Reality Based Knife Training

Knife Disarming

I don’t really believe in Knife Disarming, and to be honest I never have. I believe it is a dangerous tactic/strategy to follow on the street – in reality – and that it leads to bad training practices on the mats.

I have trained at many schools, where the disarming of a knife or other weapon signifies the end of the fight. Really? In what world is this true? If you believe that when you disarm somebody of a weapon the fight ends you are very much mistaken; maybe in the movies but not in real life. Take a moment to consider the realities of a knife fight, where an aggressor is in such an emotional place that they are prepared to pull a knife and repeatedly shank it into your body; now imagine that by a great deal of luck and training you have managed to wrest the knife of them- do you seriously believe that they’ll wake up from their emotional trance, take a look at the “new” situation and come to their senses and apologize for their heinous actions against you. Of course not. Most times when you take a knife of somebody they’ll not really comprehend what has happened other than that they are now in a fight for their own survival, and they’ll continue fighting.

Martial Arts and Self Defense training has to tell “the story” when training. Too often it teaches everything according to the “Happy Path” i.e. you do this and then this happens and then you’re safe. This is not reality, this is the imagination of the self-defense instructor who is so convinced by the power of technique and technical ability that reality can be forgotten. In reality unless you do something to physically impress upon the other person that the fight is over, they won’t understand that the fight is over. The reason they are in a fight is because their reasoning brain has shut down, and they believe the only/best option open to them is to engage physically with you. They are not suddenly going to become rational whilst you are holding their knife, and they’re certainly not going to view you as a person of moral upstanding character who is going to put their knife away and tell them to go on their way. They will see you as a threat and want to deal with you.

Self Defense training should always end with a conclusion; every time you practice a technique there should be a conclusion e.g. if you practice an escape from a hold, you shouldn’t just escape and turn round to your partner and ask them to apply it again, rather you should take a few steps to emulate running away, turn to strike them etc. You should train to an end and a conclusion, so the technique you practice has a context. You should also put in the preceding parts i.e. how you ended up in such a control or hold.

When you train Knife Disarming – and there are situations and occasions where you should disarm, though these are a lot fewer than you might imagine – you should train different responses from your partner. Have them continue the fight/training as if they haven’t realized that they’ve been disarmed – check your response(s). Have them behave as if they have realized that you have disarmed them, and that they are now fighting for their life – check your response(s). Get yourself a real knife stand on the mats with it close your eyes and imagine having to deal with it, then imagine disarming it (imagine having been cut, the frenzied nature of the attack, the look on your assailant’s face etc.) and hold it and think what your next step would be, and what your assailant’s response would be. Then consider if the way you train reflects this.