Street-Fighting-Techniques.info

Reading my post on knife fighting and knife defense will hopefully help to give you some of the basics, along with a few of what I think are the best techniques, but if you want to go further than that and gain some real skill then you will need to start a proper martial arts training programme. Kali is one of the best, if not the best system for this, and the DVD below by Baryy Cuda offers an excellent introduction to flow drills - on of the most important parts of training in knife fighting, along with a wide range of advanced and highly effective techniques. I reckon it’s the best product to get if you want to develop your skills in knife fighting and defense against knife attack.

If you haven’t already done so you might also like to take a look at his earlier post on special forces knife training

The martial art of Escrima is world famous for its knife fighting techniques. Here is a great little 8 minute video highlighting some of the drills and both offensive and defensive knife fighting techniques taught to students of Escrima:

Deadly Art of Eskrima Knife Fighting by Frans Stroeven Part1 - video powered by Metacafe

Although I would definitely advise against carrying a knife around with you just in case you need it to defend yourself there are nevertheless times when you are in a very dangerous situation and need a weapon to defend yourself, and often at these times a knife is the best choice.

If you do pick up a blade then there are two things which need to be at the forefront of your mind. Firstly you should remember that once a weapon is brought into a situation you are in danger from it as well as anyone else. Many, many people end up getting seriously hurt by their own weapon. Secondly, once you decide to arm yourself you are taking on a greater responsibility for what happens. If you a scared and lash out with a knife and end up killing someone who was perhaps just pushing you around a bit and hadn’t tried to seriously hurt you then you could easily find yourself in prison for manslaughter.

My best tip for combating both of these problems is to use a reverse grip. This basically means that instead of holding it with the blade poining upwards or outwards, you hold it so that the blade runs down the outside of your forearm, pointing towards your elbow. This makes it very difficult for anyone to grab hold of either the knife itself or your wrist, which obviously makes it much harder for them to wrestle the knife off you and use it against you. With this reverse grip it is also easier for you to use the handle of the knife to strike with what is almost an ordinary punch. This is more damaging and painful than an ordinary punch and may well be enough to show an attacker that you mean business and stop them in their tracks, but stops short of causing a potentially lethal injury.

For more advanced techniques check out my earlier post on special forces knife training

I’ve just been looking through online videos from various sites demonstrating knife defense techniques, to see if I could find anything good, and I came across this video which I think is a real gem. The techniues are from Hapkido, a martial art that I’ve never had much contact with or known much about, so it was a nice surprise. There are a good number of defenses demonstrated, covering different attacks, but from my perspective the best thing about them is that they don’t put you in any danger if you fuck them up. Nobody can ever be 100% certain of always doing a technique correctly, especially when you are taking it out of the gym and using it in a real situation for the first time, and over the years I have seen so many people demonstrating fancy, complex ways to defend against a knife attack that look great when you get them right but have the potential to put you in serious danger if it goes wrong. Everything demonstrated in this video is based on a reliable block or dodge followed by a way to disarm them that doesn’t leave you too open if they break free:

If you want to learn about knife fighting and knife defense from the top experts in the world then take a look at this ebook available to downolad now: Knife Combat by Alexander Popov. It presents the complete system developed and  used by the old Soviet special forces and sabotage units who specialized in this area of warfare, giving you the techniques themselves and the correct training methods. And if you want to get a sneek preview before you get the full version there is a free trial download.