machida clip - hypothetical knife question

[Chris McKinley]

Chris,

It's not playing devil's advocate simply to ask legitimate questions, as yours are. RE: "or can the same principles used against a knife attack be used against a hard empty hand or blunt attack ... say from a Muay Thai guy or a boxer?". Yes, quite literally. I've done so personally with the occasional MT stylist and boxer at the MMA gym where I used to teach. Think of it this way, when you are evading, intercepting and redirecting an incoming blade, you are not making contact with the blade itself. You are redirecting the incoming weapon-bearing limb. If the person were to drop the blade for whatever reason before striking you, and bring that same striking motion in toward you, there is no net gain of mass or power on his part. In fact, there is a negligible net loss since the weapon's mass is no longer part of the equation.

You are still evading, intercepting and redirecting the incoming weapon-bearing limb, the only difference being that now the weapon is a clenched fist.

RE: "I knife only has to touch on the way past or back to have a serious effect.". Indeed. As I explain to all my students, unlike a club or similar impact weapon, the blade is a contact weapon. It need only come in touch contact with you to cause serious injury. For instance, I keep all my blades so sharp that often my larger blades will cut skin from the pressure of the weight of the blade alone. Not deep or anything, but enough to illustrate a point to some of my more serious trainees.

To further that point, if one is able to evade even the slightest contact from a blade and redirect that weapon-bearing limb, then doing the same against an empty-handed strike is just that much easier, if only for the fact that the consequences for slight touch contact are far more forgiving against a simple punch.

RE: "However, much of the knife work i have been exposed too has been to 'check' the knife arm. Not to let is continue on a path where it can change angle and cut you, or cut you on its current line, etc.". That's ok. I'm certainly not invalidating that approach carte blanche. Unlike a lot of my peers, I am somewhat less dogmatic about teaching bladed weapons tactics. There are a number of issues about which the knife community tends to become quite polarized. IME, I've met guys from every school of thought who could make what they preach work, even if it's diametrically opposed to what someone else is preaching.

To me, there are valid points to be made about all of them, and truth doesn't always require mutual exclusion. Being in a fight for your life against a knife is such a nightmarish goatf*ck of a situation that dogma won't much apply anyway, and it tends to blind us to the potential value of different tactical ideas.

RE: "Where as with a punch you can even let it move close to your body (even onto your body!) and use it or subtley re-direct it, with a knife you cant afford to do this.". Absolutely correct. This is why I don't train my people to purposefully allow an incoming strike to contact their bodies in order to stuff it or deflect it. Is it a valid tactic? Very much so....I myself can do it to the point of being able to injure the incoming punch in about 1/3 to 1/2 the attempts if I'm really interested in harming my opponent. I've done a lot of training in that regard. It's great against an empty attack, and frankly, sometimes you just don't have a choice because if you get into a fight, there's a good chance you're going to get hit in some way.

However, because of the inherent and irretrievable risks that a weapon poses against that tactic, I teach my guys not to do that, but to deal with it with your limbs if at all possible. Now, before some readers might dismiss that by saying, "Well, that's just Chris....he's dealing with high-speed operators, I don't need to worry about that risk", I should mention that I teach everybody that idea. Average ordinary citizens just trying to get home safely are at a similar risk of a weapon being present if they find themselves in a real life-threatening assault.

If you're talking about puffing up and getting into male dominance fights at the local honkey tonk or trendy dance club, that may not be the case, but then you're on your own. Those fights are almost 100% avoidable and if my students find themselves facing those types of situations often, then I have no sympathy for them and feel that they get what they deserve. I train people not for chest thumping against the local stable of gelled-up satin-shirted fratboys at the club, but for situations in which their life may be threatened and they are not able to avoid it. For such situations, the chances are that there will be at least one weapon involved, and they must train accordingly if they want to be prepared for it.

[middleway]

thanks for the excellent response Chris.

Think of it this way, when you are evading, intercepting and redirecting an incoming blade, you are not making contact with the blade itself. You are redirecting the incoming weapon-bearing limb. If the person were to drop the blade for whatever reason before striking you, and bring that same striking motion in toward you, there is no net gain of mass or power on his part. In fact, there is a negligible net loss since the weapon's mass is no longer part of the equation.

Sure i understand this in concept. So your saying that someone using a knife to slash or cut and someone using their fist to break something has the same force? Wouldn't you say there is a difference in how the force is applied or transfered and how the mass behind the strike is used? Sure if we take two identical motions, one with knife in hand and one without, their application of force are comparable. However, IME, the use of force when manipulating a knife and the use of force when trying to 'knock out' through blunt strikes are different. Certainly when testing on some meat i found that the force required to cut or stab was of a different quality to the force to hit deep and effectively.

To further that point, if one is able to evade even the slightest contact from a blade and redirect that weapon-bearing limb, then doing the same against an empty-handed strike is just that much easier, if only for the fact that the consequences for slight touch contact are far more forgiving against a simple punch.

Totally agree. one thing working with knife really gives you is an appreciation of distance, angle and line of force. When you then work with a strike things arent as desperate!

... and frankly, sometimes you just don't have a choice because if you get into a fight, there's a good chance you're going to get hit in some way.

Absolutely. I have met quite a few people who thought that they would never get hit if they learnt some 'martial arts'. The fact remains that you more than likely will however.

To expand on this point a little in regard to knife work. Also i think its useful to understand that when facing a knife you more than likely will also get cut!! This really engrains that you will need to only check or contact with areas that wont lead to your death if they are 'nicked' or 'sliced' ... especially when the blade retreats.

Cheers, interesting discussion

Chris

[Chris McKinley]

RE: "So your saying that someone using a knife to slash or cut and someone using their fist to break something has the same force?". Not necessarily, though the answer can be "yes". The point I'm making is that it doesn't much matter. Again, if you're evading and/or redirecting that force, whatever it may be, the exact poundages of force don't have to be identical. Or they can be...it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is whether or not his attack is a committed whole-body movement or not....whether with the blade or without. You will have to adjust your movements accordingly.

RE: "one thing working with knife really gives you is an appreciation of distance, angle and line of force. When you then work with a strike things arent as desperate!". Most definitely. Generally speaking, a knife slash can be faster than a punch, making it by far the more dangerous. But also as I mentioned previously, if you can develop your skill to where you're able to evade and redirect even the faster knife slash, then the slower punch will be all the easier to handle, and again with a far more forgiving margin of error for slight contact. Since in neither case are you directly absorbing the oncoming force, the total kinetic energy and total momentum aren't the most vital factors. Sheer velocity and trajectory are far more relevant to your ultimate success.

RE: "To expand on this point a little in regard to knife work. Also i think its useful to understand that when facing a knife you more than likely will also get cut!! This really engrains that you will need to only check or contact with areas that wont lead to your death if they are 'nicked' or 'sliced' ... especially when the blade retreats.". This gets into one of the major points of dogmatic contention in the world of knife work. Based on my own experiences, and a bit of reasoning as well, I simply can't go there with you, at least in stated philosophy. Which brings me to one of the constant conundra of facing a bladed weapons attack:

A) Though the odds are that you will get cut, in purely statistical terms, you can't really afford to....even once. If you've worked with a knife against meat for slashes, for instance, you realize that it takes very little applied pressure to lay open a life-threatening gash pretty much anywhere on the body. However, we cannot consider the relative threat of lethality of that cut in isolation, as if we could determine of a given cut, "Yeah, I could take that one and still keep fighting". While that might be true, it ignores two things that can happen as a result of that cut:

1) In most instances, you will involuntarily retract away from the cut and cover it with both limbs if possible and momentarily stop all footwork. This means that you are now open, by a multiplied margin, for further slashes and stabs.

2) It is possible that you will begin to go into shock, even from what you might consider a non-serious wound. The onset of symptoms can happen instantly or they can develop over a period of seconds or minutes. Even if you did not experience the involuntary retractive flinch and cover described above, the onset of shock will most certainly leave you exponentially less able to defend yourself, and likewise that much more open to further slashes and stabs.

Put simply, it can be a nightmare spiral of injuries and responses to them that can quickly become lethal in and of itself, added to the fact that any single knife wound could be to a lethal target.

B) In the chaos, speed and ferocity of a knife attack, you simply cannot control where on your body a blade edge will make contact until you render the opponent unable to execute a further attack. You can influence the odds somewhat....for instance, by turning your outer forearms out toward the opponent to somewhat protect the more vital inner sides or keeping your elbows down over your liver and other vital organs of the abdomen....however, there's very little else one can do and none of this is a guarantee that the blade won't find itself a way around your meager defenses in the fray and still cut or stab one of these targets. And, as if that weren't enough challenge already, as outlined in A above, even if you only take the cut/stab to a less vital target like the outer forearm, you are still susceptible to the involuntary retractive flinch and cover, which again, opens you up to further injuries.....perhaps this time to a more vital target since the attacker can more easily choose his contact point now.

I've worked with guys, some of whom have relative celebrity within the knife community, who hold this "you will get cut, so you choose where" mentality a number of times. Occasionally, I get to do a little experiment with them that sometimes makes them doubt their religious fervor for that ideology. It involves the classic marker or chalked training blade. I have them face me unarmed, and me with the marker/knife, and tell them to control where I cut them. Sometimes, they can't do it at all, and this suprises them.

If they are able to make me cut their outer forearms, for instance, I stop. At this point, they usually have a big shit-eating "I told you so" grin on their faces. To which I respond, "Now, wipe that off and let's do it again....only this time, you're going to respond realistically to that outer forearm injury and let's see what happens". In all instances except one, if they then gave me a realistic response to a slash across their outer forearms, I was then able to get them in at least one if not more vital targets subsequently. One guy was able to deliver a lucky thrashing kick after retractively flinching, covering and stepping back that just happened to nail me in the shin and basically dropped me on the spot for a moment. I conceded that that might have been enough for him to get away. Without exception, everyone else received at least one further cut or stab to a vital target, usually multiple ones.

I certainly understand that, like any fight, get in a knife fight and you are likely to get cut. I also just detailed why you can't afford to. Does this all sound like a hopelessly nightmarish Catch-22? If so.....good. It should, because it can be. Facing a knife, especially unarmed, is a horrible prospect and the odds are not stacked in your favor. What is absolutely essential is that you must, as quickly as humanly possible, render the attacker unable to further prosecute his attacks. Whether this is by running, by placing environmental obstacles between you, by smothering or attacking him with environmental weapons of your own, by control of the weapon-bearing limb and takedown, by attacking his own vital targets, or by presenting your own weapon and eliminating him with it.....regardless of how, it must be done.

[Andy_S]

Chris McK:

SNIP
frankly, sometimes you just don't have a choice because if you get into a fight, there's a good chance you're going to get hit in some way
SNIP

Given this, how realistic is it to expect not to get cut? Particularly as:
- A knife can be hidden very easily
- A very sharp blade slash is not necessarily painful at the time -or so I have been told; I personally know of at least two persons who fought and won, then realised they were bleeding heavily - "Oh shit, he had a knife all along! Get me to a quack!"
- I have been told that impact weapons are the opposite: If you are rapped across the knuckes with a stick, you know about it immediately.
- A knife can damage from many odd and unusual angles, that, if done empty handed, would be mere slaps. When I trained arnis, it was clear that simply pulling across the target would open a nice, long cut wound with minimal pressure or strength required, and the slash-stab-slash-stab technique can create multiplie wounds in fractions of a second. This makes it very difficult to defend against.

To put it the question another way:
When you are empty hand sparring, are you and/or your students good enough to not get hit at all?

And if not, then how can you expect to have the same level of success against a weapon?

I am curious, as your strategy of not getting cut at all seems to be pretty much the opposite of the Karl Tanswell* school in which the object is to control the weapon AT ALL COSTS - even if that means controlling it and holding it inside your body, (thus pre-empting further/multiple strikes.) An extreme strategy, but one based on hard experience. And frankly, to me - and knives are NOT my thing these days - this seems a more realistic tactic than yours.

But I am open to persuasion.

*Chris almost certainly knows this , but fro those who do not: Tanswell, a JKD/BJJ/Philippine MA guy was savagely attacked in Manchester with a blade, and barely escaped with his life. After than, he pretty well ditched his previous PMA tactics, prioritizing instead the tactic above)

[Chris McKinley]

Andy,

RE: "Given this, how realistic is it to expect not to get cut?". It's not. Maybe my calling the situation of facing a knife empty-handed a nightmarish goatfuck of a Catch-22 wasn't using strong enough terms to convey my feelings about it. However, there's a huge difference between objectively acknowledging that the odds are that you will get cut and perhaps severely, regardless of the best you can do tactically, and actually operating out of that assumption by teaching a strategy of purposefully taking a cut to a "preferred" target. What I illustrated to Chris(middleway) is the folly of such a strategy.

RE: "A knife can be hidden very easily". Yep...even while using it.

RE: "A very sharp blade slash is not necessarily painful at the time -or so I have been told". Slashes are usually quite painful, though the pain does not follow a direct correlation to the depth of penetration. I have a few of those, thankfully mostly relatively shallow. Stabs, in contrast, can be completely painless. I've got two of them myself, one accidental, and neither had any pain associated with it at the time.

RE: "I have been told that impact weapons are the opposite: If you are rapped across the knuckes with a stick, you know about it immediately.". Yep.

RE: "A knife can damage from many odd and unusual angles, that, if done empty handed, would be mere slaps. When I trained arnis, it was clear that simply pulling across the target would open a nice, long cut wound with minimal pressure or strength required, and the slash-stab-slash-stab technique can create multiplie wounds in fractions of a second. This makes it very difficult to defend against.". Yep. That's why I mentioned that a blade is not an impact weapon, it is a contact weapon. Like I mentioned previously, some of my larger blades are sharp enough to cut from weight pressure alone.

RE: "When you are empty hand sparring, are you and/or your students good enough to not get hit at all?". Nope. I've never met the human being who was, either. I am good enough not to get cut about 50% of the time at my best against someone with a modicum of training with the blade. Realistic blade training is a very intimate and vulnerable thing. Egos get trimmed like so much fat on a rib-eye.

RE: "And if not, then how can you expect to have the same level of success against a weapon?". I expect that my success rate against a real weapon will actually probably be lower, percentage-wise. In actual encounters, so far I've been lucky enough to exceed my expectations, having received only minor cuts and one minor stab in actual combat. Anyone who tells you that luck doesn't have a significant role is lying to you or talking out of their ignorant ass.

All of this is why I emphasize using environmental obstacles and weapons if absolutely forced to face a blade without a proper weapon of your own already presented. I don't pretend to offer to anyone a way to take the percentage chance of your getting cut/stabbed down to zero. So far in my experience, it doesn't exist.

RE: "I am curious, as your strategy of not getting cut at all seems to be pretty much the opposite of the Karl Tanswell* school in which the object is to control the weapon AT ALL COSTS - even if that means controlling it and holding it inside your body, (thus pre-empting further/multiple strikes.) An extreme strategy, but one based on hard experience. And frankly, to me - and knives are NOT my thing these days - this seems a more realistic tactic than yours.". Having faced identical experiences personally, I have come to a different conclusion than those of the 'take a cut' school. What is "realistic" is that I'm still alive and so is Karl (I presume). That's why, as I stated previously, I'm much less dogmatic about the subject than a lot of my peers, colleagues, fellow spewers of opinion, etc. That's also why I stated, "IME, I've met guys from every school of thought who could make what they preach work, even if it's diametrically opposed to what someone else is preaching.".

As such, there's absolutely nothing wrong with controlling the blade; in fact, I teach that very thing myself...not to the exclusion of other tactics, but as a valid option. What I do teach somewhat dogmatically about controlling the blade is that if you get a chance to control the weapon-bearing limb, you should try as quickly as possible to achieve a takedown and neutralization of the assailant, since control of anything in a life-or-death struggle tends not to last very long, and the risk of getting cut or stabbed is still extremely high, even while struggling to maintain that control, nevermind if he happens to wrest it free again.