not to revive the squabbling of this thread ... but ... here is the start of an article i am writing on knife defence and how we training it. Introduction Knife confrontation is a becoming ever more present in the minds of the general public. Many news stories and articles are being presented with the ‘growing threat’ being the main focus. Lets first talk about the reality of the situation. The media would have you believe that everyone on every corner has a knife and is willing to use it. But this is simply not the case based on the violent attack figures. Here are some statistics on the reality of the current climate. Gun and knife enabled offences are uncommon. In London during 2004/05, only 2 percent of all recorded violent crime involved a gun and 5 percent involved a knife. This said, in 2003/04 more gun-enabled crimes were recorded in London than any other region in England and Wales: around 40 percent of the national total . This may seem a large figure but it equates to around 6 offences per 10,000 Londoners per year. Source: MPS recorded crime and Povey, D (2004) Home Office This being said we cannot ignore the fact that knife crime and violent armed assult are real dangers in the modern inner cities. It has been said that one in three inner city children between the ages of 9 and 13 are believed to carry knives on a regular basis. With this in mind, but very much kept in perspective, we should begin to arm ourselves with effective and practical methods of defence should the worst situation occur. The basics of violent knife attack A very common misconception that we see in a lot of knife defence work is that you will be frontally attacked by a person with their knife on full show. This is obviously the case in some very rare circumstances and should be trained against but is by no means the norm. We often see in martial arts schools two people facing off each other at a couple of meters distance, one with a knife and one without. Then the knife attacker commits from this distance with a big stab or slash. It is quite obvious that this is a contrived situation which may not be based in reality. But what is the reality of the situation? Video footage of knife attack, available of the web, and police attack reports suggest that by far the most common method of attack in the UK involves multiple attackers and surprise opportunist stabbings. Should you face a skilled knife fighter the attack pattern can include slashes, stabs and nicks. When we train to defend against knife we should look at what is common in reality for our location and amplify the skill and ability level of the attackers to cater for the worst case scenario. We need to work with surprise, multiple opponents, skilled attacks, concealed weapons and different weapon lengths and types. But first we have to look at the basics of training ‘knife defence’. Getting Cut A myth that is often perpetuated in knife defence classes and MA techniques is that you wont get cut if you use certain methods. This is simply not true. If you look at any person that has had regular need to defend themselves against a knife you will see that their arms and body are a patchwork of scars. I myself have scars and I have only had to defend myself against a knife on relatively few occasions. Your priority with all this work is to not be killed. It is as simple as that. In order to achieve this we need to ensure that we don’t get cut or stabbed in areas that will immediately threaten our lives. We also have to be careful not to fall into the other trap of assuming that where ever a knife touches you will be cut. This is simply not the case in a normal environment, with normal clothing and under normal conditions. For a knife to cut it needs to ‘drawn across’ as surface or stabbed into a surface. If we are wearing heavy clothing such as a leather jacket or similar, cut and stab penetration may be reduced. Being cut in vital areas such as the insides of the arms and legs, groin, neck, kidneys and heart will obviously cause immediately life threatening results. To put into perspective how quickly a cut to these areas can cause death the FAIRBAINE ‘death time table’ Has the shortest time of death after a serious cut at 4 seconds …. The longest time is 1 minute 30 seconds. (information from the Fairbaine WW2 commando combat manual ‘get tough’) We must therefore limit and attempt to control the areas of the body that are exposed to a knifes point or edge. This is some of the basic principle work that needs to be integrated into your movement. What training knife. When we begin training in knife work we must first of all consider the safety of our training. It is obviously not good to just straight to training with a live blade as injury will occur. Rubber knife: Firstly we start by using a soft rubber knife. This enables safe practice without a high training threat level. The quality of movement at this level will be somewhat crude as there is no psychological fear of the rubber training blade. Wooden knife: Here the threat level has increased sufficiently to change the quality of your movement. A wooden knife is capable of bruising and causing pain so you with subconsciously be more effective with your movement. Blunt Metal Training Blade: Here the threat level is increased again. Your psyche recognises the threat as real, due to the visual stimulus of the metal blade and also the feel of the blade should it touch you. Here you movement will become even more refined. Live Metal Blade: This should not be used by the majority of people practicing knife work. The use of the live blade can be essential in some circumstances for trained security professionals as it will increase the understanding of their mental state should they face a real knife. So we have a definitive stepped process related to knife work that allows us to train safely but steadily increase our bodies familiarity with a knife. It is important to point out that the use of various materials is not just for safety but also to increase your minds ability to deal with knife work. Basic Skills There a certain number of skills that are required to be effective in a knife defence situation. The first and most important consideration is your awareness. It is irrelevant how good your technique is, how well you move, how powerful your strikes are etc if you are not aware. Remember the 4 second death from a serious cut. If you aren’t aware of it coming you will be a victim on a statistics sheet. Awareness involves a great number of natural and trained skills. From recognising a threatening environment to recognising concealed intent we need to equip ourselves with certain skills and trust our instincts. After awareness comes three ideas that are interlinked, happen simultaneously and form the basis of knife defence. Move • Check • Disrupt These ideas need to occur at the same time so as to overwhelm the opponents aggressive intent. Let look at them individually and see why they are inseparable. Move: The first idea is that we move ourselves to safety in some way. This means that if an attack comes in we firstly avoid it in that moment with movement. By movement we can mean footwork to move the entire body away. This is obviously fairly difficult in a certain circumstances, for instance should we be sat in a chair, stood at a bar or led on the ground so we also have to gain the ability to move certain areas of the body away without a reliance on footwork. Check: This principle basically means to control or stop the attacking limb. This is actually part of our natural reactions. When something comes at us we often shoot our hand out to protect ourselves. What is tricking in that situation is that we may open certain areas to attack, most noticeably the wrists. So we need to ‘train’ our reaction to enable us to check safely. Again this is in the first split second as we move. We often see people grabbing the attacking arm etc. Which is fine if you have good hand eye co-ordination and see the attack early, but we must work from a position of initial safety first and foremost so ‘checking’ with the outside of the forearm or similar can be very effective. Disrupt: This is the principle of attacking the attackers structure or psyche. The attacker is the animated principle in knife defence. It is the attacker that is the issue … NOT the knife. A knife sat on a table is no different from a book sat on a table, there potensial for damage is the same. When a person interacts with the knife is when the threat level increases. So we want to disrupt the attacker in some way to put him on the defensive. This is generally done with as hard a strike as possible, but can involve a lock or throw. Again this happens as you move and check. NOT as an afterthought. When these three ideas come together we have a basis for immediately defending ourselves in that split second. They then present themselves throughout an encounter as it is either dealt with or escalates. More to follow ….
Need to modify the technique to use a wrist grab for example. This would lead up to disarming I would think. Ultimately, you have to control that weapon or the attacker can twist and strike.
Head theory - the bane of effective self-defence imho - control the opponent's mind, momentum and centre and they can't do much of anything ime - from outside a spectator can 'see' what they could do - from inside they're out of control at Alton Towers lol
Hi, Agreed - the other important aspect is timing / speed. The defender needs to be working to a different rhythm to the attacker so that the attacker is thrown (mentally and physically) off balance and just never gets the chance to recover. One of the things that interests me is that the rhythm doesn't have to be faster than the attacker's - it can be slower - it's just critical that it's different. Of course that leads me on to think of the thing I hate most in martial arts SPARRING - which (generally) teaches you to match rhythm <SIGH>. All the best. Robert.
really look at this sentence ... What is the danger as you point out in this sentence. It ISNT THE KNIFE. you say it yourself the ATTACKER can twist and strike. so why control the knife?? It is the attacker thats making the knife 'alive'. Rather than controling the knife the mindset should be control the attacker. No matter whether they are holding a bar, knife, broken bottle, needle etc It is the attacker thats the problem in EVERY scenario. Make the attacker unable to twist and strike ... then you dont have to worry about him doing it. Regards Chris
Hi Chris and All, I am sooooo a wishy washy Charlie Brown on this issue... IT DEPENDS The type of knife, the type of attack, my position, my attackers position and probably zillions of other factors will (for me) be the factors that decide whether I'll go for the knife or the hand or the arm or the man (or run like ****). As I always say "It's all situational" All the best. Robert.
I don't think you understand what controlling the weapon means. :bang: The impression that I get from Robert is that he understands what that means. Am I correct in that assumption Monsieur Robert?
End of the day, if you are attacked with a knife and have foreknowledge of both the attack and the weapon and you can't escape for whatever reason, then it is time to put the playing aside. You are fighting for your life, and you have to do the job properly. No wishy washy lock and holds - time to take the locks to the next level. That means breaks and dislocations. You have to put your attacker down. Don't go for a lock at first, take a hold of the knifehand and then hit him hard, smash his nose if you can, that gives you time to take out his weapon arm so he can't attack you. You may get in some trouble with the police, but you are alive.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ This is all getting a tad pedantic imho Whether you go for the hand with the weapon, the whole arm or control the whole body to make it ineffective - all are "controlling the weapon" fundamentally. "Fighting over" and/or "focussing on" the weapon are the fundamental errors here. They waste your power. Whether you control the person (and therefore the weapon) by "nutting" "stoating" or "jobbing" them or whether you do it by a series of locks and manoeuvres or whatever - the key point is that the power of the weapon is the person using it. And the power behind that is the mind inside them... one of the things that makes IMA stand out is that there is usage of that point rather than just mechanistic technique alone, is it not? So, can we discuss techniques in a less emotive way from here on in? Peace :Angel:
Granted, but the point that is still at issue here is "Controlling the person" is a vague statement. Those who don't understand will have the false assumption that they can defend against the empty hand as opposed to the hand that has the live blade because they think they are controlling the person. It may be clear to you, but you'd be surprised to find how many people, especially those who have no training experience at all (those who are looking for information before starting martial arts training) will think this way. You have to remember, it isn't just people who are already studying something who are reading these threads.
hi all, Another short clip here ... you can see some non complient work here as well as working from the ground and against a wall. http://www.ukinternalarts.co.uk/YLAK.mov cheers Chris
sorry to revive an old thread ... but i have just put together another quick clip of some knife work. http://www.ukinternalarts.co.uk/media/knifeclip.mov shows some freework at the end. let me know your thoughts Cheers Chris
This latest video is a classic example of what should be referred to as secondary and dangerous techniques. I'm not saying that they wont work, because just about anything can work, but all of the techniques pictured make one severe fault. They all relly on the defenders ability to control a knife weilding attacker with a perry or one handed grips. If the defender mist his perry he was not out of the way of the blade that I saw. And, he made it look as though he could avoid being sliced while he was wrestling the knife away from his attacker. Get out of the way first. Then control the Weapon. Then Dissarm. Then smash and pummle to your hearts content.
Goju man ... we have been over this throughout the thread ...lets not jump back into everything we have covered alot before. I would love to see some of your knife defence videos. also sankaku, Not a real knife a training blade. Thanks chris
One part about videos I'm finding more about is that it depends a lot on how the attacker (opponent) attacks and how realistic their attacks are. The last video from middleway is a good one because it shows training against resistance. The only fault in the video is the attacker was not shown to be a skilled or experienced knife fighter. By skilled I mean formal training in FMA or something along those lines or experienced such as being involved and witness to real knife fights such as what might happen in the prison system. Now this is not a reflection on my part on the actual real skill of the attacker, only the attacks demonstrated in the video. Bottomline is that the video was a good one for what it was, IMHO. Nice job middleway. Here are two examples of knife counters I managed to transfer to video: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM93ambRTaI"]Martial arts - knife counter rw04 - YouTube[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4ECWUkmkyE"]Martial arts - knife counter rw03 - YouTube[/ame] In both of these, the attacker was resisting but overall you might say he was very compliant. Therefore these videos can only demonstrate the mechanics of the techniques, in no way do they validate the effectiveness of the techniques. The mechanics are as follows: 1) don't get hit (get off the line of attack), protect the high and low lines 2) parry weapon hand keeping back of hand/forearm to blade 3) align the body, enter 4) these techniques untilize under arm elbow and shoulder control to keep the weapon arm from retracting and to keep control of the delivery system. 5) unbalance or stun attacker 6) apply technique (lock) 7) takedown edit: sorry didn't see what forum this was in, hope you don't mind me posting here.
hello, "the attacker was not shown to be a skilled or experienced knife fighter. By skilled I mean formal training in FMA or something along those lines or experienced such as being involved and witness to real knife fights such as what might happen in the prison system." sorry i'm not quite on the same page. are you saying that only the Filipino systems know how to fight with knifes? Are you saying that real life fights are only those that happen in prisons, and therefore anyone who has not been in prison and witnessed, or participated (I assume you mean participated in because you can see prison fights all over the web) in these does not understand knife fighting? Or are you saying that by the movements shown you can't see any knife skill? Or are you saying that from the movements shown you can tell that I have not witnessed or been involved in knife fights? :bang: Prison is one place, things happen different in prison. The knife situations you will encounter in normal life will be different. you are not likely to be attacked by someone with FMA experience to any real degree. also if Chris had not done an initial check and strike the thing would look much more like a prison stabbing. look closer, it is there but you have to look for it. when the attacker becomes the attacked the situation changes. thanks sam
