Knife attackers

[GhostFighter]

For saying someone wants to robb and kill you or just hates you for whatever reason and just wants to kill you.

What would be the most common attack by someone with an knife on the street: underhands or above?

[bushido_man96]

Both tend to be popular forms of attack, so learning to deal with both will be advantagous. Keep in mind the slashing forms of attack, as well.

[cross]

Both tend to be popular forms of attack, so learning to deal with both will be advantagous. Keep in mind the slashing forms of attack, as well.

I completely agree. Also keep in mind that the knife attack with most likely involve alot of "random" movements that cant really be easily categorized or pigeon-holled into certain techniques. What im saying is, its far better to practice against a person trying to stab you and hurt you with the knife any way they want, as opposed to "you attack me this way and i defend this way".

[bushido_man96]

You make a good point, cross. However, I do feel that by beginning with the two basic strikes that will be encountered, and training some defenses against them, will help to gain the muscle memory needed to get used to the actual defenses. Then, as you get them down, you can add the variations, and use variations of your simple defenses.

[lordtariel]

I would think thrusting attacks would be used a lot as well. Just running up to the person and starting to stab like crazy.

[TigerDude]

Reminds me of the Jim Carey sketch:

"Like all beginners, you attacked me WRONG!"

lol

[cross]

You make a good point, cross. However, I do feel that by beginning with the two basic strikes that will be encountered, and training some defenses against them, will help to gain the muscle memory needed to get used to the actual defenses. Then, as you get them down, you can add the variations, and use variations of your simple defenses.

What do you mean by the 2 basic strikes?

Keeping in mind the dynamic nature of a knife attack, realistic training must mimic this has close has possible. Any defense techniques you learn may work fine against the intended technique, but with any variation of that the muscle memory will not be of much help. This is just my opinion and i much prefer a concept based approach to most self defense situations. This leaves you much more open and responsive to whats going on, and even if you have never seen the specific attack before, you can apply the principles to effectively deal with it.

For knives specifically:(the principles come via Richard Dimitri at https://www.senshido.com).

1. Clear your body.

2. Secure the weapon hand.

3. Neutralize the attacker.

Whilst these are reasonably broad(which i feel is a good thing), they still provide provisions for all types of knife attacks you could face. Because of the dynamic nature of the attack, you cant try to attach specific techniques to the situations because the techniques used with be incidental.

Its also important to understand what your opponent will do once you have secured the weapon hand.(once again from Richard Dimitri), in no particular order:

1. Try to pull their hand away.

2. Try to push the weapon into you still.

3. Strike you with other parts of their body(or pull out another weapon).

4. Swap hands.

From these concepts and principles you can adequately prepare yourself for each possibility by isolating each in training and then putting it all together in the "all out" drill i mentioned in my first post.

[bushido_man96]

By the two basic strikes, I mean the thrust from below, and the downward thrust from above.

I can see what you are getting at, cross, and they are all important points. However, what I am addressing is the idea of obtaining some useful muscle memory related to the initial response when defending against knife attacks. I did not say that is was the all-inclusive way to learn to defend against knife attacks; merely a method to gain muslce memory, and then use it to build on the facets that you mention.

Even when we try to reduce things to the most basic concepts that we can, we still have to take things a step at a time. I am not saying that this will take years, months, or days at a time to accomplish. It just provides another piece of the framework.

Edited June 16, 2007 by bushido_man96

[Menjo]

Reminds me of the Jim Carey sketch:

"Like all beginners, you attacked me WRONG!"

lol

haha, reminds me of a certain time...When I was 15, a karate instructor was sparing with me and I kept my hands close to my body similar to a kickboxing class I took a couple nights before.

He then got angry after I was able to fight back and told me to hold one hand out like a traditional karate stance...a reasonable order.

I did so reluctantly, and then he grabbed my outstretched hand with his right and hooked me cleanly on the nose as hard as he could with his left.

[KarateEd]

1. Clear your body.

2. Secure the weapon hand.

3. Neutralize the attacker.

I was thinking about a knife attack while reading another post and the common defenses seem to follow the above three steps. However, I wonder whether step three should be "separation of the weapon (knife in this case) from the attacker" instead of "neutralizing the attacker" (which is rather broad in scope). Often I see knife defenses that involve a block or grab then a strike of some kind. I can see the merit in such a strategy as one tries to put "pain in the brain" of the attacker and divert his focus from "attack" to that new pain that just coursed through his body. However, if the strike proves less effective and doesn't capture the enemies mind, then he still has the weapon in hand. Would it not be best to first remove the weapon, then neutralize? Is removal considered neutralization?

Ed