Question about a Grand Master

MAfreak

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sorry, i really have to say it is ridiculous how you all defend against the reality that traditional styles won't prepare of real knife attacks. if ever a style could do so. even with speed and grip strenght. sure one should first train it like that to get the basics of blocking and wrist locking. but anyway. find a suicidal aikido-guy who trains this all the time, dress him like an israeli and put him to the gaza strip. you'd see what happens.
at 2:18 its exaclty what i mean. if you tell me, with traditional knife defense training you could defend it, you're lying to yourself. and now "dislike" my comment, like many people do with unpleasent truth.
 

Paul_D

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and in krav videos you see it realistically

Traditional knife defence isn’t designed for the realities of modern knife crime. A trained samurai isn’t going to attack another samurai on the battlefield in the same way that a criminal will shank you from behind in the street. Nor is a criminal going to be using an 11” Tanto, as he can’t conceal it in his pocket. He will be using a pocket knife or Stanley knife.

Therefore I wouldn’t expect TMA to look like modern knife defence. This is not a problem, if you are practicing a traditional art and know that is what you are doing that’s fine. The problems only start when you practice a traditional art but think you are preparing yourself for the realities of modern civilian knife crime.

I do not believe anyone has to modern knife attacks (if there were we would all be doing) and I certainly don’t believe the answer lies with “realistic” krav knife defence. The second most ridiculous martial arts technique I have ever seen is a Krav knife defence.

 

MAfreak

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i totally agree with what you wrote. its the same i was trying to say all the time.
to the video: holding a knife for threatening isn't an stabbing or slashing attack.
 

Paul_D

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i totally agree with what you wrote. its the same i was trying to say all the time.
to the video: holding a knife for threatening isn't an stabbing or slashing attack.
Of course, but the point is also there is just as much nonsense in Krav as there is any other art, traditional or modern.
 

MAfreak

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sadly. :( every style or school has its weaknesses. thats why one should think outside the box and learn what others do differently. it might be more effective (or crap).
 

Rich Parsons

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That move you described will not work on me. That much energy would direct me to a different location and you would be cut.
And is your "Show Me" a challenge as that is not allowed on this site.

If it is show me here in words you might not get my meaning.

But your point that ONLY KRAV has the counter that might work is a false.
 

Dirty Dog

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sorry, i really have to say it is ridiculous how you all defend against the reality that traditional styles won't prepare of real knife attacks. if ever a style could do so. even with speed and grip strenght. sure one should first train it like that to get the basics of blocking and wrist locking. but anyway. find a suicidal aikido-guy who trains this all the time, dress him like an israeli and put him to the gaza strip. you'd see what happens.

at 2:18 its exaclty what i mean. if you tell me, with traditional knife defense training you could defend it, you're lying to yourself. and now "dislike" my comment, like many people do with unpleasent truth.

Thing is, despite the silly claims you make, many people (including me) have somehow managed to defend ourselves against a knife with traditional training.
 

RTKDCMB

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capable of performing the basics means yellow belt in my opinion.

There are basics and there are basics.

one shouldn't give black belts to kids. it might give them a false and therefore dangerous feeling of superiority. even many adult blackbelts have that. just my opinion, but

There are black belts for children and there are junior black bets for children. No instructor awarding a junior black belt to a child should expect the child to to be able to beat up adults.

but even blocks of straight punches are unrealistic.

Blocks work fine when they are trained properly.

if all that would work, they'd do it in boxing and mma the same way.

There are plenty of things that are effective that are not done in boxing and MMA. As far as I know there is no MMA statistic in an MMA fight on blocking effectiveness. They also tend to get punched a lot so that's not really an argument against blocking. Also, for the record, there is some blocking in boxing and MMA, it is just not their primary form of defense.
 

JowGaWolf

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Defending against a knife doesn't mean not getting stabbed. The goal of traditional martial art knife defense is to prevent from becoming a human pin cushion. People that I know who teach knife techniques do it from the perspective that the defender will get cut or stabbed. If you can stop it without getting cut then great. If not then the next best thing is to minimize the damage and prevent repetitive stabbing. That is what knife defense is.

When it comes to defending against a knife you can either wing it and hope for the best or use techniques that are based on how people stab. Not everyone does rapid knife thrusts. Not every knife attacker sneaks up on the victim in stealth mode. To assume that someone is going to attack you with a knife and rapid stab you and there's nothing you can do about it other than just take the stabbings and die, is a stupid approach to self-defense.

Knife attacker caught on tape. Notice downward stab motion that he's using and not the prison shank motion

another person with a knife. Once again no prison stabbing method

Another video. Guy being stabbed is actually able to knock the knife away. Notice he was also able grab and hold on to the stabbing hand. Once again no prison shank motion
 
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JowGaWolf

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Traditional knife defence isn’t designed for the realities of modern knife crime. A trained samurai isn’t going to attack another samurai on the battlefield in the same way that a criminal will shank you from behind in the street. Nor is a criminal going to be using an 11” Tanto, as he can’t conceal it in his pocket. He will be using a pocket knife or Stanley knife.

Therefore I wouldn’t expect TMA to look like modern knife defence. This is not a problem, if you are practicing a traditional art and know that is what you are doing that’s fine. The problems only start when you practice a traditional art but think you are preparing yourself for the realities of modern civilian knife crime.

I do not believe anyone has to modern knife attacks (if there were we would all be doing) and I certainly don’t believe the answer lies with “realistic” krav knife defence. The second most ridiculous martial arts technique I have ever seen is a Krav knife defence.

#1 rule of knife defense is never to grab the blade. That defense would be a big fail in my book. You can actually see that she's bending the blade of the practice knife. Had it been a real knife she would be cutting her own hand, and she would be cutting the very tendons needed to grab. Had the guy quickly withdrawn his hand she would have been stabbed, without any opportunity to defend herself. The only people who grabbed blades were those who had some kind of hand protection that guards against the slicing of a blade.
 

oftheherd1

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#1 rule of knife defense is never to grab the blade. That defense would be a big fail in my book. You can actually see that she's bending the blade of the practice knife. Had it been a real knife she would be cutting her own hand, and she would be cutting the very tendons needed to grab. Had the guy quickly withdrawn his hand she would have been stabbed, without any opportunity to defend herself. The only people who grabbed blades were those who had some kind of hand protection that guards against the slicing of a blade.

I noted that too. Grabbing the blade is a bad move. But sometimes there may be no choice. It just shouldn't be the planned defense move as you said. Still, we had a civilian in Korea years ago who nearly lost a couple of fingers doing that. But he and his wife were fighting 3 or 4 people who broke into their home, so it may have been one of those instinctive things that prevented him from being stabbed. Interestingly, they weren't otherwise severely injured as I recall, and the ferocity of their defense was such that it drove away the suddenly very confused and dismayed attackers. Amusing in a way. The wife got out to the living room first and began to attack them. She told them to leave because her husband was coming out and he was mean. She didn't lie.

I might suggest a couple of things for people to consider. If you see someone approaching you with a knife and you expect a 'prison shank attack,' remember they have to approach you more closely as a rule, which isn't always a good way to use a weapon that is supposed to allow some separation. You might be able to take out a knee cap with a fast and strong kick. You might also be able to drop forward even with their lead foot, on the same side as the lead foot, then if it is their right leg, make contact with their ankle/shin with your left ankle/shin, and hook kick the back of their knee, driving them to the ground. Hook your ankles together and begin rolling forward (the attacker's forward) rolling over several times. It will take out his knee in a very painful way.

Those techniques are easier to demonstrate than describe. But even if I were to show you those, or any of several other knife defenses, defending against a knife is something that must be practiced often until you gain real, instinctive reaction timing and ability. Then you must keep practicing, and keep practicing, and keep practicing. Taking on a knife attacker is dangerous. You need to be good, and fast, and fearless. And you must be prepared for the fact that no matter how good you are, the knife bearer may have some ability as well, and you may be cut or stabbed. And you must be prepared for the fact that if that happens, you must keep resisting fiercely. There are no do-overs or king's X'es.
 

MAfreak

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Thing is, despite the silly claims you make, many people (including me) have somehow managed to defend ourselves against a knife with traditional training.

so the attacker stretched his knive-holding arm and stood still so you could do whatever you want to him, like it is trained in traditional styles?
nearly everyone in the modern world admits it. but not you... crazy...
 

JowGaWolf

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so the attacker stretched his knive-holding arm and stood still so you could do whatever you want to him, like it is trained in traditional styles?
nearly everyone in the modern world admits it. but not you... crazy...
If you are going to show Traditional Martial Art knife defense at least show a good representation of Traditional Martial Art knife defense. That video was made with sarcasm that can clearly be seen at 0:21.
Here's what a real knife fight looks like when 2 people with knives are fighting each other. According to the video that you showed at 0:40 these guys in the street are just fantasy.
 

Dirty Dog

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so the attacker stretched his knive-holding arm and stood still so you could do whatever you want to him, like it is trained in traditional styles?
nearly everyone in the modern world admits it. but not you... crazy...

You don't know anything about how I, or most other, martial artists train, obviously.
 

Gerry Seymour

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sorry, i really have to say it is ridiculous how you all defend against the reality that traditional styles won't prepare of real knife attacks. if ever a style could do so. even with speed and grip strenght. sure one should first train it like that to get the basics of blocking and wrist locking. but anyway. find a suicidal aikido-guy who trains this all the time, dress him like an israeli and put him to the gaza strip. you'd see what happens.
at 2:18 its exaclty what i mean. if you tell me, with traditional knife defense training you could defend it, you're lying to yourself. and now "dislike" my comment, like many people do with unpleasent truth.

Yes, TMA defenses can work with actual attacks. Certainly not 100% (nothing will do that). But that attack at 2:18 isn't exactly a sneak attack. He's obviously going for the first victim from several steps away, and his stabs are large arm movements, with the victim held at a distance.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that all TMA knife defenses require that you grab a wrist and apply a lock. Those exist, so we know what to do if we end up with a wrist in our grasp and the lock is available, but the blocks, off-balancing, strikes, and movement are the real defense from the attack. The rest is just a way to finish the attack (disarm or disable) if the finish presents itself.

I'll also add that nothing I've seen of Krav Maga is new to the world. KM is a solid system (when taught well, as with anything else), but it's not brand new. Those moves - every one of them - exist elsewhere. I do wish more TMA would pick up the attitude I see among good KM practitioners, with a strong focus on realism.
 

Gerry Seymour

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so the attacker stretched his knive-holding arm and stood still so you could do whatever you want to him, like it is trained in traditional styles?
nearly everyone in the modern world admits it. but not you... crazy...
You might see that when a student is learning the technique, but not with an experienced student. What you say "is trained in traditional styles" would be like someone saying "like that ridiculous grabbing the knife thing that's trained in Krav Maga." Neither would be an accurate representation of what is not an homogeneous group.
 

JowGaWolf

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You don't know anything about how I, or most other, martial artists train, obviously.
Well I definitely don't train like that Reality Fantasy videos. lol.
When my school trains knife defense we don't train it from the perspective of how an attacker would stab someone. We actually try to stab our training partner with the practice knife. Most people think "grab the knife first" but in reality you can do a lot of things to defend yourself without grabbing the knife. The stabbing hand can be parried or kicked. You can still punch the guy in his face, knees, legs, sweep. The stabbing distance is shorter than the kicking distance. If you can keep this distance then there's no need to let the attacker get close enough just so you can try to grab a knife. I know some of you people may think I'm full of it and that it's just fantasy thinking so here's a real life example.

The one thing that I learned while doing knife training is that as an attacker I'm not holding the knife as securely as it feels. Pointy end of knife pointing up or straight left me open for punches and kicks when I tried to stab. Pointy end down took way the kicks and the forward stab. Even if I didn't drop the knife when someone kicked me in my hand, the kick was hard enough to hurt my hand. Even when the kick wasn't full power it still landed with enough force to hurt and sometimes knock the knife out of my hand. I learned as an attacker that I was so focused on stabbing that I basically left everything else open. A hard punch to the face would have definitely stunned me or at the very least disorient me enough to stop trying to stab for a short period of time. It's like regular street fights where the guy gets punched in his face and it causes a delay in the next punch that he was going to throw. Sometimes a good punch in the face causes the person to curl up to avoid what they think will be another punch to the face. In the class when the punch hit my face, my mind immediately went from stabbing to protecting my face.

As a defender Half-moon kicks land harder than what it feels like I'm kicking. My arm couldn't hold back the impact of kick to the bottom of my hand. It's possible to use one hand to try to block the knife hooking in with an extended arm and the other hand to punch the face.

The one thing I never did in a knife defense class was curl up in a ball and lay on the ground. I moved really fast because sometime during the training you forget that it's a practice knife and not the real thing.

There was nothing I could do with the sneak attack stabs except for stop trusting everyone in the room and made sure that no one could get in my space lol.
 

RTKDCMB

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so the attacker stretched his knive-holding arm and stood still so you could do whatever you want to him, like it is trained in traditional styles?
In other words you have no idea how traditional martial arts train knife defenses but think they are wrong anyway.
 

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