specifics in Spear fighting combat

[PMBardunias]

Let me preface this by saying that I think Hoplomachia was an advanced martial art. I don't doubt that men who's lives depended on weapons and armor would, even if only for pleasure, devise the most artistic manner of their usage. I do have doubts about how much of an advantage the training was in the thick of phalanx on phalanx combat.

All that said, this is the snippet from Xenophon's Cyropaedia that is often brought up as evidence against such training being useful:

III [10] As for myself, I have understood from my very childhood how to protect the spot where I thought I was likely to receive a blow; and if I had nothing else I put out my hands to hinder as well as I could the one who was trying to hit me. And this I did not from having been taught to do so, but even though I was beaten for that very act of putting out my hands. Furthermore, even when I was a little fellow I used to seize a sword wherever I saw one, although, I declare, I had never learned, except from instinct, even how to take hold of a sword. At any rate, I used to do this, even though they tried to keep me from it--and certainly they did not teach me so to do--just as I was impelled by nature to do certain other things which my father and mother tried to keep me away from. And, by Zeus, I used to hack with a sword everything that I could without being caught at it. For this was not only instinctive, like walking and running, but I thought it was fun in addition to its being natural.