Street-Fighting-Techniques.info

Facing an armed attacker with nothing to defend yourself with but the knowledge and skill you have developed through your training is the ultimate nightmare, and also the ultimate test of your street self defense techniques and training. And within a range of about 2 metres a knife is just as dangerous as most guns.

Although facing a knife-wielding attacker will always be a highly dangerous situation - no matter how well trained you are - the good news is that there are a few basic and easily learned things that you can do which will dramatically increase your chances of surviving and getting away from the situation unscathed.

The first thing which you have to do is to reduce the area of your body that your attacker has to aim at. It’s a very simple principle, obvious when you think about it, but which most people wouldn’t think to do in the heat of the moment - the smaller the target you present the harder you will be to hit. All you have to do is to turn 90 degrees so that you are side-on to your attacker rather than facing them. This also serves to move the vital areas along the center line of the body, such as the heart, slightly further from the most likely line of attack. Just on it’s own this simple action can make a real difference.

The second thing is that you have to take extra care to protect vital areas of the body. You can never be 100% sure of not being hit, and in unarmed combat a fighter can accept some chance of being hit anywhere, only making minor efforts to give extra protection to the most vulnarable parts of the body. But in a knife attack you really do have to be absolutely 100% sure you can’t be stabbed in certain parts of the body. The main area you need to think about is the neck - a large percentage of stab wounds to the neck will end up being fatal. Even the heart area has the ribcage which affords some degree of protection, but the neck is highly vulnerable. It is also one of the areas which attackers frequently aim for. But again it is very simple to protect yourself by making it impossible for any attacker to strike this part of the body. All you have to do is to raise your shoulders up as high as you can (as you would in a shrugging gesture) and hold then there, and then tuck your head and chin down to close off access to the neck. If you hold this position throught the encounter you might look a bit silly, but you will be much safer.

The final basic principle is to adopt a suitable defensive position with the arms. An ordinary fighting ‘guard’ position with the arms, whatever martial art you practice, will be designed to provide a balance between defensive and offensive capabilities. But in a knife attack scenario you really need to play safe by being totally defensive in your stance and guard. The most effective defensive position is to have your arms crossed making an X in front of you. This covers The maximum possible area with a static guard, and it is also conducive to using powerful and reliable double arm blocks. And also, all you need to do is to is to block up or down using a ’scissors’ like motion with your forearms and it provides a natural trapping movement which can then be used to disarm your attacker. I’ll come back to technique to disarm an attacker later.

These three simple things require no training to do, only the ability to stay calm enough to remember them should the time come when they are needed, and they truly can make a big difference.

Generally martial arts techniques and training are the same for men or women, but sometimes it can be useful to differentiate. And because most of the people who join clubs and go to classes (as well as the people who run them) tend to be men, female self defense can sometimes get less attention.

The main reason why it can be good to look at training specifically geared towards women is not what you probably imagine - it is not anything to do with size or strength. There are small men around, just as there are big strong women, and no matter how big and strong you are it is always useful to learn how to deal with a bigger, stronger opponent. It is not even the fact that women often have less confidence in their ability when they begin, although this can come into it. In actual fact the primary reason is because the kind of self-defense situation a women is most likely to find herself in, such as an attempted rape for example, is different from the kind of situation a man is more likely to find himself in.

As a man, who has trained mostly with other men, I don’t claim to be an expert on this topic. So here is the best website I could find to recommend, which offers a free report to all visitors on self-defense for women

One of the difficult things about martial arts is that they are usually taught in a very different context and environment than the one they are design to be used in. Sometimes it can be difficult for a technique to make that all important transition from the classroom to the street. That is why it is always good to see things being used exactly as they would be in a real situation when you are learning them. It is also good to look at a specific scenario and to go through all the different possibilities of what could happen and how you could deal with it within the limitations (such as the amount of space you have around you) , and using the advantages of the environment you are in. So to kick us off with the first post to my new blog here is a video from roughhouse which goes through the scenario of being attacked on a train.