Knife Defense:Truth, Myth, and Propaganda

    In this article we are going to use knife fighting as an example. However we will also be delving into an underlying problem in martial arts and self defense today. That problem being highly respected instructors with specific agendas and motives that lead to them saying some pretty dumb and irresponsible things. I'm gonna bounce around a little bit in this article because frankly, that's how I roll. Now take a look at the short video above. It is making the rounds on youtube and facebook usually with a heading somewhere in the neighborhood of This Is What a Real Knife Attack Looks Like. Now first things first...do knife attacks happen like this? The answer is yes. The knife ambush is the most common knife attack for sure. How common is it? That is highly debatable. I will also say that in my research an ambush tends to be much closer than this and much more stealth is used. You never see the knife. The only time I have seen anyone actually charge this way with a knife is in law enforcement when someone is rushing in to beat a gun draw. Either that or what's known as suicide by cop. So that specific attack I don't really know to be that common compared to other attacks but ambush is in fact the most common and this type of attack does definitely happen alot on real knife attacks.

    That however isn't my real point here. What I really want to talk about is why a video like this would be posted. The answer is money and prestige, not your well being. Usually videos like this are posted by "reality based" martial arts clubs to disparage other clubs. The speech used is very important. You see the word "Real" is being used as a way of implying a knife course that may teach a different facet of knife fighting is fake. It's a sneaky way of saying without saying," You gotta take my super commando knife course because it is the only one that can save you. Everyone else is bullshit except me and will get you killed. You must write me a huge check and sign a long term contract if you want to save your life." That is pretty much the subconscious behind the verbiage. So is what they are really saying true? Well let's just look and see. Now the above clip is a staged demo by martial artists. Now let's look at real knife fights caught on camera where someone got cut and injured for real and see if that holds up.

  Now this gets into another myth of knife fighting,"The Myth of the Duel." You see knife dueling is made up that never actually happens. Oops! That above video appears to be a duel. I guess it can happen. Oh well another thing I was told that isn't true either. Did the sarcasm choke you up? Do duels happen all the time? Ummm no. People that bash knife sparring though need to get a grip. I'd rather train for something and not need it than need it and not have it. If it happens you need to train for it and apparently it DOES happen. Now most likely the guy didn't charge in because the other guy had a knife. However in the very top video if your standing there facing a guy running towards you and you have a knife you could probably use some lateral movement on run like hell and pull out a knife of your own instead of standing there holding a coat like a matador. Needless to say if you can get away you should do so and not stop to engage in a knife fight.

 I will say this. I seriously enjoyed watching the above video. The people in that office did damn near everything right. I want to point out when those guys first came into that office they didn't charge people like a bull and start stabbing. What they did was more of a knife threat or display. Those office people were unarmed at first. In this case yes some of them had weapons but they didn't have them out until after the attack started. A knife threat or display is very common and even more common than a knife attack. The knife is used as a tool of intimidation. Sometimes they aren't planning on using the knife but I will tell you this. If they pulled it you better assume they intend to use it even if they don't. I want to point out some things the people in the office did right.

   The first thing they did right was attack the attacker. If the guy in the very top video had thrown his coat at the guy he maybe could've bought a half second to use some type of evasive footwork or even better picked something up and hit him with it. Towards the beginning of the video right after the fight started you had it right there where a guy was unarmed throwing punches at a guy with a knife. You think he cared if he got cut? When your dealing with mafia like in this video they will probably kill you anyway. That brings me to another beef and myth. I saw another well respected guy talking about awareness and avoidance make a dumb statement. There is a certain sect in the knife fighting community that focuses on cutting certain parts of the body to remove functions such as cutting into tissue to disable an arm and such. Now anatomically that is possible but with the legal system the fact is if your in a situation where you half the time to do that then it probably wasn't a situation where you needed a knife in the first place therefore your probably going to be going to jail. For that reason alone that theory is pretty useless. However this guy makes this statement in this article. Remember if you get touched with the knife your going to bleed out and die. Really dude? Now I understand the goal behind the statement. You should avoid violence at all costs and I agree with that. You shouldn't stay and knife fight when you have the ability to leave. I agree with that too. However don't lie and say some bullshit that isn't right to accomplish your goal. If you can't do it with the truth then move onto something else. I have been in 4 knife fights in my life and I didn't have a knife in any of them I was unarmed. I have been cut twice and one required stitches. I've got a shocker for you...I'm not dead. I didn't bleed out because I was "touched" with the knife. I know a guy in Kansas that has over 100 knife wounds. He isn't dead either. So I'm pretty sure that statement is bullshit. However I'm sure you scared some people into your class and made you some money though. On yeah in those 4 knife attacks I never got bull rushed either.

The above video is from a knife attack in Thailand. I just want to point out that guy got stabbed alot of times and oh yeah he didn't die and didn't bleed out.

 

Here is a whole collection of videos where people got stabbed or cut. None of them died and they all fought back. Even the guy who got his neck cut he didn't die either and he even helped the other guy who also got cut and didn't die. There were even attacks in there that were the real version of the very first video that was supposed to be real and none of them died either and were able to escape and fight back. To make a statement like that is dumb and irresponsible  because once your in that situation it doesn't really matter. Yes you can obviously die from knife woulds and many have done so. Still you gotta fight to save your life if it comes down to it. If someone is cut in a knife attack what the hell do you think they should do? Stop fighting and just fall over and wait to die? Hell no you fight back. It's a pointless dumb self serving statement. yes awareness and avoidance is better but don't bullshit people to get the result you want. In an aggressive knife attack attacking the attacker can be a very good strategy when you can't get away and it may even save your life.

   Some other things those office people did in the mafia attack video was they created barriers with the furniture. They threw things to diminish the attackers which is very important. In a violent knife attack the more you can diminish your attacker the higher your chances of survival become. Which is all the more reason when cornered to attack the attacker. You might get cut or you might not. Even if you do get cut it doesn't mean you are going to die. You might but you might die if you don't do anything as well.

    So now you've got some ideas on surviving a knife attack. These ideas are coming from watching actual people actually survive real knife attacks. As far as our first video at the top it has some value as far as making the point knife attacks aren't easy. They are harder than some say and easier than others say because some act like it's impossible to survive one.That video has some basis in truth but some of it isn't. So what happens in a real knife fight? The answer is..everything. Train for ambushes, train for duels, train for closed areas, train for open areas, train for crowds. It's all possible and it can all happen. Anyone claiming only certain kinds of knife fights happen probably have something they want to sell you. Question all of them and do your own research before buying into someone's system. Which system is best? There's good and bad in all systems once again, don't be lazy do your own research and make an educated decision. What if some big name guy said it was good. Well....fuck them guys! Do your own research and use common sense.

   Let me tell you about big name guys. They say dumb stuff all the time. Hell it was a big name guy that made the statement," If they touch you with that knife you'll bleed out and die." He was one of the biggest. Another one once said he'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6. So why is that ignorant? Well it implies you have to choose between the two which is extremely rare. If someone threatens you is it always kill them before they kill you? No...you could just leave. If you can't leave well then now you have something different like what we have seen in this article but this article is about something extreme not the normal self defense situations. I saw one say one time."Jujutsu doesn't work against knife attacks you can't capture the arm." Well maybe he can't but I did it 4 times out of 4 times when attacked with a knife as a bodyguard and bouncer. Jujutsu was actually invented for disarms that's the whole reason it exists. Now you must diminish the attacker first but you can get that arm people have been doing it for thousands of years. I could go on and on all day about things these people say that isn't true.

    In closing, a good system is a good system and a bad system is a bad system. Anything can happen in knife fights. Train for awareness and avoidance. I even wrote an article about it on this blog. train for duels if you have a knife. Train for ambushes. Train for everything we talked about. research these subjects and make common sense decisions. Don't believe everything everyone tells you even research this article to make sure I'm right. Don't believe every video you see on youtube or facebook. You take control of your own self defense and do the research. You get control of your self defense you get control of your life.

Do You Really NEED More Tools For Your Toolbox?

     How many times have you heard the phrase it's always good to get more tools for your toolbox? Honestly in martial arts I hear it all the time but is it actually true? Well the honest answer is it depends. Before I get into all this I want to talk to you about context first. If your getting into martial arts to study a martial art then more tools doesn't hurt. Some people are basically technique collectors and that's what they like to do. If that's what you like to do then more power to you I hope you find a bunch of stuff. I'm also not talking about groups of arts. For the purposes of this article and historical fact unarmed fighting is it's own art. Knife fighting is it's own separate art. The same will hold true for sword fighting and the like as well. For the purposes of this article we will be focusing on this phrase applied to a single art. So to get to the point quickly do you need to always be adding more tools to your toolbox? The correct answer is an emphatic no! You simply need the right tools for that box.

    Let's look at a little science here. In another article we talked about Occam's Razor, also known as the Law of Economy. When it's correctly translated it means when two answers solve a problem a third one is irrelevant. Try taking that and applying it to martial arts. Your gonna piss off alot of people, as I'm probably about to do. Have you ever been in a class where you had to learn 5 or 6 escapes for something and it was obvious some of them would never work for you but they made you learn it anyway for a belt rank? That doesn't make alot of sense does it? Wouldn't it be better to learn a concept that everyone could apply that worked for all? If so then why are you forced to learn a bunch of crap? Well the most common answer you'll get is that it's tradition and it's always been done that way. But is that even true? The answer is no. 

    Let's look at the Toda samurai family in the 17th century. How many techniques did their low level soldiers learn for combat as far as unarmed self defense? A hundred? A thousand? Try 8...yeah that's right 8. They were taught 3 strikes,1 throw,2 armbars, and 2 wristlocks. They would also learn a short kata that taught body mechanics but that was it. They won alot of battles too because they could take 8 techniques and modify them for any situation they would find themselves in. They would master those 8 techniques and could adapt under pressure easily because they weren't trying to pick between a hundred techniques and figure out what in the hell they needed to do.

    On top of that look at all the old Karate masters. They didn't learn a bunch of kata they spent their whole lives dedicated to one kata because it gave them everything they needed to defend themselves. So was it always done that way? Umm no sorry that argument isn't true or valid in any way. You see in the modern age alot of traditional systems put all this stuff in there to preserve their history and culture and there is nothing wrong with that whatsoever.  The thing is they were very honest about it and respectable. It's the western world that has gotten it so twisted around. It had nothing to do with teaching you an ounce of self defense.

    Does that mean these guys that teach all this stuff can't fight? No it doesn't mean that at all some can and some can't. What it means is that if your going to them for self defense your learning in a way that is inefficient and unnecessary  for your immediate goal. Sure if they are a good teacher in time you can get really good but what are you going to do until then? If you get attacked ask the guy to come back in a couple years when your skillset is better developed? Yeah I don't see that happening.

    On a darker side of the issue you also have instructors that are only in this for the money. They are always adding techniques and requirements for you so you will have to stay there longer and pay them more money. They will tell you pretty much anything to keep you subservient. The most common trick these days is to get you to sign a huge long term contract and pay them alot of nonrefundable money up front. That way if you catch on and leave then they have your money and couldn't care less. There is alot of that but thankfully that isn't always the case. Martial arts are fun as they should be. More often than not(hopefully) what you actually have is someone confusing need with want. They want to do more things because it's fun and they enjoy it but want and need aren't actually the same thing now are they? Unfortunately even though they are well meaning they confuse their own want with what you need and this can get you hurt. I know instructors all over the world that teach 1 and 2 days courses where people can learn do defend themselves against basic attacks. 

    Ironically enough, if applied correctly courses like these could be of great benefit to "traditional" schools.

They can actually co-exist together. It only requires 1 thing...innovation. The first thing that needs to happen is a change in the curriculum. Take all the basics for the types of techniques you teach and put them all at beginner levels. Do stress drills early on and troubleshoot and work fail scenarios. Make everything flow together and have continuity.  When that foundation is firm and the fundamentals are sound you can actually add things to it without damaging your students. Then you could actually add tools to your toolbox and they would know where every tool went and which tools didn't work for them. You gotta stop making them learn techniques they can never use on belt promotions. If it's useless they shouldn't have to learn it. There's nothing wrong with upgrading a curriculum and making it more efficient and conducive to learning. If your part of some money hungry organization that requires you and your students to learn things that aren't in their best interest then leave that organization. Your loyalty should always be to your students they are the ones that put faith in you. Your goal should be to strive to prove that you earned that faith. If your just teaching a bunch of stuff and you know some if it won't work for a student but you make them waste their time and yours learning it anyway then your unethical and immoral. As an educator you should always hold yourself to a higher standard or risk becoming a hypocrite as well as other things.  I love martial arts and want them to always be relevant. When old outdated logic isn't thrown out then a martial art can become a museum piece and lose its relevance. I don't want to see that happen. If you don't want to update then I have some news for you. The public is getting smarter and your days are numbered. Your slowly turning into a dinosaur as we speak. People run from Dinosaurs not towards them because they are smart enough to know dinosaurs can hurt you. Your dinosaur logic can do the same to the very people your trying to help.

   I've been around this a long time. Time is precious to me and I hate to see people waste it. I certainly don't want to bash anyone I would just like to ask you. Put your students first. You may not know the science behind the things you say or even know your doing something wrong. You could have the best of intentions. I would ask that you look at your curriculum and go to your libraries or even on the internet and research what you are doing. If you find something isn't right change it. Life is too short and your students deserve the best you can give them. So be the person that deserves the faith you receive. Don't confuse need and what. That's all I have to say.