Knife fighting again...

There's one more thing for now, although I'll probably think of more later. THe mindset needed to bash somebody with a baton is quite a bit different to that needed to stab or slash somebody with a knife. It's still violent, but I think you're more likely to be able to bring yourself to do that than the other, if you're not normally inclined to be a violent person. The weapon won't do you any good if you can't bring yourself to use it.

I'll be answering more about knife work and the use of live blades in practice on another post.

Hi Mr. Morris,

There are many so-called "gurus" who claim to be able to teach either knife fighting or defense against a knife. Most of them are just teaching regurgitated martial arts, usually from some Phillipino or Indonesian knife/hand fighting art. I have respect for the martial traditions of other people, but the truth is that we live where we do. We are not in a "blade culture."
Even in Brazil, the knives are not a weapon, it is a tool (lethal tool of course). Some knife fight professors teaches toe-to-toe, with the same weapons, trying to hit/cut each other like gentlemen. They are teaching dueling even if they start practicing like freak monsters!
My ex-wife (one of my early students) was attacked with a knife.
I had talked to she:
"If you want to survive, you don't go in with a "fighting attitude" to any possible violent event."
Happly she know that was not a fight: it was a try of assassination. The bad guy was not going to want to stand there with she and hack it out. This is exactly the fantasy that many so-called knife fighting experts promote. The absolute last thing I want to do is to try to "fight."
A sharp knife in the hands of one attacker makes him an instant 50th degree Black Belt. Despite all the martial arts mythology and movie-making, there is no completely effective defense against a knife, I presume. Some people can improve your odds slightly but there's a million ways they can be hacked up with a knife.

What are your vision (and fight experience) about and against the knife fighters? How you deal with a knife attacker? What are your advices in this deadly topic?

P.S.: my ex-wife survived, saddly

P.S.: my ex-wife survived, saddly

I'm sorry to hear

I just drop in to have an opinion: there's no such thing as knife fight, as the fight is almost never symmetrical, all participants wielding equal weaponry and all. It's stabbing OR getting stabbed AND trying really hard not to get killed in the process.

The law abiding people get into a fight for two reasons only: 1. their being attacked, or 2. to rescue somebody under attack. In both cases there's no room for dueling, with or without knives, otherwise 1. it's not a fight, or 2. they're not law abiding.

Hello Sven,

I´m one of the "law abiding people" so

P.s.: you wrote

there's such thing as knife fight, as the fight is almost never symmetrical, all participants wielding equal weaponry and all. It's stabbing OR getting stabbed AND trying really hard not to get killed in the process.

probably you want mean

there's NO such thing as knife fight, as the fight is almost never symmetrical, all participants wielding equal weaponry and all. It's stabbing OR getting stabbed AND trying really hard not to get killed in the process.

Edited. Thanks, mate

And about "law abiding", please read the following article:

Better Trained: Cop Killers or the Police Officers They Kill?

By Ken Hanson

In the first part of this series we examined how
those who dismiss criminals as being stupid are in fact themselves
acting stupid. In another example of how dangerous it can be to
underestimate the two-legged predators who walk among us, the FBI has
recently finished a five year study of cop killers and the
shootouts that took the officer’s life. While I have only seen a
summary and not the whole report from the FBI,The Force Science
Institute has published a very good synopsis of the report.

Some of the findings reinforce the deadly misconceptions the public
has about criminals. In these attacks, the criminal was found to
practice more often than the police officer, shoot more accurately
than the police officer, has more experience in using lethal force
than the officer and has the proper mindset needed to survive the
encounter.

These findings need to be a wakeup call to the public: The thugs
among us have been going through urban combat training since a very
early age, and in the typical encounter, the street predator has the advantage.


To the readers of this website and those who take responsibility for
their own safety, many of the study’s findings will not be
surprising. For instance, offenders:


Do not pick a particular firearm with any criteria in mind, instead
being stuck with what happened to be on hand.

Do not legally buy their firearms, with only one exception in the study.

Do not obtain any firearms from gun shows. -Almost exclusively chose
handguns over the infamous “assault rifles.”

Do not use accessories or equipment, such as holsters or flashlights.

Beyond these findings, which are common sense confirmations of the
reality that exists for all but the most rabid anti-gunners, some of
the findings are pretty shocking, and we should adjust our training
accordingly.

Criminals do not worry about marksmanship, stance, grip, sight
alignment or any of the other fundamentals we rely upon. Instead,
they rely most often on instinctive shooting, or “point and click.”
The key is to get rounds on target, quickly. As one cold-blooded
killer remarked, even if he shoots you in the leg, he can walk up
later after you are incapacitated and put one in your head. Despite
this, the criminals have a much greater accuracy rate than the police.

Criminals have been carrying and using firearms for far longer than
those they target, as early as since age 9 and almost all since age
12. This has given them real-life experience in the carrying and use
of guns from a very early age, and just like the young athlete out
on the basketball court until sundown, they excel at what they practice.

Criminals have been through a PhD program in mindset. Most of these
thugs have grown up without parents and have learned the lessons of
the street. For years and years, their ability to survive has
depended largely upon their willingness to do whatever it takes to
persevere in an encounter. Think about that, while your kids are
home eagerly awaiting the debut of High School Musical 2 in the
coming weeks, those who will prey on them are out experiencing life
and death encounters, and not necessarily for the first time. As an
interesting corollary to this, the thugs who have been involved in
repeated deadly encounters have probably USED force; the police who
have been involved in repeated deadly encounters often have simply
THREATENED the use of force. The police mindset is perhaps being
diluted since they often defuse the encounter without using the gun,
whereas the bad guy almost always uses the gun.

Criminals most often hide their guns in the waistband of their
pants, often near their groin. The male criminals were of a uniform
opinion that female police officers were more willing to conduct a
thorough search of their person than male officers. Beyond this, the
study found police often missed “telltales” of weapon presence on
the offender. Bulges, inappropriate clothing, constant touching of
the gun through layered clothing, blading the body away from the
officer to protect access to the gun etc.

This is very scary stuff to those of us who work 9-5 and rush home
to get the kids to soccer practice. We have so many different things
on our minds as we go through the day that often we are not in a
position to conduct ourselves appropriately from a personal security
standpoint. (Ohio’s laws on “no carry” zones do not help. Gun bans
disarm victims, not criminals.) The fact that our sworn officers are
perhaps at a training disadvantage to the bad guys should be a stark
warning to us civilians. We need to recommit ourselves and our
families to living the Warrior mindset while still being normal,
functioning members of society.

Otherwise, in an armed encounter, a concealed carry license is just
as worthless as a rabbit’s foot carried for luck.

Attorney Ken Hanson is Buckeye Firearms Association Legislative
Chair and author of The Ohio Guide to Firearm Laws.

Mr. Hanson talked about firearms, but blades must be include too...

What they neglect to mention in that study is the reason the criminals appear to be more accurate than the police...and it is only appearance...and that is the LEO is responding to being shot at by the bad guy and not the initiator.

In other words, bad guy plans to shoot any cop that tries to stop him. He's already prepared mentally and initiates said contact. Cop, on his 24th traffic stop of the day isn't really expecting any trouble and all of a sudden comes under fire. Now, while enduring a massive adrenalin dump, and still under fire, must draw and fire back.

Reverse the equation. Let's cop decide to assassinate bad guys and see how accurate the bad guy is after being shot/shot at.

Nick

Have to agree. You can't be at Condition Red all the time (there's VERY thin and blurry line between being cautious and paranoid, the latter being mental illness), and getting there takes time. The one who starts all the mess always has an advantage. After all, that's the idea behind our proactive training.

Haven't forgotten about this thread, and it looks like the basis for a good discussion. Got some stuff lined up but I won't be able to post until next week, I've got a busy weekend.

Steve

Luciano, I’ve often scanned You Tube etc. to see how other martial artists from the traditional Chinese, Japanese, Okinawan, Filipino, Indonesian and more modern combative disciplines go about dealing with a man armed with a knife. Irrespective of their performance or their claims as to the effectiveness of these traditions/systems or personal methods, or even my own opinion (which is usually ‘what a load of bollocks’), there is one simple fact that remains. And that is, whatever they’re doing isn’t worth shit unless it’s been tested on the streets or in training.

By ‘in training’ I don’t mean in some live blade choreographed karate/aikido/tai chi demonstration against some well-rehearsed stooge, or in drills against an equally compliant training partner. I mean tested in some form of reality based conditional and dissimilar/aggressor training in which even with a training blade, marker or rolled-up newspaper, the intent of your training partner is to butcher you like a piece of meat in one way or another in the shortest possible time. His objective should not be, as is so often the case, to fulfill the illusion of the effectiveness of your tradition, system or personal method by feeding you those stabs, cuts, and slashes you are familiar with in some choreographed, pre-determined way.

For example, if the teacher claims that you should respond in a certain particular way, then test it. See if it works. It’s easy to do this. Ten to one, it won’t work. And, if he’s a non-violent type and he says forget knife defence and run, then try that and see if you can get to the door before your training partner cuts you to ribbons. Try it. For real, try it.

Whatever mindset, physiological response, or physical skills you acquire through your training for dealing with a man armed with a knife, they must be the consequence of working with a training partner who is able to replicate someone who is seriously trying to kill you. Even with a training knife, marker, or rolled-up newspaper, he must be able to replicate your worst nightmare and not one of your fucking daydreams.

And here’s the thing. If you can’t deal with somebody attacking you in a violent and random way with a training knife, marker or rolled-up newspaper, how the fuck are you going to be able to deal with someone armed with say a butcher’s knife who is attacking you in a totally unpredictable way?

On another thread some while back I think it was Rob Mac mentioned live machete practice as a route to the 'aggressive mindset.' I don't really see it that way, unless you're using it for real and I assume that's not the case! Sure, engaging in live blade choreographed displays or live blade drills might seem to be the real deal. But the mindset, physiological response, and necessary skills to take on someone with a knife are based on compliance in this case. If either of the parties get it wrong as to what they have to do, and when and where in such an exchange, somebody could end up dead, crippled for life, or blinded. Such exchanges are never free, because the consequences of making a mistake in a free exchange could be deadly. And both parties, being fully aware of this, are naturally cautious when engaging in such drills. That clearly shows up when you watch clips of live blade exchanges.

We learn from our mistakes. Training with training blades, markers and rolled up newspapers allows you to go at full power in an unpredictable way. And here’s the important thing. You get to learn from your mistakes, over and over again, until you get it right. Training with a live blade doesn’t allow you to train at full power in an unpredictable way. You can’t afford to make mistakes. That’s why the routines are overly prescribed and controlled. They don’t prepare you for the reality of the fight.

Not that there aren’t problems when using training blades, markers and rolled-up newspapers; there are. But providing you use your imagination with regards to a realistic encounter, and keep it real—don’t turn it into some fucking stupid game of tag with a blade, or something that resembles a fight on the set of Zorro—training with training blades, etc. can produce more reality than training with the live blade.

There are, of course, occasions within training when you need to work with a live blade to gain familiarity with it; for example, doing solo stabs, cuts and slashes. But again, you’d first want to start with a training knife because of the possibility that you could even cut yourself. Also, if you’re working a knife blade you need to be able to work it against a target, again, with a replica knife before moving on to the real thing. Until you’ve tested your grip, particularly when the handle is slick, you could very well slip and cut your own hand, sever your own tendons. Also, you can get used to the experience of the live blade by standing at a safe distance and allowing somebody to cut, slash and stab at you so you can get used to the sense of being in the presence of a live blade, and how you might respond psychologically to the reality of the knife. You can also get a sense of the movement of the blade and how you might have to connect or disconnect with it. But all of the real close contact/entry drills would actually have to be performed with training knives, etc. for obvious reasons!

The real key, though, to learning to deal with someone armed with a knife is your training partner, who for obvious reasons in technical drilling and even some forms of conditional fighting, shows a certain compliance while you’re in this learning process. But he doesn’t do so during dissimilar/aggressor training. In that form of training, he’s out to kill you, and to prove to you that whatever defence or counter you have, it isn’t worth a shit. That’s his objective. He isn’t there to prove that what you’re doing works. He’s there to prove that what you’re doing, doesn’t. And that’s where he gives to the opportunity to learn from your mistakes. From a personal perspective, you have to learn what works for you and what doesn’t, irrespective of what your trainer might be demonstrating.

Because it’s so dangerous to get real experience against a knife—you can’t go out and pick fights like you might as an unarmed fighter go out on a Saturday night looking for a scrap—this is where dissimilar/aggressor training is critical. Also, within dissimilar/aggressor training you need to practice starting this fight for your life as if you’ve already been wounded, or you’re in a bad position, say on the ground in a compromised position. You have to sometimes start the fight at this disadvantage and seek to overcome it.

This is an area where working on your mind is very important. Like an actor, you have to be able to get into this state where you vividly imagine that you’ve been wounded and it’s serious. Because that’s a strong possibility with a knife; you could get cut or stabbed before you even saw the knife, as well as within the exchange.

If you’re doing this dissimilar training with markers to show where you’ve been hit, then don’t stop when you win the fight. Afterward, you also need to check yourself for wounds, seriously, and be able to self-administer first aid in such a circumstance. Otherwise you could bleed to death before any assistance comes.

The greatest problem with this kind of training, as I’ve already intimated, is finding training partners who are able to replicate the natural born killer types who will kill you without batting an eyelash. Some of them will laugh while they’re doing it. And the reason this is difficult is because the greater percentage of martial art practitioners are non-aggressive types who haven’t a fucking clue what real violence is. Therefore they have a problem with expressing themselves in a violent and destructive way that would come naturally to the natural born killer.

If you cannot replicate that violence, then the only person you’re good at fighting is a non-violent type, and it’s unlikely that he’s the guy you’re going to maybe someday run into. It’s a real Catch-22. What do you do?

The majority of martial artists have no psychological/physiological/physical template to work from, either by their own experiences or by drawing on the experiences of their masters, trainers, or coaches, etc. Indeed, some of these masters, etc. see violence as abhorrent and the domain of the psychologically flawed. Trouble is, it’s the psychologically flawed who will kill you if you are in their territory, step into their personal space, say the wrong thing, or move in the wrong way. Or, indeed, some will kill you purely for the gratification of doing so, for no rhyme or reason.

From my experience, the best people at dealing with those natural born killer types, the so-called ‘bad guys’ are other bad guys. And the best guys at training the non-aggressive types, the so-called ‘good guys’ are bad guys who have a handle on the source of their violence and understand how they have successfully expressed it in many violent encounters. They’re not good guys with the morality of a saint, riding some fucking white horse, or good guys trying to pretend to be bad guys. They are bad guys, who for whatever reason, are willing to teach you what they know.

Computer security firms often hire hackers to sort out their problems, because it’s the hacker they have to defend against. No different here. Knowing your enemy isn’t just about being able to recognize killer types and deciding how you might then go about dealing with them at a verbal or physical level. It’s about being able to get inside his head, having a sense of what he is feeling and thinking and realising the implication of his behaviour and actions. You are able to do that because on some level, you are one of these guys.

Now the thing is, how do you become a bad guy when you are in reality a good guy? Most people are not comfortable with being the bad guy, so they’d rather remain the good guy and run the risk, hoping that they never find themselves in a situation against a seriously hostile opponent. Or they entrust themselves to a ‘good guy’ instructor who claims you’ll be able to solve the problem without compromising your psyche. This is very common in the martial arts.

If I tell you that you’ve got to adopt the mindset of the natural born killer in order to replicate him in training and give yourself and your training partners any hope of surviving against such an individual, most of you will leave the room forthwith! But that’s what’s got to be done. Now having said that, it doesn’t mean you go off to an NLP course teaching you how to be a sociopath, or that all your training is done in a red fury of blind violence. There’s a process, and it’s integral to my method.

To view the world as the dangerous guy, you have to change those neural networks (i.e., recognition, strategic/generative, afferent/limbic networks) by which you interact with the world. There are many ways to do this, but some of them are highly controversial, and not something I would personally put up on the site. Though, as I explained to Ken Milling (who’s a psychologist) this weekend, you can actually go about making these changes in your daily life if you are so inclined.

But the simplest way is to be involved in a reality-based training method that isn’t bullshit, and which is supervised by somebody who is one of these bad guys. There’s a discussion going on over on Shi Kon about whether your trainer needs to be able to fight.
http://www.shikon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2323

Their arguments in favour of the trainer not needing to fight are OK for boxing or any other contact sport, because the athlete is already aggressive and wants to fight and the trainer is there to provide technical help. But that’s not the case in 99% of the martial arts. The guys who are coming in to the typical dojo or gym don’t know how to fight and expect to be taught how. Where’s their representation of that? Not only doesn’t their teacher fight, but they never get to fight, either. In sport, the athletes are already athletes and the coaches can be fat and old and washed-out, because the coach isn’t the one performing, the athletes are. Even at the lowest level of competitive sport, the guys on the field are playing the actual game. They’re not academically debating it or practicing certain aspects of it in demonstrations or in isolation of the game. They’re doing it. And that’s how the martial arts should be. But aren’t. Unfortunately.

I have more to say about the second post you put up from the American gun rights advocate, but let’s see where we go with this one first.[url]

Hi there , thank you for a very interesting post about knives Steve, i have a question to which there may not be an easy answer,

there has been a lot said about what does not work as knife defence and some of the problems that exist in certain systems.
what i would like to know though, is there a sysetm or training method that can dramatically increase the chances of an unarmed man surviving a serious knife attack ?
i mean is there a tried and tested method that actually does work and can be learned by the average guy? obviously there is no 100% foolproof method and anything can happen in combat but is there a sytle/system/trainingmethod etc that can help ?

thanks

Frank

For example, if the teacher claims that you should respond in a certain particular way, then test it. See if it works. It’s easy to do this. Ten to one, it won’t work. And, if he’s a non-violent type and he says forget knife defence and run, then try that and see if you can get to the door before your training partner cuts you to ribbons. Try it. For real, try it.

I yet tried it. Even when I runned much more faster than my partner, he always can throw his blade into my uncovered back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFcQ_EQBbKk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0fPL4f3Eqc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izDQwDT_ERg

If you’re doing this dissimilar training with markers to show where you’ve been hit, then don’t stop when you win the fight. Afterward, you also need to check yourself for wounds, seriously, and be able to self-administer first aid in such a circumstance. Otherwise you could bleed to death before any assistance comes.

I must agree: learn self-first aid is self-protection too! One friend in Brazil was resident doctor so I can visited emergency hospitals in Sao Paulo city to watch some knife (and another weapons) wounds. Sometimes I saw only the final results: the autopsy. Gore and real. That´s my reason to put this post here. I also cut my nail and half tip of my finger once (not fighting but in the paper guillotine´s job). Since that I know how replicate this "sweet" and "cold" feeling.

You don't teach people how to be a street knife fighter, you teach them how to survive against one. That´s right?
In resume, if I understood correctly, the better process of training needs the real deal simulation (with securance and common sense of course): a lot of mistakes, over and over again, until get it right, with and without live blade. And again we always need a violent man behind (and ruling)this approach.
So, this key factor "ingredient" send us to that second post about the law abiding men (i.e. non-violent type).
After the notorious "respect for elders, because your elders will beat you up, if you don't show respect" my father´s second advice to me was: the worst enemy in certain cases are the coward (shadows, shotgun hit in the night...).
In most traditional martial arts (and some CQC systems) the idea that a truly violent and dangerous "predator" would walk up behind them and just shoot (stab) them in the back doesn't seem to enter their heads! They fixate on and train for their fantasyes about violence, not how it happens in real world...

P.S.: not a "bad guy" Mr. Morris. You are a "Professional" bad guy. Great difference in this business