Roman Gladiators Long ago, in the Roman Empire, there were people called gladiators. Gladiators were slaves, criminals, and volunteers who fight each other to the death for entertainment. Roman gladiators were mostly men, sometimes there were female gladiators. They trained very hard to fight in the arena. Roman gladiators trained for arena fights by getting in very good physical shape, learning how to die, and learning how to use weapons. To be able to do anything, Roman gladiators had to be in really good physical shape. How did they get in this amazing shape? The first thing new gladiators did when they got to training camp is go through a inspection to see if they were able to train and fight. Research suggests that gladiator trainers kept their students on a largely vegetarian diet. Also, the first thing the trainers taught their gladiators was how to fight without a weapons to gain muscle in their body. Gladiators even trained with weapons two time as heavy as the real weapon to build up their upper body and core. Gladiators also had to learn how to die bravely. They also, had to learn how to die gracefully and with honor. Showing no fear when dying was a big part in learning how to die. Spectators of this sport fully expected these gladiators to die …show more content…
Although they did not use real weapons during the training process for fear of injury, gladiators were very skilled in using weapons. Each gladiator had a lot of different weapon training programs. An example of this is when gladiators, mostly the largest most athletic men, were trained to engage in hand-to-hand combat in the arena. Another example is that different types of fighters required custom training according to their armor, weapons, and fighting techniques. Many different types of weapons were used for fighting in the arena to. The weapons included swords, lances, tridents, nets, and bows and