Does effective knife defence exist?

Having seen various arts that claim to possess knife defences, I’m left extremely sceptical whether anything would work in reality. (I’ve been attacked by weapons when I was younger.)

Both Silat and Philippino systems seem to rely on fine motor skills. Fine motor skills go out of the window under adrenal stress.

Krav Maga uses more gross motor skills, but I trained quite a bit in Krav and was never confident if the knife stuff was good enough. Maybe it gives you a slim chance and that’s as good as it gets against a knife.

I realise the best defence is situational awareness and avoidance, but that’s not my question.

So, does a good defence exist against a knife?

 

I think it does. But I think you have to lower your expectations. 90% of stuff is garbage the remaining 10% will increase your odds of survival but offer no guarantees and likely not stop you being hurt)cut.

I like Survival Tactics Against Blade, and I hear that the Dog Bro's die less often material is also good.

 

Yes it does....with a caveat that most people treat as a "bolt on" and spend maybe 1 session a month if they are motivated or lucky

Even in FMA it is not drilled under pressure in 90% of clubs

With any knife defenses - and my own " 30% system" is no excpetion - the training needs to be as consistent as it would be for empty hand and thats why you so rarely see it done well

 

Monkey_Magic:

I assume you mean in the case when you have no other choice than fighting someone armed with a knife. In that case, always try to get something to equalize the odds: a stick or a trash lid or a piece of wood or a stone or a piece of brick or even just sand to throw at his eyes. Or using your belt or your jacket. Or throw your cell phone at his face to distract him and then maybe closing the distance to grab the hand holding the knife and take control of it.

 

@Monkey_Magic
But in case you have to fight someone armed with a knife and there is no object nearby that you can use as a kind of shield or a object to throw, then you should find out what knife disarm techniques look more realistic. And also not very complicated, that require at least some natural responses to execute them.

Let me give you a tip: pay attention to the people in your surroundings ( don't get too distracted by something else such as your cell phone or being mentally somewhere else ). Watch for anyone who is not showing one of his hands ( when he has it in his pocket or behind him ) more or less close to you. He could have a knife or any other weapon in that hand.

 

Does a good way to defend against a knife exist? Yes; a longer reaching weapon, armour and a bigger weapon, a shield and a bigger weapon, a shield and armour and a bigger weapon... Seriously this is a question which as far as I'm concerned was solved several thousand years ago, and solved repeatedly. The question is rather, if you stuck two unarmed people in an empty room and gave one of them a knife, to what degree could you increase the unarmed person's survival chances with all we know about effective modern training?

Increasing someone's physical fitness and fighting attributes (range, timing, etc) are going to give a significant improvement on their own. Now to what degree does the knife specific training improve one's survival capability compared to that? Well specificity of training is important but purely stacking the two against one another I think it gives less improvement to one's chances than fitness and general fight capability, but is still clearly important to the overall preparation for the specific given context.

Now we also have to consider the opponent. Against an untrained opponent the human body is fairly well naturally shielded against laceration as reflected in the large number of wounded as opposed to dead in mass knife attacks. Against a determined attacker with knowledge of how to use the knife, well assuming all other capabilities being even relatively equal except the knife, you're in big trouble. So even with the best training your chances go from slim, to just slightly less than slim. That's why the Dog Brothers aptly named their training "die less often."

 

take a look at the thread

"This thread might possibly save your life."

it is a reasonable introductory discussion about knifes and knife techniques. if you give it a close reading you will see that although it begins with a lot of the usual negative comments - a reasonable consensus emerges. You can also see that across the board of different arts the techniques that most people judge to be helpful tend to have similar characteristics.

 

Yes there is effective unarmed knife defence, if by effective you mean "people have successfully used it". Which is not the same as "consistently effective across multiple situations and skill levels", then no. Unarmed defence against an athletic and determined knife weilder is nearly hopeless. Add to that a skilled knife weilder, then it's almost completely hopeless. The highest percentage techniques are not high percentage in an absolute sense. They're just better than nothing, because they give you the best chances of survival in an incredibly dire situation.

 

So long as you don't also need to swim, yes.

 

There is a guy on youtube who says he always wears a type of armor under his shirt or t-shirt when he has to walk on the streets. His youtube channel is called "Metatron"

 

Even if I catch the attacker's (someone who never trained in any martial art ) hand holding the knife, would he just quickly switch to the other hand? Is there a way to counter that?

 

He doesn't actually do that. It was a joke, but his channel is actually good for info on subjects related to Japan, samurai, Japanese weapons, etc.

 

Yes - take him out first and if you have a weapon deploy it first

 

That is one of the standard counters, so yes he could do that. Ideally, you want to make it hard to do by isolating the knife hand, which is also hard to do. There is no knife defence that a skilled knife fighter cannot circumvent. That's why people use knives. Knife defenses are most effective against a committed attack where the attacker wants to bury the knife in you or stab repeatedly at the same target. They fall apart against feints, second intention attacks, and the like. You're simply not going to prevail unarmed against a savvy knife fighter, barring luck or a huge skill difference. Even if you win (read: survive), you're going to get cut and/or stabbed. You will end up in the hospital, barring incredible luck. You may have to sacrifice your hand. You may have to grab the blade and be severely cut. Better than dying by along shot though.

 

To be honest I'm more worried about the facing an untrained nutter attacking sowing machine style that close and that committed you are losing blood,

Honestly the odds of being attacked by a knife are so low, the likelihood of winning any such accounter so low its not that high on my training priorities if it was I'd carry my own weapon as that's about the beat defense you can have

 

Thanks for all the replies. I wasn’t aware of the STAB program or Die Less Often. Has anyone come across No Lie Blades training?

Also, I’m extremely interested to learn from others experience. This could be training you’ve experienced first-hand (as opposed to theorised!).

More than one person has commented that knife attacks are rare, but I did mention that I’d been attacked by weapons in the past (once resulting in injury). So I agree with the comments about avoidance being the best bet, as always in self-defence.

 

He's an italian. And I don't have any info about the area where he lives.