Street-Fighting-Techniques.info

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

This post follows on from The Basics on Knife Defense, and you should read that one first or you probably won’t follow this one.

From the knife defense ready stance if someone goes for you with a stabbing attack to the head or neck area here is what you should do. Firstly, as with the previous midsection attack I explained, you should block with both forearms by pushing them upwards. Assuming that they have attacked with their right arm you then turn your right hand and grab their wrist whilst uncrossing your arms. You should therefore be holding them so that the back of their hand is facing your palm. Step towards them and simply bring their attacking arm up behind their back whilst using your left arm to grab hold of their neck or shoulder so that they can’t easily step forwards or turn out of the arm lock.

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:

This is one of those worst case scenarios - where an attacker is holding a gun to the back of your head - but the worst does sometimes happen and just a little knowledge and preparation of defense-and-disarm street self defense can make all the difference. Here is a video demonstrated a reasonable simple and reliable technique which you can use if you do ever find yourself in this awful situation:

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.