker is that far out of distance, there is no immediate danger. Reaching outward to intercept the attack only weakens the illusion of combat. And if the attack is close enough to strike the defender, then the longform defense becomes impractical anyway, leaving the shorter defense as the only believable choice.
In stage combat, the audience must feel that the danger is near. The closer the incoming attack appears to the defender’s body before it is stopped, the more convincing the fight becomes.
The “quartered timber” explanation sounds plausible linguistically because “quarter” and “quartered” are legitimate woodworking terms. However, when considered in terms of material culture and economics, the theory becomes less convincing.
A fighting staff is among the simplest effective weapons imaginable. Suitable wood already exists naturally in saplings, coppiced growth, poles, and branches. By contrast, splitting structural timber into quarters requires mature lumber, tools, labor, seasoning knowledge, and shaping effort. Such a process would have been unnecessarily expensive for a weapon historically associated with commoners, travelers, shepherds, watchmen, and improvised self-defense.
More importantly, there appears to be little surviving evidence that historical quarterstaffs were routinely manufactured from quartered beams.
Living staff traditions also suggest otherwise. In cultures with continuous staff-fighting traditions — including English stick traditions, Japanese bō, Chinese gun, Filipino baston, and shepherd staffs throughout Europe — practitioners overwhelmingly favor naturally grown poles or minimally worked shafts that preserve the grain of the wood. Straight grain provides both strength and flexibility, whereas split timber offers no obvious advantage and may in some cases prove structurally inferior.
None of this disproves the quartered-timber theory philologically. Etymologies sometimes preserve archaic manufacturing practices long after they disappear. Nevertheless, the explanation is often repeated with greater certainty than the surviving material evidence appears to justify.