Defending yourself against weapon attacks or assaults in the real world, is another topic that I am frequently asked about, and rightly so, because it is a very, very important area of personal defense. However, it is also one of these topics that ignites widely different opinions that can generate a lot of heated debate and controversy. Once again,…we have to start with and realize that the “pseudo profession” of martial arts instructor or the “self-defense” industry and community has more unfounded opinions, baseless assertions, untested assumptions and just plain old horse shit and lies, being spewed by more chest pounding, bloated belly jiggling, finger pointing, ego posturing, “forgot to take my meds” flakes, phonies, weirdos, hatters and trolls than just about any business out there… except maybe things like astrology or tabloid journalism (although the astrologers tend to be much nicer people than a lot of the goofs in the jiu-jitsu world).
Therefore, it is always so hard for the layperson and decent “regular Joes” out there to just sort through all the BS and get the training and personal defense information they need. Hence, I am first warning people of the strange but true paradox that one of the worst places to get self-defense advice is from the “self-defense” industry. Thus,…once again… I am going to try and use a little rational thinking, logic and…god forbid… actual facts to discuss this topic in a constructive way.
I believe that weapon defense is a critical part of any real world self defense system and should not be ignored, glossed over or, worst of all, mythologized to such a degree that we can’t deal with it factually. The first fact is pretty self-evident, weapon attacks occur all the time in the real world. Therefore, if you can’t defend yourself against armed assault, you can’t defend yourself.
As a professional self-defense instructor I have always found that idea unacceptable. Therefore this inspired me to spent more time, not less, researching and developing viable tactics and methods, while my contemporaries in the martial arts community and various styles I was involved in over the years where too busy doing kata or going to Brazilian Jiu-jitsu tournaments to be able to treat this topic with the seriousness and attention it warrants.
The First “myth” or blatant disinformation we have to dispel or clarify if we are going to get to the truth, is the frequency of armed assault. This is necessary, because…as usual…there are groups or individuals within the martial world that have an agenda that is enhanced by leading the public to believe that armed attacks happened far more frequently than they do.The reason is pretty simple, they are probably trying to sell you some super-duper weapon defense system or style and anything else you might want to learn is of course useless because “most assaults involve weapons”, as they like to state.
As martial arts bull-shit goes this is pretty mild so don’t be too hard on these types they may mean well but such statements are also statistically indefensible. There may be a way to juggle the stats to make it look that way if you are only looking at certain high violence scenarios or areas like “armed robberies” or assaults within correctional facilities. (Like duh!…you mean to tell me most ARMED robberies involve a weapon! Shiiiit Jethro…I didn’t know that.)
However, if we look at the totality of “fights” and assaults going on out there in the real world, than clearly this isn’t the case. In fact, I’ve written about this elsewhere, but weapon assaults are probably over reported in comparison to “unarmed” fighting and assaults. This is because of the much higher dangers and seriousness of consequences of armed attacks. Not to mention, that our society has far less tolerance and acceptance for that kind of one sided violence.
For example, I have personally seen and been involved in dozens if not many more real world altercations that were never reported and therefore, could never make their way into any data base. Most of us probably have, to some degree or another. Does every school yard dust up, “consensual street fight” or incident of a bouncer physically having to eject a patron get written up and eventually become part of crime statistics? Of course not, but anything that causes injuries particularly serious injuries or draws the attention of hospitals, police or a concerned citizenry is much harder to ignore or fall through the sociological accounting cracks.
In other words, if you walk down the street and see two people in an heated argument you probably ignore it and keep moving(depending on what kind of a neighborhood you live in you might just say “ah mom and Dad are at it again”) but if you see one of them brandishing a weapon you probably call the police( yea, mom and dad are at it again). Pretty simple idea right, (but we are talking about the martial arts world here so I have to speak very s.l.o.w.l.y.).
The result is that the Crime stats repository of the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK are very similar to each other despite their geographic differences and generally report a roughly 25% frequency of armed assaults. Therefore, I think I am being a little conservative but erring on the side of prudence by applying the old and very useful 80/20 rule to unarmed vs armed assaults.
Thus, let’s begin with the idea that if an incident goes physical you have about a 20% likelihood of somebody coming at you with something. Thus, armed assaults do not happen anywhere near the frequency of unarmed assaults but they of course will be far more dangerous.
Therefore, don’t just take my word for it, or any body else for that matter, here is a direct quote from the Canadian Department of Justice crime stats web site:
“In Canada most assaults and threats do not involve a weapon”
Most sources agree that the reason there are not more weapon attacks is because the vast majority of fights and violent acts are spontaneous and not planed out beforehand. This is an extremely important point, because it means that in a very large percentage of the weapon attacks, the attacker was acting impulsively and therefore had to improvise his weapon. He didn’t have an actual custom weapon with him since the assault had not been planned out ahead of time and he had not armed himself in advance.
This really is vitally important for laypeople and the self-defense industry to grasp and is well supported by the statistical evidence. The very, very most common type of “weapon” attack you are likely to face is some sort of improvised weapon. This certainly lines up with my own personal experience, in which I was involved in, or directly observed, threats or attacks with beer bottles and glasses, pool cues, billiard balls, chairs and stools, kindling like pieces of wood, iron frying pans and other ordinary everyday objects like that. I saw this far, far more frequently than I have come across a person carrying an actual weapon.
( As a kid in the late 70s I even had another spastic kid gouge a chunk out of my side with the end of a plastic “rat tailed comb” they were all the rage and standard equipment, to be tucked into the back pocket of those painfully tight “Saturday Night Fever” inspired jeans we all wore. Man, in those dangerous days you had to have your rat tailed comb handy to deal with the very serious threat of… that long “feathered backed” hair we all had going wild… now that could be treacherous.)
The important implications of these facts are twofold. Firstly, as self defense practitioners we have to grasp the idea of how pathetically easy it is for any scum bag to pick up the nearest blunt object and instantly negate years of training and preparation. This is particularly true of sport based training, if we are unprepared and untrained for this common scenario. Imagine spending literally years in a “Brazilian Jiu-jitsu” academy where these real world possibilities are not even mentioned let alone realistically trained. Then be wide eyed in amazement at your inability to deal with a common and rudimentary street attack.
Secondly, and most importantly is the idea that these improvised weapon attacks are not only vastly more frequent than any other kind of weapon assault but that they are also the very kinds of weapon attacks that proper self-defense training can most adequately and realistically deal with in the real world. In other words, these unplanned, untrained and not remarkably skilled type of attacks, while still extremely dangerous are the type of situations that good self defense methods are designed for and can give you the best chances of success against and therefore worth investing your time in.
This should be pretty obvious to a lot of people, but it’s Deja vou all over again, and I have to point out that we are dealing with the “bizarreo” world of martial arts and self-defense “experts” where often wrong is right and right is wrong. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that there are large numbers of martial artists telling you that you can’t really defend yourself against weapon attacks (or most other kinds of attacks for that matter!) and therefore shouldn’t bother trying. Their usual rational is along the lines of, real live weapon attacks are like Ninja movie ambushes or carried out under the most extreme battlefield like conditions so of course it’s hopeless.
Well, the truth is that the only thing that is hopeless are these people since the objective evidence reveals that ordinary, completely untrained people have successfully defended themselves against armed attacks on countless documented occasions. Therefore, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that you or anyone else would be able to do the same with proper training
For myself, this kind of thinking or debate is moronic, there is no question that weapon defenses work since I have been forced to defend myself against armed assault on a few memorable occasions, including a planned-out surprise ambush. I was able to defend myself successfully in each case, because of one key factor- my training. Is luck also a big factor in the outcome of dangerous situations like these? Sure it is, but like the old saying goes, the harder I train the luckier I get. Thus, I think it’s about time that the public becomes much more critical and aware of the negative, dishonest and highly irresponsible agendas of these individuals or groups. We will be looking at this more specifically as we go along.
On the other end of the usual spectrum, we have lots of styles and systems casually teaching all kinds of “weapon” defenses that are probably little more than fantasy. There must be hundreds if not thousands of techniques out there that have never been anything close to being objectively researched and tested. This is highly irresponsible as well, weapon defense is an important and serious area of legitimate research and study. It should not be treated as some children’s game or something purely for entertainment or ego gratification. Some people’s lives really do depend on these techniques, choices and work we do as self-defense instructors.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way endorsing the “the tougher I talk the better my techniques must work” approach. These kinds of guys have become so common that they are a recognizable comedic stereo type. The point is, no matter what someone is telling us from: “you can never defend yourself against this kind of weapon attack” all the way to: “You can defend yourself from every weapon attack if you just train with me and my magic system” we have to ask: “what facts are these claims and assertions based on”?
Moreover, the more forcefully or skillfully these assertions are made should make no difference, just because a system or style successfully markets its self as hard core self-defense and sounds like they take it seriously (or at least take themselves a little too seriously) does not mean it is based on anything but the same old unfounded opinions, untested assumptions, antidotal evidence (tall tales) and ,most of all , chest pounding ego driven agendas. One of my main purposes with these posts is to try and get people thinking more “scientifically” so that we are looking for and developing more objective, verifiable and testable sources of information and basing our methods on that, not the say so of “pseudo experts”, of which there are literally millions in the martial arts world!
I kid you not, if you have read any of my stuff before, than you know that a huge portion of the mammoth martial arts “industry” or “community” can be divided into one of about four different enormous sub-categories. First, we have the “traditionalist”. Traditionalist basically treat what they do as almost a kind of religion in the sense that it is a self-contained world of masters, theories and history that is very resistant to influences from the outside. The “master” or founder of the style is basically a kind of martial arts prophet, therefore he and he alone has the true path. If the master didn’t do it then its not worth doing. Whether the stuff they do has any function in the real world is often totally irrelevant.
Next we have the “glorified babysitting services” which are schools that unabashedly cater to children and whose main and sometimes only concern is “retention” and profitability. These schools are some of the very most common because they are the most financially viable . They specialize in keeping people happy and that means avoiding contact or issues that disturb people…like self defense.
Then there are the “ego loons” who spend their time talking about how tough they are and how bad everyone else is while inventing their own styles or just want to spend their day telling people what to do and displaying their very ornate belt that often hangs over a huge belly.
Lastly, there are gigantic numbers of people involved in “combat sports” of nearly infinite verity. There are a lot of good people and good athletes doing this stuff but it’s about being focused on the rules of your game and your performance and ranking with in that similarly self-contained world.
Of course there is a lot of overlap and blurred lines like “traditional sports”, glorified baby sitters inventing their own styles or fat ass “ego loons” coaching legitimate athletes but too lazy to train themselves. Nevertheless, it’s downright hilarious sometimes to see how many schools and individuals fall easily into these categories.
Now I am not saying there is anything wrong with a lot of this and some of it is very healthy and socially positive, the problem, in a nut shell, is that none of these groups are generally interested in changing anything or doing anything that approaches objective scientific based research or training into real life self-defense but who all profess or at least are perceived by the public to be experts in self-defense.
This is what creates a vast “pseudo profession” of people who claim to be experts in something they have never done, don’t know how to do and don’t have an interest in doing but to whom the public keeps being told are the experts. Thus, the hilarious paradox, and I mean this completely, is that the “self-defense industry” can be the worst place to get self-defense advice and training from! That is why there are so many empty calories in the smorgasbord of the martial arts world.
Therefore, when it comes to your personal safety, it is too important a thing to leave in the hands of “pseudo experts” that really are too busy with their style or sport to worry about you and your real life self-defense needs. If this were not bad enough, when we look at weapon attacks there is far less margin for error and the consequences for taking bad advice are so much greater that we better be sure we are on the right track.
That is the “whys” now let’s look at the “How’s”. The purpose of this post will not be to look at specific weapon defenses so much but to explore more the fundamental concepts and strategies that are the more important foundations of solid reliable techniques. We are going to look at some simple concepts that have been proven to work tactically on many different levels and since the beginning of time. If you understand the proven principals, than it will be a lot easier to differentiate between good solid methods and tactics and mere theory or worse yet fantasy.
Having a scientific and proven set of self-defense “first principals”, (to base our techniques, tactics and strategies on), is essential to every aspect of self-defense or you just end up with a miss-mash of often incompatible and contradictory methods. This is even more important when we factor in armed assault because too many self-defense courses make too great a distinction between unarmed and armed attacks and basically end up trying to teach you two completely different systems. One problem with this duel approach is that it over complicates and adds a lot more material that may contradict other aspects of the system, this kind of tactical or conceptual incompatibility can cause dangerous confusion in real world self-defense.
Secondly, the most important consideration that many so called self-defense instructors are not even aware of and therefore is never even factored into their training methods; is the fact, that a very large percentage of people who encountered armed assault did not even realize they were being attacked with a weapon! This is particularly true of smaller edged weapons where many victims did not discover they had been stabbed or slashed until after the encounter was over.
Others report that they felt tremendous impact but did not know what they had been hit with. This may seem strange to people who have thankfully never faced a real world serious self-defense situation but it is another example of our perceptions being quite different from reality. The reality of real world savage attacks includes a lot of confusion, chaos, tunnel vision and other sensory distortion due to the effects of trepidation and the adrenal “dump”. Even in more “obvious” and direct attacks it can sometimes be very difficult to know precisely what an attacker is holding in his hands or even what he is specifically doing under the real world conditions of surprise (and its accompanying “flinch” responses), psychological “denial”, poor light and all the other difficult conditions that can accompany real-world attacks. Hence, the first and a very important principle that we must introduce here when dealing with weapons and add to the concepts from our previous posts or lessons is the idea of “interchangeability”.
Interchangeability
This idea is a really simple one but is often ignored in the overly artificial conditions under which most self-defense training is done. Even ridicules “self-defense” techniques seem like they can work if the stand in “attacker” moves very slowly and we know exactly what he is going to do. Add a healthy dose of cooperation from the person playing the “attacker” and we end up with little more than “make believe” passing for self-defense training. In other words, if your defensive tactic is based on knowing precisely what your attacker is going to do and when he is going to do it, then it will in all likelihood, break down under real world conditions.
You can assume that most of the time you will not know whether the attacker is throwing a straight punch or a hook, for example( although there are statistical probabilities that we must not ignore). Under real world conditions just knowing he is about to launch any kind of a punch is a lot to be thankful for and your defenses have to be as general and interchangeable as possible.
We looked at elements of this in other posts and lessons with the ideas of “surprise” and “flinching” along with training the defenses at odd angles. Now, we can add the further complexity of not knowing if he is punching at us at all but instead swinging an ash tray or bottle at our head. If your defense works against a punch but not against a bottle or works against a bottle but not against a punch you are going to be in trouble if you guess wrong.
In the split second you usually have to react to a real world attack, count yourself lucky if you have time to perceive that he is swinging his arm at you at all, there will be no time to stop and switch between various defensive methodologies as you try to figure out if there is something in his hand and if there is, what exactly he is holding. This is the problem with over specific defenses.
The best examples of “interchangeability” are going to be the defenses I and some other Brazilian Jiu-jitsu instructors use and teach against impact weapon attacks. It may be helpful to note that from a conceptual point of view, (and a simple idea that is lost on many people including so called self-defense instructors) unarmed punching and striking attacks are by definition “impact” attacks. The “weapon” may be only the fist but it is still producing the blunt force trauma that is causing the injuries.
Thus, there is a very close, nearly identical, relationship between punching attacks and single handed impact weapon attacks, especially with “haymaker” type punches that are the very most common on the street. These types of punching attacks are often bio-mechanically indistinguishable from the swing of a club like weapon. Furthermore, thrusting or stabbing motions are very similar to straight punches.
Historically, you may find it interesting to note that western or “English boxing” evolved directly from the sword work and cudgeling (stick fighting) of the London “masters of fence” who we talked about elsewhere. Even the names of boxing punches reflect this weapon based origin; “jabbing” obviously means to quickly poke someone with something sharp and the “uppercut” was just that, turning the palm up so the edge of the sword could make an up wards cut.
Therefore, most punching and clubbing attacks can and should be defended the same way. The point being, that “shelling up”, “cobra” blocks, “sliding” blocks and “suki-nage” throws were designed to be completely interchangeable between striking and impact weapon attacks and to a large degree edged weapon attacks as well. This makes your defenses much simpler, faster and more decisive in the chaos of a real-world attack, you do not have to know what the specific attack is, only that you are being attacked and in the real world this is an incredible advantage. In the case of a weapon attack this decisiveness can literally safe your life.
THE GOVERNING PRINCIPLE
More importantly than the simple mechanical similarity between swinging a punch and swinging a weapon, is an even simpler but more pervasive governing principle. We understand the idea that having ten different blocks or defenses for ten different kinds of punches is not only more complicated but grossly inefficient when there is only a split second to make tactical decisions.
Yet many, if not most, self-defense methods are built around this paradigm that each punch travels at a different angle so it has to be treated differently. Add to this the additional angles or levels that the path of a weapon attack may travel along and even if we treat them interchangeably there are still too many choices that have to be made and information to process for such an approach to function successfully in the real world.
But what is the alternative? You ask, different attacks are …well, different. Despite the many different angles that these attacks can follow they still all have one thing in common that should be viewed as the governing principle for these kinds of threats. Once again, we have something so simple but all-encompassing that it is missed or ignored by most approaches to self-defense.
Here is another ancient Jiu-jitsu “secret” that is hidden in plain sight. Let me reveal it for you in this way: no matter the path that the punch or weapon swing approaches from, it has to have the necessary room, distance or space to operate. It really is that simple, if there is no space between you and the attacker there is no place for the swing to function in.
Thus, Instead of looking at each kind of weapon swing as a separate attack we go to the source of the problem and realize that “space” not the weapon is the real danger. A weapon is just an inanimate object that is no danger by its self until a human picks it up with dangerous intent; he cannot act on that intent if there is no room to operate and swing the weapon. Therefore, don’t worry about the weapon so much, worry about the distance between you and the “delivery system”. This distance is the space his arms need to swing and wield the weapon. No room, no danger, this is the far more practical, provable/testable and efficient paradigm to operate under.
As a weapon becomes longer and heavier it becomes more dangerous, on a certain level, because it can reach us from further away (generating even more velocity). This can cause more or greater trauma with a single blow. However, on another level it also becomes less dangerous if you are too close because of the added distance or space the weapon requires.
This may seem counter intuitive, but the weapon wielder needs you to be at a specific unobstructed distance in order to maximize the advantages of his impact weapon. (For a somewhat humorous but still more “realistic” depiction of what it could be like to try and swing clubs in confined spaces, check out the Tom Cruise movie: “JACK REACHER”, and the bathroom attack scene. While the scene is played with a little too much “slapstick”, it nonetheless, captures pretty well the chaos, unpredictability and precise amounts of space a fully committed club swing requires and all the things that could go wrong in a “real world” environment.)
Once we fully understand this idea, why would we even consider giving the attacker the advantage of leaving him the space he needs? It is just this approach, to deny the attacker the space he needs, that has been proven to save lives. The alternative tactical idea or paradigm, of standing in the attacker’s “zone of operation”(that area right in front of him and between his arms that humans want whatever they are working on, to be in.) and try to use your arms to block powerful club swings or even to try to move around and “angle” in that “danger zone”(which in the case of weapons becomes the “lethal zone”), verges on the suicidal. It is merely the instinctive urge to flee from danger or “freezing” in place that those primitive defenses are based on, not on critical evaluation, scientific research and practical testing as our Brazilian Jiu-jitsu methodologies usually are.
For example, one of the first things a coroner (medical examiner who investigates deaths) looks for to see if he is dealing with a homicide is “defensive wounds”. In the case of someone who has been bludgeoned to death the defensive wounds almost always include broken bones in the forearms. This is because the victim stays in range and tries to block the club swings to the head with the arm; this is a very instinctive way to react to an overhead swing and is probably related to the reaching out motions of a “bad” flinch reflex.
The arm may manage to get into a defensive position but it doesn’t actually prevent the attacks (it only temporarily changes were the attack is landing- and this is the critical distinction), the club is still free to move and eventually batters through the arm because it has the space to swing and generate its lethal momentum. Once the arms are broken the victim’s head becomes completely vulnerable.
This is the reality of blocking or trying to use the arm as a shield like defense. Stopping an attack, whether a punch or the swing of a beer bottle before it can gain the momentum to even be dangerous is infinitely safer and more practical than trying to track with your eyes and then intercept attacks, no matter how many times we see this on TV or in a Kung-Fu movie.
One horrific example was told to me by a professional involved in the case of, I believe, a Winnipeg man who was attacked by his machete wielding neighbor who had a history of mental illness. When faced with a sudden surprise attack the man instinctively raised his arm in defense and had his arm severely injured or cut off by the machete swing. If that were not bad enough the attacker made another swing so the man tried to fend it off with his remaining arm and it too suffered the same fate! The man, now without the use of either of his arms was facing still more machete swings and was able to survive only by closing the distance and knocking the attacker over while staying too close to be swung at until help intervened.
This may sound like something out of a Monty Python movie, but it is really a version of very common “defensive wounds” that coroners and medical examiners are very well aware of when they investigate violent deaths. Yet the self defense experts seem oblivious to the real world dangers of staying in front of an attacker and putting your arm between you and his weapon swing.
Therefore, particularly against weapon attacks but interchangeable with any form of attack that requires space between the two combatants (which is all striking attacks and weapon swings) the governing principle is to “jam” and “smother” the attack depriving it of the space it needs before it can even become dangerous. This may become more challenging and complex when dealing with edged weapons because a small sharp or pointed weapon may require very little space, strength or momentum to operate. Nonetheless, they still need some space to function in, so the concept is still very sound and we will be looking at the differences as we go along. From here on remember the Brazilian Jiu-jitsu axiom: “It is the space that is dangerous”.
It is interesting to note, that some self-defense systems seem to understand this principle when dealing with club or bludgeon attacks (probably because it is the most obvious and irrefutably dangerous) but have a totally different approach to unarmed striking defenses. Their punch/strike defenses usually still involve standing in the middle of the “danger zone” blocking/evading and then trying to strike back.
This is what I was eluding to when I wrote about teaching two different systems, concepts or sets of material and then possibly a third when dealing with edged weapons; one extra decision or choice to make is one too many in the chaos of real-world self-defense. These tactical or conceptual contradictions are actually the norm in most self-defense systems and martial arts and they can cause “freezing” and hesitation which can be deadly on the street.
The reasoning behind this kind of dual tactical thinking is usually based on the dangerous idea that hand strikes are easy and safe to defend (assuming you can even distinguish them) and that you must maintain that distance between the attacker and yourself so that you can retaliate with your own strikes. Our previous posts and lessons went into detail on the effects of “stability”, the “flinch reflex” and other factors that demonstrated why trying to play “catch up” by blocking punches in the “danger zone” is anything but safe or easy especially under real-world surprise conditions.
Furthermore, the statistical ineffectiveness of most people’s strikes most of the time, from a defensive point of view, means that this is simply not a safe trade off. Just like the club attack that will eventually beat down your defenses, “blocking” or evading punches does not actually stop the attack but only changes where the attack makes contact.
One miscalculation or slowed reaction and you are struck and struck at the optimum distance that the attacker wants you at. You do not have to be hit hard initially to cause great compounding problems. Once your head is lifted or worse yet turned away you are very vulnerable to the accumulating and overlapping effect of even crude strikes and there will be little you can do at that point since you are caught in the “danger zone” being destabilized, preventing you from being able to move how and where you want.
Data indicates that some of the worst injuries and even death from punching attacks occurs not because the punch was so powerful but because the victim is simply stunned or disorientated and then falls and crashes his head into the ground causing the catastrophic injuries .Think of how the blow from a billiard ball or glass ash tray would compound this. Once again, it is the space, from the fall, that is the most dangerous. By staying in the “danger zone” you are simply making yourself a perfect target and are right where the attacker needs you to be in order to do the most harm.
According to one study I came across on knife attacks: “most lethal knife attacks take place inside a critical distance about two-thirds the length of the attacker’s arm. The most common attack is a slash at the outer edge of this distance.” Hence, over and over again we have objective evidence telling us exactly where not to be during a weapon attack yet that is exactly where many if not most experts keep telling us to be! Wake up people there is something fundamentally flawed with this kind of self–defense advice no matter how long it has been around-in fact that could be the very problem.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The reason why getting close seems so counter intuitive compared with the almost universally excepted paradigm of standing in front of the attacker, basically at arm’s length and swinging back or trying to block, has a lot to do with the cultural and historical origins of “martial arts” systems.
Remember, humans are often referred to as “the tool using animal” and like the rest of human technological progress our ancestors discovered that killing an animal for food or another human in war was monumentally easier with a tool and weapons are just a specific category of tool.
(Check out the opening scene of the science fiction classic “2001 A SPACE ODDESY” and let it sink in that weapons might be our very first tools and have been an extremely important part of human culture from before we were even fully human!-that’s a long relationship with hand held weapons.)
The point being, that only in very recent times have people started to primarily think of close quarters “fighting” and “self-defense” as an unarmed skill. For all the millenniums before our modern times, serious combat or self-defense meant using a weapon. Only in this context does it make tactical sense to maintain that space between you and your assailant; yes, you are leaving the attacker the space to use his weapon but you also need that space to counter with your own weapon.
The original tactical thinking was very simple and very effective-cover yourself with some kind of protective clothing to reduce the effects of hits(ie armour, because you are going to be hit most likely standing in the danger zone) and-have a bigger longer, better weapon! (As Crocodile Dundee said: “that’s not a knife, this is a knife.”)
What most people do not understand, and this includes even the highest level experts, is that it appears that most systematized stand up “striking” martial arts derived directly from weapon systems and not the other way around. Or, for that matter, from some natural inclination for humans to try and do serious harm to each other by swinging their arms. I can hear all the howls of protest now, from the chorus of “experts” who on closer examination really don’t know anything except what they have been told and blindly excepted from a long line of other misinformed “experts”. (For a cultural based study of this topic, check out my “Fist fighting, a cultural perspective” post.)
The simple fact is that this assertion, that striking based martial arts are actually weapon martial arts with the weapons removed and not an instinctive human way to fight is actually pretty obvious to anyone who takes the time to do a little research into anthropology, history and the martial arts. Yea, I’m thinking that eliminates about 95% of the “experts” and their opinions, no matter how hard they pound their chests, raise their voices, or write idiotic stuff on the internet.
What is interesting is this phenomena for weapon systems to develop into unarmed systems is a common occurrence in both the East and the West. Take for example the “long fist” systems of China, they are considered some of the oldest systematized Asian martial arts and are still widely taught all over the world now. Their long stances and wide sweeping motions of the arms are clearly based on the use of the heavy halberds, pikes or pole arms that were the main weapons at that time and place.
In fact, many schools also still teach the old weapons hand in hand with the unarmed fighting as was originally done. However, as the weapons become seen as archaic or less socially acceptable in a changing world, the weapons aspect is given less attention (and called “traditional” to justify the training) or disappears entirely leaving just the unarmed aspect. To many people who objectively look at these martial arts as unarmed fighting systems, they do not make a whole lot of sense, but when you put the long two handed, heavy halberd back into the hands of the “long fist” fighter we see that it could not really be done any other way. In order to swing a long heavy pole arm, you have to have a long stable stance or the weight of the weapon pulls you off balance, the arms move largely independently of the lower body and stance to manipulate the weapon while remaining stable.
For another example, I was doing some research on ancient Greek martial arts like Pankratium (which was a well developed method of mixed martial arts that was an Olympic sport for hundreds of years) and one source claimed that the Greek boxing power punch was directly developed from the motion of throwing a spear.
In exactly the same way as the Chinese “long Fist”, the Karate that originally came from Okinawa was taught hand in hand with the Kobudo or originally Kobu-jitsu weapon systems. Each original kata could be performed empty handed or with one or more of the kobudo weapons, like the “tonfa”, “sai” etc.
As a Black Belt in Okinawan karate I can tell you first hand that these kata techniques make a hell of a lot more sense with a kobudo weapon in your hand than as realistic unarmed fighting. What a lot of people do not know, is that Karate was not really introduced into mainland Japan until the 1920s. In this modern unarmed culture the weapon aspect of Karate was largely abandoned and a purely unarmed form of Karate evolved but still using the same weapon principles.
Even the names of the techniques where invocative of weapon fighting, “knife hand” strikes and “hammer fist” blows. Even the sport fighting method that was developed for Karate competition even later into the 20th century was borrowed directly from the weapon competitions like Kendo sword fighting.Thus, the idea of “one strike one kill” which really is an idea from swordsmanship was over laid onto the unarmed karate method and I think to the detriment of Karate as a functional real world fighting system.
English Boxing of course has from its earliest days also been known as “prize fighting”. This term is from the original “Masters of Defense” in London that would have contests with all kinds of weapons like staffs, swords and sticks and fight for a prize in public. This started to include the punching methods based on the use of the stick and the crowds came to enjoy this part so much that the weapon training disappeared (along with some help from gun power) and the sport that became modern boxing was born.
The point I’m trying to make, is that as these once weapon arts become unarmed arts and spread around the world then the majority of self defense instructors come from these systems and we have a lot of advice that comes from systems that are being used for things and in ways they might never originally been intended for. Just like in philosophy, if you begin with a false premise it will be very hard to reason out the truth.
There is an interesting dichotomy between the idea of weapon fighting vs. grappling or perhaps the idea of “self-defense” vs. “self-offense”. Take for example, that even in some completely weapon based systems of Filipino martial arts it was taught that once you closed with an opponent to seize or grapple with him it was actually more advantages to drop your stick and use both hands.
Therefore, even people who are experts at using weapons often recognize the problems and disadvantages of trying to wield that weapon against someone who had gotten too close to you. Hence, in the old days when people only had hand held weapons to fight with, it was a well understood concept that if you wanted to take someone out the best way was to hit him at a distance with a weapon but if you needed to save yourself then you had to get too close and probably grapple him to prevent that weapon being used on you. If you don’t have the weapon to begin with than the choice is simple.
These concepts are pretty universal to all hand to hand combat if we look at them objectively and not just at unarmed against armed attackers in a modern street context. The unarmed vs armed attacker is just the most obvious and unequal versions of facing “superior fire power” that warriors and soldiers have had to deal with all through history.
All through man’s violent history we see the example of not so much the “unarmed warrior” but the “poorly armed warrior” using closing and clinching tactics to defeat his much better armed advisory in close combat. Take for example, the medieval mounted knight. He was the most formidable force on the battlefield for hundreds of years and the preindustrial equivalent of a tank.
Unarmored peasant footman or yeoman archers hand no chance of survival trying to fight man to man against such a juggernaut, if they tried to use the knight’s own perfected methods of distance combat with long weapons like the lance or sword. Instead, the footman in single combat with a knight on the battlefield would turn his disadvantages into advantages by seeking to get too close to the knight for him to use his long weapons. From here he would seek to grapple him to the ground where the knight’s heavy amour would be of a great disadvantage.
The unarmored footman could move faster and more naturally and could actually kill a fully armored knight with just his dagger if he could get close enough to grapple with him and find the spaces between the armor plates that his small dagger could fit into. The knight, on the other hand, did not have the room to use his longer and ostensibly deadlier weapons and was now at a terrible disadvantage because he had been unbalanced and forced into a range he was not equipped for.
Right through into the gunpowder era there are plenty of examples of how modern firearm wielding soldiers were defeated by warriors using handheld crude weapons, if they could successfully close the distance with the enemy and negate their long range advantages. One classic example, is what the Zulu tribes men did to the British at Isandhlwana, Africa; although good tactics by using surprise certainly contributed to the Zulu victory.
Furthermore, you can go back a little further to the Scottish highlanders during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. The highlander troops were outnumbered and poorly armed compared to the British regulars who had canon, muskets and bayonets, the highest long range weapon technology of the time. However, the highlanders knew how to fight close with their “targe” shields and “Claymore” broad swords.
They knew they could not stand in front of the British firing lines and let them open up on them from their chosen distance. So they used tactics that caught the British totally by surprise even though they usually knew they were right there in open battle. The highlanders didn’t stay at a distance but charged directly into the British lines and used close range hand to hand fighting to break the lines and take away their opponent’s distance advantages.
Conceptually, you can see that the highlanders had to charge through what was an extended battlefield sized “danger zone” in order to get so close to the enemy that their weapons were largely ineffective. These tactics where directly responsible for the early successes of the Jacobite troops despite their many disadvantages. Hence, tactics that have been proven on the large scale throughout time can also be applied by the individual.
Thus, the most important but counter intuitive part of defending against weapons attacks is to move in against them and deprive the attacker of the space he needs to be effective. If you do not have a superior weapon of your own there is usually absolutely no good reason to give the attacker that room to operate. I want you to think about the old army saying:“The defining characteristic of the warrior is the willingness to close with the enemy.”
FIRST TACTICS
Before we move into the specific defenses let’s look at the most general defense and tactic that is closely related to our “first principle,” that we outlined above. If “pouncing in”, closing the distance and smothering the attack is the best defense, then the best time to launch this defense is before the attacker can fully deploy his weapon. If you have followed the logic and necessities of real world self-defence so far then this may seem obvious to you, however; because of the tactical and technical contradictions that we have talked about, this is another very simple and extremely important basic tactic that becomes obscured and confused by all the theoretical and fantasy based approaches to the serious topic of weapon attacks. Not to mention, non-existent in sport based Brazilian Jiu-jitsu curriculums.
Here is a simple way to look at these ideas and how they are related to each other. Hesitation creates time (for the attacker), time (combined with a “bad” flinch response) creates distance and distance and space is the primary danger. As we talked about, only about 25% of assaults are armed and this is born out and consistent across the national crime statistics of the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia. From these statistical facts we reasoned that the “80/20” rule is a very simple and accurate “short hand” way of dealing with many of these self-defence topics that often have conflicting data. As we discussed, the reason more armed assaults are not occurring is because of the spontaneous nature of most acts of violence. In a very large number of real life situations (not TV) the attacker has not armed himself in advance and has not planned out the attack. (That is why, for example, that we are not including defences against firearm threats in this discussion since they do not appear on a top ten list of most common weapon attacks and by definition only someone planning ahead would have a firearm with them. In other words, the chance of someone spontaneously and randomly getting access to a firearm is very remote; although still possible if you are in a sporting goods store or some rural environments for example, where a hunter might have a shotgun or rifle on a rack behind the seat of his truck. Furthermore, many peace officer shootings result not from an initially armed assailant but from the peace officer being disarmed and having his own weapon used on him. These examples are statistically very rare compared to the other kinds of attacks seen in our “top ten list” and therefore are best covered in a separate discussions.)
This is one of the key themes of my programs and of any real world approach to self-defence with even a pretense to being “scientific”. we must be prepared for the kind of attacks that actually are statistically and practically likely to happen and not what we think is going to happen or what we are told is going to happen by the vast number of unreliable (often chest pounding) sources portraying themselves (and blindly excepted by the public) as authoritative. This is another very valuable use of the 80/20 rule and we must except from the beginning that 80% of self-defence knowledge that is being disseminated for public consumption by the “pseudo-experts” is at best untested theories or unfounded opinion. The short answer to why this state of affairs exists is simply that self-defence training is a “product” and each producer of this product has their own agenda. Unlike almost every other kind of consumer product in the world (except stuff like auto and life insurance) both the consumer and the producer hope they never have to put the product to the test and for a lot of people, perhaps even most, it never is. Therefore, this ends up producing a mind-set with in the martial arts “industry” that since no one is ever going to have to use this stuff it doesn’t really matter what we teach. You can understand how this can lead to all kinds of abuses. Furthermore, just like that “earth quake insurance” policy, if that one in a billion “big one” hits, it’s only then you find out about all the small print and exceptions revealing that you are not covered-and never were!( Assuming you are even alive to try and collect.) Thus, the vast majority of self-defence training is about selling you the idea that you are protected, not the reality. The reality is simply not as easily marketed or considered as “attractive” to the provider or consumer.
We went into great detail on this topic earlier on so that people could understand just how much of the “self-defence” and martial arts industry is simply non-sense and disseminates “disinformation”. When dealing with weapon attacks, being under the influence of this “disinformation” pushes us up the scale from highly dangerous to potentially lethal. In other words, when facing an armed attacker you better have more going for you then the untested assumptions (fantasy) of some “toughest man alive” (flake) and remember, now days this “disinformation” can be very well packaged and marketed and is just as likely to be police/military fantasy as it is to be the old fashioned “traditional”/kung-Fu movie type fantasy and everything in between.
To make matters worse, as I alluded to at the beginning, the phonies and their “disinformation” can also be at the other end of the scale and take an approach that amounts to “learned helplessness”. Many instructors go out of their way to tell their students that it is simply impossible to defend yourself against weapon attacks! Sound a little defeatist? Well it gets worse, I know of at least one highly successful instructor with hundreds of students who would routinely tell his students that not only could they not defend themselves against weapons but that they could not really defend themselves at all! Yes, I am totaly serious, these guys are nuts but this type of thinking absolves them of any responsibility for their curriculum and justifies the teaching of any hogwash they feel like. (Not to mention any guilt about cashing your check since their rational is “sure my phony BS does not work but either does anyone else’s”). Now don’t get me wrong, these kinds of schools are not nuts enough to try and push a heavy anti-self-defence agenda, they are really about some “tradition” or low impact sport model that makes a nice safe fitness system or whatever and are shockingly popular and of course make a great living for the owner. But that same owner never hesitates to put “self-defence” on his signs or in his adds.
I hope you can begin to understand why I am so critical of the “self-defence” industry and what you have to be on guard against if you are looking for real skills. I have seen both ends of that scale, from one former US Marine sergeant turned karate instructor that truly believed he was deadly, and I mean for real, for doing no more than punching a board on a wall and doing the traditional pantomime known as kata, all the way to the karate instructor from the previous example who believed that you cannot really defend yourself so you mise well do some kata (and get a belt for it) and punch a board on the wall (for all the good it will do you). The truly ironic and humorous part is that they were teaching fundamentally the same shi…stuff. (Thus the origin of the great stylistic debate that “my kata is the real kata and your kata is the phoney kata”. Hmmm, is this starting to sound like who is the “best” astrologer?) The concerned and motivated public simply deserves better than to have to weed their way through these fakes and phonies like I had to (all of whom have impeccable paper credentials and “bad ass” reputations by the way… as well as large numbers of “followers” who adore them with the same kind of wide eyed, junior high adulation, worthy of any pimply faced low self-esteem 12 year old.) in order to poses some real world skills. Believe me, I know of what I speak, because I spent the first 10 years of my own training with various “masters” and competitive athletes who often had large and even international followings, some actually worked out hard others were so obese that they looked like they were 8 or 9 months pregnant, yet were feared as “killers” by their brain washed students. The point being that there were lots of “masters” but little real world substance (despite all the reputations, “tough talk” and ego posturing) and if their stuff worked so well, I would not have had to go through all the time , effort and even ridicule of having to import Brazilian jiu-jitsu into my home country for the first time. Man, did that make the charlatans squeal.
Sure, there are guys like the above who since they cannot defend themselves against even the “haymaker” of some scrawny street punk certainly cannot defend themselves against a weapon…using their methodologies and mind sets. This does not however mean that there are not more effective methodologies out there that vastly increase your odds. Hence, instead of facing up to this ego shattering reality they instead base the assertion that “you cannot possibly defend yourself against weapon attacks” on the nature of the weapon itself or the skills of the attacker, not because of a lack of skill, knowledge or motivations on their part or weakness of there “style”. They almost always use a knife attack as their example, and state things like “a trained knife fighter will do this or do that and you could never possibly stop it and defend yourself”. I have heard this kind of reasoning from all kinds of instructors from all kinds of arts and systems, including Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructors. In the case of the BJJ instructors, their agenda was pretty clear; anything that took away from their sport fighting time was counterproductive to their goals of winning the next irrelevant tournament and therefore a waste of time. (Yea, good to know that to many “self-defence” instructors your personal survival is a waste of time.) They would say that the deadly “navy seal” or the lethal “Filipino martial arts expert” were the only people who knew the “real way” to use a knife. Those who had under gone the secret and esoteric initiations of “the trained knife fighter” were veritable gods of death and your demise was such a foregone conclusion that your only slim chance of survival was to bow down to their divine power, lay on their alter of bloodied and bladed sacrifice and beg for mercy while sacrificing your first born to them but never ever even think of trying to fight for your own life or that of your family.
Ah yea…I am not kidding, this stuff is said all the time by people only too happy to take your money to teach you “self-defence, and the fact is that a knife attack could be one of the deadliest and most difficult real-world assaults to defend against. (Although, let us not forget that statistically you have something higher than an 87% survival rate in real world knifings)be that as it may, the problem with this line of reasoning, however, is that a “trained knife fighter” does not seem to statistically exist! Victims of edged weapon assaults do not report “inquartata” or “posatosoto” type attacks, nor do they report “sinowalli”, cinco terro combinations or much else, for that matter, that would pass for “trained” knife work. In the real world, knife attacks are overwhelmingly simple, the very worst ones being sneaky but still direct and brutal. Apparently, there is nothing secret or even remotely skillful going on out there in the real world and the only “real way” to use a knife is to “stick them with the pointy end”.
Thus, I am forced to point out to people such as these; that this is why people use knifes in the first place,(you morons), because they are so dangerously easy and simple to use, you don’t need any training to be effective or even deadly! In the real world, the defining characteristic of the “real knife fighter” is not some theoretical or often silly training but the willingness to use a knife on another human being without hesitation. According to the LaFond study on edged weapon attacks, 99.9 % of assailants who used a knife had absolutely no training with it. Furthermore, any training that might have existed may very well have been irrelevant to the way the weapon was actually used.
Therefore, if you want to live your life knowing that any crack head who stole a 5 dollar table knife can walk up to you and rape your wife or daughter or sodomize you because you let some phoney “pseudo expert” tell you there was nothing you can do (but keep paying me to get you ready for that next life threatening tournament), well you go right ahead. Other people chose to have other options and at least a fighting chance to protect themselves and those they care about.
Not long ago the city of Calgary suffered its worst mass murder in its history. These tragic events unfolded because an average collage kid became mentally unstable and used a kitchen knife to attack the people at a collage party he was attending. Five of them lost their lives, not because of any highly sophisticated attack method or well-rehearsed plan but because someone was in the mental state and had the opportunity to use a knife relentlessly on unsuspecting victims. The sad fact, is that attackers won’t use fancy, sophisticated or even what most martial artist would think of as “skillful” attacks or plans, they don’t know how and they don’t need to, they are already deadly.
All this mumbo jumbo about this is going to happened and that is going to happen,( like the attacker will use a “wrist twirl” to cut your hand if you grab his wrist or he will be an expert in using his second “alive” hand in combination with the knife so you can never get hold of him and any defense you can muster can be defeated by turning the blade this way or that way…) statistically seems to exist almost entirely in the imaginations of martial artists. The real life knifers out there seem too busy actually stabbing people in direct and often rudimentary ways to worry about such things-I suggest that at least to start, you do the same, worry about being able to defend yourself against what is actually being done to people over and over again and not what could happen.
What does this mean for us and our training? It means that the people who the public turn to for self-defence advice are often making stupid excuses for their lack of knowledge and interest in the very area they profess to be experts in. They would rather be going to some tournament than actually helping you reach your self-defence goals. Then when you call them on it, and ask why you are not teaching me this, they try and make it sound like you are some kind of rube for believing that you could actually protect yourself or your family, man like what’s wrong with you?
As we pointed out, the simple statistical fact is that completely untrained and unprepared people have been able to defend themselves against edged weapons and knifes in the real world on many documented occasions, all through history, and continue to do so. Thus, defense against an edged weapon is not easy and not considered particularly high percentage (so should be avoided at all costs) but is certainly possible and like any other self-defence skills the more you practice it the higher percentage it will become. Anyone telling you that you cannot defend yourself against weapon attacks is simply lying to you and has an agenda very far removed from teaching you to realistically defend yourself. But you have to have instructors who believe it is important and want to do it, not make excuses because it does not fit their personal ego agenda.
That being said, the above factual statement is a far cry from saying or believing that you can defend yourself all the time in all situations and against all weapons. Therefore, you do not have to indulge some phony in his silly game of “how would you defend against this or against that…” as he dreams up one completely bizarre and unlikely scenario after another. Simply point out that you are unaware of these attacks ever actually happening in the real world and then quote the list of documented examples of real people (usually untrained) in the real world that have successfully defended themselves or others against knifes and edged weapons in the real world. The newspapers are full of them and I try to record and save such reports as part of my research. If you like to make fools look foolish, which I admit I feel needs to be done when we are talking about the martial arts world, then you might want to do the same and keep track of how often a newspaper or TV program records a successful weapon defense.
We have covered a lot of ground here, so I want to reiterate the main points before we get back to the specifics of our “first tactics” section. The main point is just like in our “unarmed” self-defence approach we need to worry about and prepare for, the real world attacks we are actually going to face. Not let ourselves be psychologically or tactically disarmed by wasting our precious training time worrying about attacks that never happen and never will. The problem is that this can be much harder than you think because of all the weird and wacky disinformation that is out there. Weapon attacks by their nature are very dangerous so we do not need to add layers of imaginary dangers to further complicate our training. If some coward wants to get a belt for doing kata or entering a jiu-jitsu tournament good for them, but they should keep their mouths shut about things they don’t know anything about and reserve their baseless opinions on who can do what or what is possible in the real world. They clearly know absolutely nothing about it and have an agenda in conflict with your reasonable self-defence needs and the public should start understanding this. Think of it this way, would you want your country defended by an Army that said: “oh we don’t train because our officers said that we could not possibly defeat the enemy because they might drop a nuclear bomb on us”? Or go to a doctor who finds a tumor and says there is nothing we can do because it might be a such and such and they are too deadly. Its sound preposterous doesn’t it?-yet it is going in “self-defence schools” every day.
Here is one of my favorite analogies to help explain this kind of lunacy to laypeople. Years ago, I was taking a basic first aid course and the instructor pointed out that as lay people it wasn’t our responsibility to make judgements about the condition of accident victims, we were required to work on them and do our best regardless of what we thought; only a doctor could declare someone dead. However, even as lay people we could assume some one was dead only if one of these four conditions existed: The person was A) decapitated, B) transected, C) in a state of decomposition or E) burned beyond recognition. Thus, what much of the self-defence “industry” is telling you is the equivalent to saying you should never take a first aide course because you might run into one of the above situations and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Therefore, instead of training for and planning for the 99.9% of the time when there are good chances our training and skills can help someone we should instead spend our time arguing about how we can’t save a decomposed body therefore all first aid training is useless…tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is nuts!
There is the an old saying about doing what we can about things we can change, not worrying about the things we cannot and being wise enough to know the difference.
The purpose of all this discussion is to bring us to this point and to the realization that if the very most common weapon attacks are spontaneous and unskilled then this can often give us a defensive window of opportunity that may actually give the unarmed defender the advantage over the weapon attacker. Sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not magic but it is certainly a tactic that can help, but you need to definitely not be in the frame of mind “that you cannot possibly defend yourself against weapons”.
Here is an important tactical consideration that is lost on most instructors but can really help increase the odds in your favour. If the attack is spontaneous (which should be the starting point of weapon defence training ) then there has to be a delay between the moment the attacker makes the conscious decision to attack you with a weapon and when he can actually get a hold of something to use as a weapon. This is very important when we are talking about spontaneous and improvised weapon attacks which are the most common scenarios. If someone wants to “glass” you they have to make that mental decision then they have to find a glass, get to it, pick it up and only then deploy it. If it is already in their hand then you have been forewarned about what kind of attack is likely. This can be a very small window, but it is critical to understand that for that moment the attacker has to take his mind completely off of you and focus on getting a hold of his weapon. This is the optimal time to “pounce” on him since he will be unable to take any defensive action with his mind focused on deployment. The more difficult the deployment of the weapon, the bigger your window of opportunity. Heavy objects take longer to lift, smaller objects may be harder to grab etc. Furthermore, the attacker may give you “tells”, such as him looking away from you and scanning the table with his eyes to locate the nearest glass, he may start more subtly moving his hand towards an object on a table, this is difficult to do without his eyes and he will have to give his intentions away. Many times there is no mistaking his intentions, In order to grab a chair for example; he must make large more easily recognizable motions. Imagine what a person has to do and how vulnerable they leave themselves for a moment when they bend over to pick a board up off the ground. As we discussed earlier, you do not have to wait to see specifically what he is trying to grab, you must not hesitate when he gives you this opportunity. This is the idea of “counter deployment” and should be considered “very early defense” and is therefore your first and best line of weapon defense.
Very early DEFENSE
Therefore, “counter deployment” training is essential to be able to deal realistically with real world weapon attacks. The first step is to simply understand this and train for it accordingly, do not start every training session with the stand-in “attacker” already holding the weapon and at his optimal distance and primed to attack (not to mention, aware of what your defenses are going to be). You can see how this type of training reinforces the myth of the “trained knife fighter”; instead you must have the mindset that even Wild Bill Hickok is little threat to you if he cannot get his gun out of his holster.
Historically, it is interesting to note that the real-life lawman and gunfighter, Wyatt Earp, apparently used such counter deployment tactics to save his life on many occasions. When faced with a hostile pistol carrying cowboy at close range, Earp would not try to back up and out draw the gunman and create space (as we see over and over again in movies), but would step in, smother the cowboy’s attempt to pull out his pistol and use the butt or barrel of his own handgun as a close range club. This method was so common among the period lawmen that knew what they were doing that it was given a name “buffolowing”. The tactic must have been very effective since Earp went his whole life never having been shot or wounded and such tactics must have been as counter intuitive and surprising then as they will be today.
Hence, you must specifically train these situations and scenarios, spend a healthy amount of time with the weapon or potential weapon out of the hands of the attacker. Place “clubs” against walls or simply on the floor so that the stand in “attacker” has to actually go through the process of arming himself before he can actually attack. There are many specific “counter deployment” techniques that have been developed for specific weapons but they should be seen as supplements to this more general tactic. As we have already discussed at length, if you hesitate or wait to see specifically what the attacker is arming himself with, you are giving him time and losing your advantage. The main point is that overcoming hesitation and denial is a skill in itself and a very, very critical one that needs to be trained accordingly.
As for technique, it has to be as simple and general as possible. The slapping down and “over hooking” methods that are utilized in the “clubbing” and two handed “swinging” video lessons that you may have seen on my APPs are perfect for this kind of pre-emptive defense. Deny the attacker the use of his arms and prevent his body from being able to go where he wants and we have solved a very large portion of the problem. From here you are basically in an unarmed fight because you prevented the attacker from deploying the weapon so you can finish with unarmed tactics that work in that distance.
Will, these methods and principals apply to edged weapons and particularly small edged weapons, that can move very quickly and need very little space to operate? The answer is yes but we have to tighten up all the methods and reduce even more the amounts of space we have been talking about. Small, fast edged weapons are probably the most difficult and dangerous weapon scenario to deal with at close range but they are also, just that, small with limited reach so you may be able to use the other end of the jiu-jitsu “distance management” concept and be all the way out. In other words, on the outside of the “danger zone”. This is a different topic that we should reserve for another time and discussion.
As for close range edged weapon defenses we have to move from a more general approach of controlling the opponent’s body by getting as close as we can, to focusing on just the knife baring limb and getting as much control of that as possible. According to a study I was researching on successful real world knife defenses, which I believe were largely improvised by lay people, the most common characteristic of successful knife defenses in actual real life street attacks was controlling the attacker’s arm with both of yours. This seems logical and intuitive, but again we are talking about the weird and wacky world of self-defence where things like defending with one hand and punching with the other hand at the exact same time, pressure points, or wrist locks while standing in the danger zone are far more commonly taught by “experts”, than this simpler more intuitive and proven approach.
Some people are still going to have a problem with this because they can’t get their heads around the idea of getting close to a knife but at close distance there really isn’t any other viable tactic. The worst thing you can do, just like the “bad flinch reflex” against a punch, is to move backwards or turn away. If the knife can’t move it can’t hurt you, the problem is unlike a club that needs a lot of space to generate momentum a knife does not have to move very much. But it still needs space, more than some people would have us believe.
Here is an experiment that you can do to prove this and was first demonstrated to me by one of my Filipino martial arts instructors and I routinely use it now as well to demonstrate the concept. My instructor took a razor shape knife and held it by the blade. He squeezed as hard as he could…what do you think happened? The answer is nothing, and it’s no magic trick any one can do it because the blade of the knife cannot cut without being pulled or moved. That’s right, if you look at a knife edge, under a microscope, you see that it still functions like a saw and has tiny little saw teeth that have to be pulled across a surface to cut… yes, no matter how sharp it is. Therefore, this instructor advocated that if necessary you can grab the blade of a knife. Man, talk about counter intuitive but it can save lives and he recounted one incident where a small group of people including one of his students were attacked by a knife wielding assailant. I believe it may have been a mentally deranged street person so the attack was without warning, I believe the other two people in the group where killed but the student survived because he was able to grab the blade.
As counter intuitive as this may sound and certainly flies in the face of much of the advice given by the “experts”, this is actually nothing new. Grabbing the blade of an opponent’s dagger was a very common tactic during the renaissance era in Europe and is shown in many forms and situations in the surviving fencing manuals from that time and those guys knew their edged weapons. There are ways to try and hold the flat or unsharpened part of a single edged knife blade and this is quite viable on larger knifes but we are talking about full on wrapping your fingers around the whole thing and hanging on like your life depended on it…because your life would depend on it; there is no guarantee that you will not cut your hand and odds are you will, but if you know and are psychologically prepared for the idea that the tighter and harder you grab the blade the less you will be cut, then you have a surprising and viable very last option defence. (Check out the end of the final sword duel from “Rob Roy” for some cinematic inspiration.) Once again, it’s the space that is dangerous.
Therefore my way of thinking about it and explain it, is that we can use the same clinch theories but we have to apply them against the attackers’ arm and not his entire body. The simplest way to look at this is to “pounce” or “close the distance” on his entire arm and forget about the rest of his body for the moment .In other words, treat his arm like it was a whole person and control as much of it and as many joints as possible. This of course assumes you know from the beginning that there is an edged weapon but as we have been discussing this is certainly not always the case so using our principle of interchangeability all of our upper body clinches should include some form of arm control that can easily morph into specific weapon arm control.
In future posts we can then look at specific defenses and how to make our clinches and control positions as functional and interchangeable as possible.
I hope that this post has provoked a different way of thinking about weapon self-defence and that it motivates you to not only train harder in this area but to delve into it as “folk” scientist looking for the truth. We should live like modern rational men, not medieval peasants who were told what to think and believe. The sad fact is much of the martial arts industry is literally medieval…in origin and even more of in mentality. It’s time to enter the “enlightenment” and apply some scientific methodology which after all has only been around for a few hundred years….take self-defence seriously but have fun doing it…