"I am the 5th Remedy Master of dagger for the collar hold of this player. Before he has drawn his dagger, I will break his arm, so keeping his hand to me is to my great advantage, because I can do all the covers and binds of the other Remedy Masters and of their scholars who are before. It is like the proverb says. I want everyone who is a scholar in this art to know that nobody can defend a collar grab without speed."
So speaks the Fifth Remedy Master of Fiore dei Liberi's dagger section. This is the master who answers a very specific and very unpleasant scenario: you are in the middle of an argument, the other person has grabbed you by the collar, they have not yet drawn their dagger but clearly intend to, and you have a window of a second or two to act.
Fiore's answer is one of the most elegant pieces of applied mechanics in his whole book. A single pin, a single push, and the opponent's elbow breaks. Before he has drawn his dagger, I will break his arm.
This is the Wrist-Pin, one of the more famous techniques in the entire dagger section.
The Situation
The scenario the Fifth Master answers is distinctive. The opponent has grabbed your collar with their left hand. Their right hand is free and almost certainly about to produce a rondel dagger. They may be shouting. They may be about to head-butt you. They are within an inch of escalating the argument into a stab.
Fight Like Fiore notes that while Fiore's illustration is relatively static, the real context is usually dynamic. A tavern argument. A wrestling match where one hand has suddenly freed itself to grab a weapon. A lunge that starts as a grab-and-stab in a single motion. Whatever the specifics, the situation is the same: you are close, your attacker is close, a weapon is about to come out, and you have very little time.
Fiore's instruction is direct. Nobody can defend a collar grab without speed. Act now.
The Pin
The Fifth Master's first move is to pin the opponent's grabbing hand against his own chest.
This is the critical and the simple element. The pinning hand (your left) reaches up, presses their grabbing hand firmly against your chest or torso, and does not let it move. The pin does not need to be elaborate. It does not need to be overpowering. It just needs to hold their hand absolutely still against your own centre line.
Why your own centre line? Because the pin is creating the fulcrum of a third-class lever. A fulcrum must be stable for a lever to work. If the pin drifts, your fulcrum drifts, and your lever collapses. Pinning the hand to your own chest makes the fulcrum travel with you when you move, maintaining a perfectly stable pivot point.
Fiore's genius is that the pin does not depend on strength. It depends on positioning. A small person can pin a larger person's hand to their chest easily, because the pin is supported by the full structure of the pinner's torso. The opponent cannot pull their hand away with just their arm; they would have to drag your whole body.
The Push
With the opponent's hand pinned, the second move follows immediately. Your right hand reaches across to their left elbow. (Their left, because it is their left hand that is gripping your collar.)
The right-hand move is small. Your elbow does not stray from your body. You place your palm against the outside of the opponent's elbow joint.
Then you twist. Not with your arm. With your hips. A strong, sudden, anticlockwise rotation of your hips, optionally combined with a step of either foot to adjust the distance.
Three things happen in that instant.
Their wrist is pinned. It cannot move. It is the fulcrum.
Their elbow experiences force. Your right hand, driven by your hip twist, pushes their elbow laterally.
The lever does its work. A third-class lever has the force applied between the fulcrum and the load. Your force is at the elbow. The fulcrum is at the wrist. The load is the rest of their arm and body, which has nowhere to go except to rotate violently around the wrist pin.
The result, as Fight Like Fiore describes it: "The elbow will almost immediately start to hyperextend. A gentle push will send the player spinning across the room. You can either direct them into something, or control them to the ground. A strong push will quite literally rip the arm almost in half."
The Physics
This is why abrazare sits at the root of Fiore's whole system. The Fifth Master is not using arm-wrestling strength to overpower an attacker. He is using applied mechanical leverage. The opponent's own anatomy is being turned against them.
A third-class lever (where the force is applied between the fulcrum and the load) is usually thought of as the weakest class of lever in mechanical terms, because the mechanical advantage is less than one. But that is true only when you are trying to move a large load with a small force. When your goal is to hyperextend a joint, the third-class lever is ideal, because the velocity at the end of the lever (the opponent's body) is multiplied even though the force is not. A small push at the elbow produces a large motion at the body.
The joint at the centre of the lever (the elbow) is also the weakest point in the arm's mechanical structure. It is designed to bend in one direction and lock in the other. Force in the wrong plane, applied with good leverage, breaks it.
Fiore did not write in terms of classes of lever. He wrote in terms of plays that work. But the plays embody the physics correctly, because physics is what actually happens when two bodies collide in space, and Fiore watched what happened with the attention of a master.
The Scholars: Variations and Extensions
Fiore gives us several scholars of the Fifth Master, each teaching a variation.
The First Scholar applies the same mechanics against a slightly different grip. As your opponent grabs you, you move your left arm into a specific structure (elbow on hip, forearm horizontal), rotate your hip clockwise to chamber your right hip, and grab your left wrist with your right hand. Then you rotate your left forearm around to strike against the opponent's elbow, driving with your right hip. Fiore adds a lovely extension: "if I were caught by a spear, with such a strike I would either unpin myself or break the head from the shaft." The same mechanics that break a dagger-arm can also break a spear-shaft caught in your jacket or armour.
The Second Scholar uses a different mechanic altogether: brute force, applied correctly. As the opponent grabs you, you raise both hands above your head, make a fist with one and wrap the other over the top, then drive your arms straight down as hard as possible. Use your lat muscles rather than the muscles of the arms. Sink into a squat to add body weight to the strike. This breaks the grip through sheer downward force.
Fiore notes, fairly, that this is a larger and slower motion than the elbow-break. It works, but it is easier to counter.
The Counter to the Second Scholar: as soon as you feel the scholar dropping into the downward break, you let go of the collar, snatch your hand back out of the way, and stab immediately to the chest. Fiore as always shows both sides of every exchange.
Why This Master Matters
Three reasons to give the Fifth Master special attention in your training.
Collar grabs are a real threat. Modern self-defence situations, much more than medieval ones, often start with exactly this scenario: aggressive approach, shout, collar grab, intent to escalate. The Fifth Master gives you a response that can be applied with remarkably little training and no weapon of your own.
The third-class lever teaches generalisable mechanics. Once your body has felt the wrist-pin fulcrum lever, you start recognising similar levers across other Fiore plays. The grappling master plays, the dagger master plays, the sword-vs-dagger plays all contain wrist-pin or elbow-push motifs. The Fifth Master is the clearest introduction to this family of mechanics.
It works with minimal strength. One of the strongest recommendations any martial technique can have. The Fifth Master can be applied effectively by a small person against a large person, because the mechanics do the work. This is Fiore at his most egalitarian.
Drill and Warning
At HEMA Penzance we drill the Fifth Master slowly, with great care for our partner's elbow. The technique is easy to overapply, and hyperextension injuries from sloppy drilling are a risk if both partners are not attending. The correct approach is:
- Pin gently but firmly.
- Position the right hand carefully on the outside of the elbow.
- Apply the hip rotation at very low speed until the partner's elbow just begins to feel the stretch.
- Release immediately.
- Repeat.
The goal in drilling is not to break the partner. It is to learn the feel of the pin, the positioning, and the direction of the rotation. Full-speed application is reserved for scenarios that will never occur in training.
This is one of those Fiore techniques where the mechanics are simple enough to be dangerous. Respect it. Drill it slowly. Your training partners will thank you.
Come and Train
We work Fiore's dagger plays including the Fifth Master periodically at HEMA Penzance, every Tuesday evening at Penzance Leisure Centre, 7pm to 9pm. Your first lesson is free, all equipment is provided, and no experience is necessary. Come along and see for yourself.
Fiore's words and the mechanical interpretation in this article are from the Getty manuscript translations and commentary at Fight Like Fiore.