the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Glad to see someone posting some Silat Suffian footage in relation to knife work - Maul is one of the best I've personally seen.

Didn't really like Rob's Systema clip... sorry, Rob I am sure the drills have context, but those methods of evasion will have you cut to ribbons if you don't check the attacking hand. Especially true, IMHO, when looking at the drills where you strike the knife-using opponent - unless you're checking the knife hand, you really need to have your student with the knife follow up with other slashes/cuts/stabs etc.

Otherwise it has the feel of one-step sparring (which has its place, as does slow training), but is a very limited exercise, especially when dealing with knife attacks.

Ah I thought I'd labelled the video up clearly, but perhaps not. The evasion methods are just that - purely evasion. The approach is breaking down each component to train it separately. Again, it's not the totality of our knife training. So, yes you are right it is a limited exercise in order to practice certain aspects of knife defence. However unless time is spent on individual aspects it seems difficult to get any other reaction than sheer panic when simulatingfull speed attacks.

One of the preferred methods is, where appropriate, hit the guy as hard as you can - affect his structure, mindset or just plain knock him out. Simulating that is difficult, even with the gloves and headgear. However using them gives some measure of how effective or not your striking is. That was pretty much the point of that particular drill, to explore evasion, position and strike. From there we can explore further actions

Of course it's nice to control the knife hand but to be honest I find it a bit optimistic in anything other than a "duelling" or perhaps a mugging situation. On a recent sparring course one of the guys remarked, after being "stabbed in a crowd" he didn't even see the knife man, let alone the knife. Clearly in that case seeking to establish control of the knife hand is not an option. Hopefully good awareness and movement is.

cheers
Rob

Maul is great and I also recommend Ray Dionaldo.

Ian, for RMA knife, Andre's the only one worth watching. He's always calm, collected and can actually stop his attackers. Not just talking about it or romanticizing about it... the man can do it!


Nothing's more suicidal than relying on a K.O. in a knife fight. Evasion necessitates more evasions and get folks in a prey mindset. At some point the defender must bring things to a rapid climax or he's toast. I teach that if you can run around like it's romper room, than you should have been running away.

And yeah, I've been in a real knife fight once in the Bronks NY. Me and a buddy were leaving a club late one night and four guys jumped us. We can only confirm one knife because we ran as fast as we saw it. Oh, and my buddy, he's a Navy Seal who bounced in clubs all his life. We didn't stick around to find out what else were going to be pulled next from their pockets. Some things you just learn from the streets, while others dance around in Dojos.

SNIP
I'd like to train this stuff someday.
SNIP

He has got some excellent material - I liked his sacrifice throws - but I'm guessing that his knife and stick work comes from Philippine (they are doing basic hubud at the outset) rather than his native silat method.

dtactics wrote:
And yeah, I've been in a real knife fight once in the Bronks NY.

Well to feed the troll fora second... I've been in six situations with a knife knowingly involved, though none of them were in the Bronks they were in Eest London. Three were dry and three were wet. Our group is also lucky in that we can also draw on the experiences of a few of our guys

I don't advocate any one particular approach for "knife defence" or anything else for that matter, it's all context sensitive. Running can be good, running can be impossible. Ditto any other tictac you can think of. My goal then is to equip people with the neccesary physical capabiliites, neccesary tactical awareness and neccesary mindset to deal with what could be any manner of threat.

In training we are at a disadvantage - we don't know what is going to happen. We don't even know how we are going to react - which is also why it's obviously important to train under pressure at some point but also to train from a point where things are less than perfect (the situation or ourselves). Let people debate how it looks or what they would have done afterwards - the important thing is getting home.

Hi Rob,

Can I ask a question (without being accused of being a troll)?

Of those six encounters with knife attacks, how many of them involved you being cut? Not wanting to insult, but I hear so many stories about knives and machetes that involve no-one getting hurt. Madness...


Ian,

Maul's art is a family Silat art, but I believe over the generations there has been a great deal of cross-training, information exchange, etc from around South East Asia.

Hi Duncan

The troll bit wasn't aimed at you

I've been cut once, the other two times were friends, one slashed across the face the other stabbed with a screwdriver. In the non-cut cases the knife was brandished rather than used

I guess injuries depend on the situation and motivation. If someone wants to kill you chances are you will get cut. If someone is using a knife as a penis extension you have more chance of getting out unscathed. In my police friend's incident with the machetes it was a gang of armed robbers, so their main thing was to get away (the robbers). His car took a few whacks in the process but he got his man, without injury to himself or his colleague afaik

cheers

Rob

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the clarification - never good to hear someone has been cut, but good to hear that the stories are realistic. I've just heard far too many recently on knife forums that indicate there's a little artistic license going on...

And to add, I am not a Systema hater, LOL, I like the open-hand work... but am a little skeptical about the knife drills... I guess I need to get myself to a Systema knife seminar to check it out in person.

Regards,

I like the way the silat suffian guy moves. I'd just liket to see the actual training method beyond the obvious stuff he does on seminar as seen in the youtube videos. There's nothing that shows free flow. Everything I've seen is some kind of feeder based attack and then counter attack or a patterned drill.