Training Week commencing 9 june
Quick summary of this week’s training and what I’ve picked up from it. We focussed a lot on the use of the double armed “scissors” block against knife attacks and aggressively attacking the knife holder with a combination of this block and a muay thai style knee attack. Basically against the attack or aggressive threat from the blade in the right hand, you drop the left arm to defend against a low attack and raise the right to defend against something higher – your arms are touching and your inner wrists are facing you to protect the veins-and you step in strongly with a right knee attack to the guy’s abdomen. The right knee attack twists your torso so at the point of impact it is at 90 degrees to the attacker hence getting the left side of your body away from the slash. Once you’re in from there you scoop the attacker’s arm with your left, crash into his neck with the little finger side of your right wrist and go medieval with knees, headbutts etc.
Tough to describe this, hope that all made sense. It’s dangerous, messy and the downside is very, very bad but that’s the reality of any confrontation, particularly when the guy has a knife. If the guy is after you with a knife and you can’t run away or get a useful weapon like a chair then, as a last resort, I think you have to go in very hard, cover yourself as best as you can and attack the guy very aggressively to give yourself a chance. To be honest, if you just deflect and move without being able to run like hell out of the way very quickly, he’s going to get you sometime soon so aggressive attack is a perfectly valid option. It’s risky and the knee strike can affect your stability but on the upside it can really screw the attacker thereby giving you the opportunity for attack and disarming. Being stabbed and slashed can also affect your stability pretty badly.
Anyway the results I saw this week when the knife attackers were going for it like hell and the defenders used this approach were, I thought, pretty conclusive about the strength of this approach. I’ll be interested in any comments but particularly from the people that did the drill this week.
Stewart
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June 15th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Facing such an attack is about as bad as it is going to get in reality. I’ve tried a lot of techniques and I have to say at the moment this is the one I like the best by a long way. The simultaneous knee makes a huge difference in gettting your body out of the way while at the same time allowing you to disrupt the guy and set him up for some brutal full power knee strikes from a clinch that controls the knife arm. When you act the role of assailant you need to try and keep pulling back the knife to slash or stab again to make the drill realistic. The thing that stops you from recoiling the knife and stabbing repeatedly is being hit hard in the clinch. Great technique .. but remember if you’re inthis situation run if you can!
June 19th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Dead on mate, it’s all about dealing with the recoil and I believe this to be the best method – but it’s last resort, like everything else we do against the blade.