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[TLE]

OK, OK. I have done steps 1-4. I am heading out the door now to spread the ashes. I figure the chicago river is a fittting place.Then I'll come back and order the new book!

[Mesmeriser]

this is very interesting  i was thinking about this just the other day.
i never had anything with knives, ( well i had as a kid, everybody had a switchblade at one point im sure, rambo and his knife were pretty cool to  but i grew over it pretty fast)

and i noticed that while doing eskrima they all seemed to treat knives and the whole knife fighting as jolly good fun for the whole fammily and its all so cool.
and i noticed after some cloasses i was getting drawn into this i always tought of knives as real scary dangerous things but i was beginning to think it was fun as you just drill it and the whole class is smiling.

i think its important when teaching knive and other weapons to constantly ground the students to brutal reality of what it is your doing, your practicing defending against life ending attacks and how to brutally maim and kill people with a knife.
after a couple of classes i caught myself thinking how i could easily disarm an armed attacker with these new techniques i been practicing... errr...i quickly corrected my thinking

that kinda thinking gets people killed.

it all just seem so much fun with the fake rambo knife you buy and use in training its like when you were playing soldier as a kid.
i can only speak for what ive seen but i think there should be a little more sense of reality in eskrima classes. it isnt fun, it isnt a cool art,its brutal killing and maiming i'l remember to keep this in mind when dealing with the knives.

good stuff

mes,

[Mesmeriser]

actually thinking back how i really got sucked into the whole knife thing was somebody told me getting good with the knife will do wonders for your pangamut later on

[redcap]

Well done, another who has come over to the light side of the Force. I agree completely about the smiling eskrima class thing. People get carried away with the flow and so on and forget it is a killing act they are training for. Not only that the person they are killing isn't trying to kill them but almost zombie like will freeze and allow you to flow into your sooooo cool knife pattern.

We have a long time instructor of basically just knife stuff here in Australia. Nice bloke, very funny, very skillful and well thought of by one and all, almost. I've known him for twenty years and I know he isn't anywhere near a cold blooded knife wielding thug. What worries me is that he might carry a knife and one day find he has to defend himself. He has had very little actual fight experience and none that I know of with a blade but I could be wrong and all that besides, he is a very skillful martial artist without a doubt. I think he will fall back on his training and one of two things will happen.

He will kill his attacker and find the law doesn't see his actions as reasonable in the circumstances. Or, he will disarm his attacker and stab or cut him and the attacker fails to realize this in the heat of the moment and continues his attack. Either the attacker will kill the instructor or the instructor will kill him. Both outcomes will invoke the Law of Unforeseen Consequences.

If he clicks into remote control and slices up his attacker as he trains to do every day of the week he might go too far. If he doesn't then there is a lot of empirical evidence the attacker won't even feel the cuts and stabs. So why carry the knife? Because that is his bread and butter. As they say, how you train is how you fight.
Redcap

[whitewolf]

the thoughts presented here so far make a lot of sense to me- although i have been shown a few disarms against a stick and a knife-i still feel that i have a long way to go to be preficient-maybe i can do iot but i need to feel more confident-so i even tell my students lets work on this and all get better at it-as for instructors who never have been in a fight against a edge wpn  or club i have to agree on these subjects one has to have had some practical experience to say"this works"
they dont have to have been stabbed but at least  did some real reality type training or been envolved a little to see what it mentally feeels like to be up against
a opponent.
One of the instructors i had who teaches use of stick told me the the dueling type practise where you both bang away at each others stick instead of learning to block and go in to hit a  vulnerable area is not as good as i.e-strike the wpn hand-hold the wpn hand and strike the wpn hand with your wpn then strike him. -keep it simple and very quick.
so thats how i practise-
WW (ELB) "speed of light"

[redcap]

WW, I am a living legend in my own lounge room when it comes to disarming of knives and sticks. I have done both for real and yet.... It can go horribly wrong at any time. I recall one road incident where I got out to check the damage to my car (the other car's passenger had thrown something at me for no reason I could discern). The thrower got out, a weedy little young bloke. I got into my car and drove off. He had a claw hammer in his fist, plus his mate the driver was getting out with something in his paws. I couldn't see any damage anyway so why stay and get into a fight with a nutcase with a hammer? As 'expert' as I might be, what if I slipped or "missed it by that much, chief"? Not worth finding out.

They then chased me and got in front and slammed on the brakes, I narrowly missed hitting them. I let the traffic get around us and kept back until they turned off. Bizarre behaviour. I did take a number plate and asked a mate in the job to run the plates. Some weeks later I heard someone had put sand in the gas tank of their car, slashed four tyres and left a hammer in the bonnet as a hood ornament. Probably no prints on the hammer, I bet whoever it was wore gloves and used the hammer they'd left under the passenger seat. I guess it was Karma.
Redcap

[whitewolf]

Red=excellent-it shows that you actually did self defense by not getting in over your head and lived to see another day-so many do not evade but instead stick their chest out and say -opps another pint of blood nurse-
I always tell students if possible get the hell out of the area-forget your pride and just
ignore the problem if possible-go home to the house--WW

[Mesmeriser]

you gotta admit though WW that can be hard sometimes. but i def agree its not worth getting sliced up over. besides a big knife is scary as hell.

kudos on the clean get away though redcap,

i actually did knifetraining last week and were getting into the duelling part i actually dont like it, all it does is teach bad habits because blocks are different with the knife then you slash stab the guy and cut up the biceps, triceps these patterns are brutal though damn.

i discovered what im really after  is the counter knife stuff  and the counter stick stuff, how to deal with those attacks and train lots of applications.

its still funny to see ho they treat knife fighting as good ol fammily fun in class

[Kentbob]

One of the things I always do, no matter what I'm teaching to people, is underscore the brutal reality of any sort of violence.  The essence is that any sort of violence is scary, dirty, nasty, ugly, and not really a whole lot of fun once blood gets spilled. 

THEN, I tell them that you cannot dwell on this reality, or else you begin to shut down a little, and can't focus on the task at hand.  It's only something to be cognizant of, not brood over.  Always remember that we are training for a bad situation, in which guts may end up on the ground, but don't dwell.  Some eyes got real big when I told this to a women's class, but in the end they were very appreciative.

I saw this in a Kuntaw class at college.  The college instructor, who was not one of my favorites, was very focused on flow, and feel, and blah blah blah.  It was apparent he had not been in a fight.  As stated, it's not good to go overboard with flow and all that.  It's important, I think, but not THAT important.

Kent

[metz57]

At one knife / counter knife seminar I went to the instructor started the day by passing round very graphic photographs of real knife wounds. It was a very effective way to put the training in context. I remember a small group of guys (wearing t-shirts with the name of the Filipino art they practiced) going a little green while looking at the pictures. It seemed to me that it was the first time the gruesome nature of the skills they had thought of as ‘fun’ had exposed.

Metz

[redcap]

I have a handout with that famous photo of the back sliced open, the one many claim is a police officer but I think he's a con. It is gruesome and it does get the point across. On the other side is the 'Heaven Six' method I developed and a photo of the basic position, covering throat, heart and so on.

I still have students wanting to 'duel'. I use two real chinese copy knives, a K-Bar knock off and an M14 bayonet copy. Both heavy blades that are blunt and taped, as are the ends. After the first hand cut the range widens and the mad do or die tactics disappear. If I get a whack in to the side of the head (above the ear the bone is thickest) you can see the other guy start to question his entire collection of reasons to learn to fight with a knife. Sometimes I get lucky straight off and either slash the throat or get a stab in and those really hurt. Then we can all get back to counter knife training with ego's proportional to reality.
Redcap

[whitewolf]

hey Red-i sure would lke to see u smack one of them beside the ear-ww

[Mesmeriser]

yeah i saw those pictures from an old topic yesterday, really opened my eyes\
this guys had deep  ass cuts like a piece of meat sliced opem it was ridiculous.
never really had a picture of what slashing could do in my head, i always just knew stabbing would kill ya but that slashing man, damn its ridiculous cuts you open like those slabs of meat you see at butchers.

its really important you fucking respect a knife or whatever combat your trainining for.
it made me realise even more how ridiculous the knife fun type of mimndset in my class was.
seeing those pics i realised its time to be scared shitless of knives again,  fear of weapons is a good kind of respect
and im def dropping the stupid blocks i learned in class. im back to find  ways and train tactics to grab the weapond hand and never let go and dont stop bashing till hes down and out
\

guess im no jason bourne afterall

[redcap]

Blocks are ok so long as the knife remains blocked and kindly awaits the next move. In FMA they teach a V movement where as soon as there is any resistance to the blade, be it an attempted grab or a block, the knife is twisted and pulled back, then thrust out, twisted and pulled back. The other hand jumps in to free it up and help it along. It is effective, vary fast and very difficult to counter, but not impossible.

The good news is most people don't use a knife like that. I saw several incidents in my years in the Philippines and I never saw anything remotely FMA like. I saw mad slashing, pumping stabs and a lot of posturing and intimidation. Keep in mind the heat makes the arms sweaty and hard to grab and t-shirts tear faster than Gi's, so I teach a lot of punching/slapping of the forearm if you are being teased and stalked, but preferably stay out of range and put something between you and the blade. A 20 peso jeepney ride works. A stalker is relatively easy to avoid until they commit; then they are the same as anyone charging in and just as lethal.

I also like pushing the attacker away and being a large Kano it was effective against smaller, lighter Filipinos. If the opponent is larger than you, use him to springboard yourself away. Pushing savagely is very intuitive and reflexive in these situations so why not train it? Of course it doesn't look as hard core as some FMA switch and slice deal, but it's your choice.

One thing to remember when training this stuff... you can't look good. A determined novice can cut you if they try hard enough, more so when you can't really strike their throat as you would for real and so on. As for hitting them on the side of the head with a steel training blade, WW.; it does get their attention. Takes a lot of the 'family fun' out of it.
Redcap

[whitewolf]

Red-seriously-the blow to side of the head sounds good to respond .
When I was in Olongapo P>I> the favorite thing of the local kids was crowd around a marine or sailor and pickpocket him-threaening some times with a knife-
One time on the street about 4 of them surrounded me and started to crowd me- I backfisted the closest one in the side of the head-he stopped and looked at me and they left the area-
I always was a supporter of the Back fist"

As far as the right way to defend against a knife- I have been doing some studying lately using Hocks book-one thing is apparent- speed  and agression counts considrably in the initial defense-waitiing it out will get you hurt- correct

Sense I have been getting into this more-i have been nticing that the local
"self defense" schools here do not review defenses against a blade -one has to
take a specialized semina from a reputable teacher- i.e. Hocks seminars.
I have taken 2 so far....

Lastly my SF friend says the following.
if threatened with a knife
1-pick up some type of wpn -NOW- and use it.....
2-Shoot them if you have agun
3-Run like hell-
WW (ELB) "speed of light"  -(the SOL really helps in this situation)