Some people have mentioned to me that they want to learn how to defend against a person with a knife, but they don’t want to learn how to fight with a knife because they don’t want to kill anybody nor go to jail. This is their words not mine. I don’t want to kill anybody nor go to jail either. However, it is now time to wake up and see the reality of how you can go about surviving edge weapon encounters or home invasions.
Your main goal should first be to survive these life threatening encounters and that should be on the top of your list.
In order to defend against any kind of weapon you must begin by understanding how that weapon works and then how to use it. This way you know what the weapon can do and cannot do. This allows you to get into the mind of the person holding that weapon and
what they plan on doing.
I have seen far too many martial arts instructors teaching their students to block a knife attack. Yes, you heard right — block the knife attack. That works well in these martial arts schools when practicing with no real life stress. In reality it will get you killed.
When you become a student of edge weapons you learn about seeing angles. Once you learn this you then learn how to use
these angles of attack for both defense and offense. You also learn how it is a better idea to keep your opponent’s weapon hand in motion versus trying to stop it with a block. By keeping the opponent’s hand in motion you can then control it by redirecting the hand to particular places or locations that allow you to thwart your opponent’s attack. Once this is learned defending against a knife will make much more sense. It is only then that students of the blade can fully appreciate how easily a knife fighter can counter your block and hack you up if you try to stop their cutting or stabbing motion with a block.
The only intelligent way to counter a knife attack is to first learn how it is done. So by learning how to use edge weapons it will make more sense when that time comes to defend against one. Don’t be foolish and think you can defend against a trained person with an edge weapon when you have no training with edge weapons. Over the years I have personally seen good fighters go to their graves with that kind of thinking. They actually believed they could defeat a skilled person who knew how to use and handle an edge weapon when they had no idea what a knife fighter was really capable of doing to them. Bad idea.
At Combat Science we can only help you if you allow us. In order to do this you must get over your fears. Only then can you learn how to properly defend yourself. We will be here when you are ready.
Respectfully yours,
Grandmaster Peter Freedman