Chris McKinley wrote:To be fair, Dan, a knife in the hands of a well-trained and capable person eats just about anybody up, regardless of what they train empty-handed, including anything you or I might be doing. Statistically, nobody does particularly well against a highly trained and skilled knife fighter when they're empty-handed. Nobody. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or speaking from ignorance, and both are equally dangerous. Further, if your criterion is to be meaningful, it would have to be applied equally to the alternatives to which Systema might be compared.
I'm not a Systema guy, and I think a fair and objective look at what they do is totally appropriate for discussion. I, too, for example, have wondered that they seem to have both the attackers and defenders moving in a "Systema-like" way, for lack of a better term. That's okay if it's a two-way drill, but then IMO you'd also need to include some work where the attacker's movements are more typical and realistic. And maybe they do, I don't have enough familiarity to say.
Well, as I pointed out to you when we were
disagreeing.....here is yet another area where you, John, and I always seem to agree, Chris. When it comes to practical fighting movement, there really isn't much we disagree on that I have seen. My point was not that there
is a winning strategy to go up against a knife empty handed...just that it is rather dumb to be showing that type of systema movement as
any sort of strategy to use.
Since I know these guys, soime for years now, we have discussed it in detail. I know that it is meant to teach and impart
other things, I have told them they do a diservice to both themselves and the budo community to put that stuff out there without explanations.
For the record, I think I was the first one to point out to them that their atackers.... look like a systema guy moving with a knife, and then their structure collapses and "receives" ...very aikido-like, on contact with the guy defending. Why?
Real people do not behave that way and trained people will work you and vector you and keep coming. I always remove the fenfer out of every video in my minds eye and watch the attacker. If I don't see a real attack and response-even slow is okay provided the dynamics work, then what's the point?
Dan