Knife Self Def - Live!

[dtactics]

Often times you don't even know he's got a knife, let alone know to disarm. I know a guy who "won" a fight only to die afterwards because he failed to realize he wasn't taking hooks to the ribs but stabs. In his adrenal state he never felt the pain until it was too late.

The guy in grey dress shirt and slacks has the knife.

[Steve Rowe]

Here's a good example of the unwillingness to deal with a knife wielder.....

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d41_1259264795

[chrislomas]

dtactics

Often times you don't even know he's got a knife, let alone know to disarm. I know a guy who "won" a fight only to die afterwards because he failed to realize he wasn't taking hooks to the ribs but stabs. In his adrenal state he never felt the pain until it was too late.

This is definately the case in the two sharp weapons attacks I have been involved with, in one I intercepted a low close in 'punch' at my lower rib I didn't realise there was a shard of glass wrapped in the guys sleeve(!) - it had been deflected enough that it thankfully only made a small cut in my side and would have been much worse otherwise, in the other case I was tussling with the guy but didn't realise that a knife was involved till I saw it hit the floor (I guess it got dropped during an attempt to strike, I still don't know what happened there exactly TBH). In both cases I cannot deny a very large portion of luck was involved.

The same is true for friends who have been stabbed. The knife isn't usually seen if the guy means business, and often the stab not felt till after the altercation. These incidents lead me to believe that for me in my practice all my empty handed initial reactions have to be the same as my knife defence. Everything I practice in close fighting should work with or without a short weapon being involved, though of course knowing some general principles/rules of knife defence are useful after the intial contact has been made. I therefore don't feel either either capable of, or see the use in, having two seperate emptyhanded sets of fighting responses in my body. However if I were to work with more knife specific stuff I would certainly look Mr Tanswell out (he's in my city) as I hear good things about him and when I met him he seemed like a nice guy also.

[yusuf]

hey all..

i'm not an expert on anything at all but a lot of the flaws in knife training can be seen very easily by using simple exercises...

get together a training group and give a training knife to one person.. then tell them that during the training session they have to kill any one person or the whole group is going to mill them into a pulp at the end.. see what ensues...

ask a partner to stand in front and launch telegraphed attacks ... from the blade being visible intiially progressing to hidden initially, see how many time you get stabbed running away as soon as you have sight of the blade vs reacting with whatevr martial measures you take...

start with the point of the knife touching the defenders body... as soon as you say go see how many times you get stabbed .. what instinct works best in this situation...

using a shock knife, the attacker is allowed one shock to the defender before the main attacks and then the defender is allowed to respond.. (this is the best drill i have seen but alas the shock knife is outlawed int eh uk unless you are a MA teacher)

pad up group of three.. two attackers, one with a knife.. get the first one to start a melee and the second to try and stab the victim or vice versa .. explore at what point which instinct is better (for me strike anything that moves whilst moving the body out f range seems to work best, one of my friends can throw at will and projects person one into the path of person two) ... find out what works best for you

i think it becomes pretty clear that not all the tactics advocated int he vids work in all situations...

peace

yusuf

[Bhassler]

Re: running away
If you can run away, why are you fighting in the first place?

Re: Willem de Thouars
Don't be fooled by the demonstration. Typically, de Thouars will show an app once, show a couple variations, then turn everybody loose to skirmish and struggle with it. The demonstration is to show the idea, but the learning happens by doing. That whole art is predicated on kinife attacks. It's not totally unusual for someone to pull a (training) knife during an empty hand drill in class, and a number of times I've seen guys get disarmed in a knife drill only to pull another knife with their dominant or non-dominant hand and start stabbing away. I was even stabbed a couple of times in a push hands drill.

Which leads me to my third point:
Coming online and postulating about what is or is not good knife defense if it's not part of your regular training is just like those guys (thankfully they are much fewer now) who theorize about why their deadly system is too much for an MMA guy to handle when they've never been to an MMA gym or rolled with anyone. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to set something up and see who's full of shit in an MMA context, but unfortunately it's not all that easy to do so with knives. Now if only we could add live blades to an MMA fight, we might really have something....

[Dmitri]

It's not totally unusual for someone to pull a (training) knife during an empty hand drill in class, and a number of times I've seen guys get disarmed in a knife drill only to pull another knife with their dominant or non-dominant hand and start stabbing away. I was even stabbed a couple of times in a push hands drill.

Next time you go to their seminar, bring a toy gun (pellets) and shoot someone through a hole in your pocket in a PH drill, see what they think.

Now if only we could add live blades to an MMA fight, we might really have something....

Well, why not take it just one more step further and have some real good ole-fashioned fun?

[Bodywork]

Re: running away
Coming online and postulating about what is or is not good knife defense if it's not part of your regular training is just like those guys (thankfully they are much fewer now) who theorize about why their deadly system is too much for an MMA guy to handle when they've never been to an MMA gym or rolled with anyone. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to set something up and see who's full of shit in an MMA context, but unfortunately it's not all that easy to do so with knives....

Not really. The red marker is an old training device. and it works.
Here is the main thrust of my own critisisms with knife training: The attacker.
Most people don't really know how to use one, so they do not offer serious, trained attacks.

The counter to my own argument is that the Senate published a report years ago-gathered from LEO and ER visits. There was something like 3,200 knife attacks involved.
7 were from accidents involving MA
30 or something like that (IIRC) from various crimes
And the rest were from?
Domestic disputes involving kitchen cutlery.
So were are you going to be, and who is going to be attacking you in the first place and with what?
Dan

[Dmitri]

Domestic disputes involving kitchen cutlery.

That's it, I'm buying my wife an extra nice present this season and will be super-extra-nice to her from now on.

But seriously though... those stats show an excellent point. Thanks for that, I had no idea; I would have thought crime-related incidents were at least on-par with domestic disputes... but a rate THAT much lower?!
Live and learn...

[DeusTrismegistus]

The reason Systema coat-tail surfer doesn't or won't get it, is because he too is imbued with an abundance of over self-confidence, self-esteem and "success" earned from dedicated hours of this ridiculous ring around the rosy slow-mo knife work. Add to that his lack of aerobic conditioning (see love handles) and I totally understand why he pushes the "Stand and fight, cause you can't always run" approach. Perhaps, more road work and fewer 10 sec spurts of fanciful anaerobic nonsense could introduce a fresh perspective to his knife fighting strategy... or not

So in the spirit of Christmas, I'm going to give our S.C.T.S. (Systema Coat-tail surfer) a little gift:


Note that EVEN when cornered, Jim seeks to extricate himself from there at the first opportunity. Mr. Wagner is extremely well regarded in the LEO, D.T. community. His work doesn't look pretty but he gets folks home at the end of their shift. I also like Tanswell and Jim Grover's strategies much better than anything out there.

Did you watch past the first couple minutes because he goes over what to do in a situation where you cannot escape starting at about 6:00.

[DeusTrismegistus]

Oh I noticed in 2 of the three stories in the first CCTV clip the victim DID run away but that unfortunately wasn't enough. We need to be able to have some options when running isn't available. That means practicing knife defense and multiple attackers. In all but the last CCTV vid there were multiple attackers.

Honestly though that kind of crime is pretty much not happening around here, here being Ohio. Teenagers will occasionally jump each other and beat others pretty bad but even that is uncommon. The gang related violence may be different but you never really hear about that either. Most assaults I hear about are domestic or involved in robbery of some type.

Another thing in at least 2 of the CCTV clips from the first vid is that better situational awareness could have at least hopefully mitigated the damage. The first clip you could see the guys waiting around the corner and the third clip the guy was caught unaware from behind.

[emptycloud]

My thre'pence worth, The difference between training in knife attack/defence in class and reality is that in reality two or more people are actually trying to kill each other and this is a big problem in training (you cannot kill each other). Covering each other in marker pen is perhaps useful for something, but you cannot kill the man with the marker pen, for instance you cannot literally put you size 11 heavy leather soled shoes through his knee cap, he wouldn't land many doodles on you after that. I don't think there is such a thing as reality based training, just train the best you can, try not to walk around stoned with an ipod on, try not to stagger home drunk, etc, all the usual obvious stuff, and trust that when its needed something from all the years of training will just kick in and take care of you. I am off to train right now, i shall consult with guys at the club what as to what they think.

[Dmitri]

trust that when its needed something from all the years of training will just kick in and take care of you

That trust, the faith in your training, it really all you've got, in the end.

Good post.