Knife Defense

[Azulx]

Does your school practice knife defense drills? If so how do you practice them, and what are they?

 

[Blindside]

Its about a quarter of our curriculum. How to use a knife offensively, how to take advantage of the flinch response, how to take advantage of the trained defender, how to ambush somebody, and then you get all the reverse of that as the defender. We do lots of close quarter reaction drills to build muscle memory, first isolating to certain attacks and then building combining drills so that the defender is facing randomized attacks. Then we take all the drills and techniques and start sparring it and it gets ugly and messy and the defender dies a lot.

this is working from a wrap over position or two-on-one and doing some foot sweeps and reaps to work on destabilizing the other guy. Not full sparring.

These are unarmed vs knife sparring.

 

[Juany118]

Yes... shoot em! Kidding . My school teaches Kali so there a number of ways to do it, some armed others unarmed. All of them are kinda hard for me to explain by typing and there are different techniques to address slashing vs stabbing which can change whether you simply check and then control the had to disarm, or step in to control the elbow, do you do it on the inside or outside the offending limb etc. There are plenty of videos though, just Google "FMA Kali knife disarms" or some such.

 

[hoshin1600]

Its about a quarter of our curriculum. How to use a knife offensively, how to take advantage of the flinch response, how to take advantage of the trained defender, how to ambush somebody, and then you get all the reverse of that as the defender. We do lots of close quarter reaction drills to build muscle memory, first isolating to certain attacks and then building combining drills so that the defender is facing randomized attacks. Then we take all the drills and techniques and start sparring it and it gets ugly and messy and the defender dies a lot.

this is working from a wrap over position or two-on-one and doing some foot sweeps and reaps to work on destabilizing the other guy. Not full sparring.

These are unarmed vs knife sparring.

Very nice. Wish I was closer I would make a visit.

 

[Blindside]

Very nice. Wish I was closer I would make a visit.

Well, we are in a out of the way area, but you would of course be welcome!

 

[geezer]

We do some knife defenses. Assuming you even see the knife before it's in you, the following are my favorites:

1. Run away.

2. Throw something at them and run away.

3. Grab something big like a chair and hit them, then run away.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

In my previous school, knife defense incorporated armed vs. armed and unarmed vs. armed, where we were trained to use the knife as well as trained to not use it. it also incorporated live sparring with rubber knives. My instructor taught distinct ways to deal with each type of knife attack, and we would incorporate those in the sparring (with improvisation).
Current school does not do knife on knife, and is unconcerned with us knowing how to use knives. I feel like it's an important part, but they disagree, and I see no reason to argue with them. Instead of teaching us specific techniques per se, they teach specific initial reactions/openings, and encourage us to improvise from there. I'm a fan of this, as it allows more improvisation for the scenario, especially since we focus on weapons less. The other thing that it does is focus on different scenarios, such as multiple attackers, being attacked without knowing if the person has a weapon or what that weapon is until they decide to pull it out (knife, bar, gun generally), walking and having a random member attack, etc. They do this with open handed as well, but it's nice to have weapons included.

 

[Juany118]

We do some knife defenses. Assuming you even see the knife before it's in you, the following are my favorites:

1. Run away.

2. Throw something at them and run away.

3. Grab something big like a chair and hit them, then run away.

My first "non-sport" MA was Aikido. I read this and remembered seeing this video so I laughed.

 

[geezer]

Another practical example:

 

[Juany118]

Another practical example:

Or this... lol

 

[Buka]

Ya, but that's no ordinary rabbit!