Street-Fighting-Techniques.info

Here is what I believe to be the most effective defense and disarming technique against someone trying to stab you in the torso. This post follows on from my earlier one ‘The Basics of Knife Defense‘ and assumes that you have adopted the defensive stance described there, so I suggest you read that one first if you haven’t read it already.

One of the most important thing in blocking a knife (or bottle or other sharp object) attack is that you need to use a solid, powerful and reliable block. The crossed arms of the knife defense stance come in useful here as it allows for a natural double arm block. Simultaneously bend over slighlty, moving your belly and side away from your attacker, whilst bringing both arms down hard onto the attacking arm or your opponent. Your arms should remain crossed, coming down is a scissors like movement so that when they hit they trap knife arm of the attacker between your hands. This is a very reliable block because it doesn’t require to much accuracy, it is an instinctive movement working with your natural reactions, and it has a lot of strength behind it.

But blocking a knife attack is not enough; you also need to disarm them and take away the knife to stop them coming straight back at you. Assuming that the attack is right handed you should grab hold of their wrist with your right hand. If they attack with the left you also grab with your left. You have to be quite quick to perform this disarm, so it is worth mentioning that if you don’t get a good grab straight away you need to back off and get out of their striking range as quickly as possible. When you make the grab you should be trying to place your thumb so that it runs down the back of their hand, while you fingers should be as close as possible to the wrist joint where the arm meets the hand, on the inside of the arm.

As soon as you have hold of them lean back and pull towards you to straighten their arm as much as possible, whilst simultaneously uncrossing your arms, bringing your holding arm round in a semi-circle and turning it over so that the back of your hand is facing the floor.  This movement should turn over their arm so that their elbow is pointing upwards. At this point you have a hold, and only need to apply pressure for a double lock. Pushing with your thumb on the back of their hand applies a writs lock, whilst using your other hand to push down on the elbow gives you a painful arm lock.

You must remember that the wrist and arm lock are not done for their own sake, but just to make them drop the knife. The second you have the lock, if they don’t drop the weapon automatically, you should shout at them to drop it, and the second they do you should let go of them and grab the weapon yourself.

As soon as I get the chance I will put together a video of this technique, as well as others for attacks to different areas of the body, and add it here, but for now hopefully this description has given you a clear enough picture for you to get a good feel for the technique.

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.