Knife Fighting?

[death2twinkys]

Does anyone know of a way to learn how to knife fight. With particular intrest on trainers in the Portland OR area

[Chris Phelps]

"knife fighting" is a very general term. Will you be learning for offense or defense? Will you be facing opponents who are armed or unarmed? What will they be armed with?


From the incredibly small amount of information given, here is my recommendation.

1) sit down and actually spend some time thinking about what you want to learn about and why you chose to learn it.

2) Post here with a complete description so we can better help you.


Those aside, here is a "general Direction" for you to head into.

For knife on knife fighting, check out a martial art called Sayoc Kali.

Sayoc Kali

For defense against knife attacks, You can also learn Aikido.

I recommend you study both, as both of them can and will teach you quite valuable information.

Also, read up on a form of fighting known as grappling.



Those three combined should give you a great wealth of knowledge and power to defend yourself against a great deal of attacks.

[death2twinkys]

Thanks, thats what I wanted to know. I just couldn't think of the proper wording for it.

[DonR101395]

http://www.onesourcetactical.com/ has some videos to get you started while searching for an instructor. Marc Denny and Gabe Suarez just released a new video last week that is pretty good I just got mine friday and it's based on Kali tecniques. It's also available at http://dogbrothers.com/product_info....ee3c6a0e91f77b

[oldbillthundercheif]

Get two hard-rubber "knives", a bucket of paint, a bargain-pack of white T-shirts, and a crazy friend who wants to train. You could pick up extra knowledge through professional instruction, but you can learn a lot on your own.

[DonR101395]

Good call Bill, but you can also do the same thing with a couple of markers and it's less messy.

[Mikeyboy]

Do a search and check out some book and DVD here;

www.awma.com

[Samurai]

You absolutely will NOT teach yourself about proper knife fighting with paint and magic markers in the backyard. Part of knife fighting is getting cut. When you get cut, you begin to lose use of your muscles and nerves. There is no way to simulate proper nerve and vascular damage during a confrontation through horseplay in the backyard. However, professional techniques, developed by professional instructors, will teach you movements and body coordination to allow you to move quickly and efficiently with minimal use of unnecessary musculature. Paint and markers alone will teach you agility and acrobatics, but they will NOT teach you proper technique. Proper technique comes from proper training!

Now, that said, there are PLENTY of rough-ol'-boys at the bars and monster-truck shows out there who are EXCELLENT knife-fighters, and who have had no professional training whatsoever. Those guys got good by ACTUALLY knife-fighting! You can usually distinguish those guys in a crowd; they have scars all over their bodies, and they usually walk with a limp. But, you don't want to train that way... they also tend to not live very long...

You wouldn't learn to shoot a gun by grabbing a plastic water gun and going in the backyard with your friend, would you? Of course not! That would be stupid... So, why assume that you can learn to knife fight with toys in the backyard?

Seek professional help!

[Ricebrnr]

Escrima is a Phillipino martial art mostly noted for its stick fighting. That being said its forms translate well to empty hands and knife fighting which it does train in specifically. You may want to find some schools in your area and take a look.

[the possum]

Gentlemen,

I find it very hard to even post in this thread...
But I hope all of you will take a minute to check out this page, and much more on that site, for another perspective.

Lies About Knife Fighting

[hso]

Let's define the terminology a bit.

From my perspective -

Everyone needs to learn to defend against a knife.

Some folks need to learn to defend against a knife while they have a knife.

Very few folks need to learn to fight with a knife.

There are whole cultures where figting with bladed weapons is still part of day to day life. These cultures produce very extensive knife fighting systems. Most of them start with blade on blade and the advanced student/practioner eventually learns to deal without a blade of their own against a blade. Kali, Silat and other systems from SE Asia and the Phillipines are such systems.

In this country most knife attacks are ambush attacks. As such you're best served taking focused courses on how to deal with those unless you are willing to invest a lot of time (years) learning a whole system.

[DonR101395]

You absolutely will NOT teach yourself about proper knife fighting with paint and magic markers in the backyard. Part of knife fighting is getting cut. When you get cut, you begin to lose use of your muscles and nerves. There is no way to simulate proper nerve and vascular damage during a confrontation through horseplay in the backyard. However, professional techniques, developed by professional instructors, will teach you movements and body coordination to allow you to move quickly and efficiently with minimal use of unnecessary musculature. Paint and markers alone will teach you agility and acrobatics, but they will NOT teach you proper technique. Proper technique comes from proper training!

I don't believe anyone said to not get instruction from an instructor, however the suggestions were valid. I've seen instuctors use markers as a valuable tool to show exactly where you are getting cut.
Once again, get instruction, you can only go so far on your own.

[Ricebrnr]

That was a great read the possum, thanks for posting it.

I agree with many of the points mentioned, and want to further clarify my suggestion.

While there may be no such thing as knife fighting, should one wish to train in a martial art with knives I still believe Kali/Escrima is a good place to start. Of course no martial art especially those more oriented to sports translates to the street well without the will and the proper mind set. This includes using your brains to avoid the confrontation altogether.

Any good practioner knows the paradox; "The more you know, the less likely you will be to use it."

[death2twinkys]

What I need to know most is how to attack with a knife. Mostly in a, my rifles out of bullets, my pistol is out of bullets, and they are still coming, full on combat situation or since that is just asking to die. A, I need him dead quietly so I can move forward and prepare an ambush kind of way. I am going into the military and have heard multiple times that the Army's knife training is a joke at best.

[Ricebrnr]

Oh in that case, I would think a bayonet on the rifle or simply using the rifle as a club would be better than going to the knife.

I imagine there's a reason why the knife training would be a joke until you get the more "specialized" tarining.

[oldbillthundercheif]

Yeah, you will want specialized training if you want to become fully proficient, but the backyard training is more effective in dealing with what the "lies about knife-fighting" guy called the Jailyard Bum-Rush. You will have to train for years and years with an instructor before you have any hope of surviving this sort of encounter. If you and a buddy don't mind occasionally injuring each other badly, this sort of wild and unpredictable attack can be pretty well simulated in informal training, though. If your fine-muscle control doesn't go all to hell with a friend stomping the snot out of you while you try to draw your weapon, you must be some sort of genetic mutant.

[JR47]

Using a rifle butt? You've been out of the service for what? Forty years? Today's plastic rifles respond poorly to being used as a club. Even worse, they don't always inflict the type of damage that you're hoping for.

As for the "When you get cut, you begin to lose use of your muscles and nerves. There is no way to simulate proper nerve and vascular damage during a confrontation through horseplay in the backyard."

Does that mean that someone advocates being shot to simulate proper nerve and vascular damage before one can learn to handle a forearm in self-defense?

Knife-work is messy. Most of the time, the difference between the winner and the loser is who died first. Combat operations involving edged weapons is usually of the ambush type. SF has a couple of good programs. Get to know a couple of SF types, and see if they'll help you.

If you're looking to gain insight ahead of time, Penjak Silat and Kali forms are good.

[Samurai]

Mr. Death, the reason the army's knife training is a "joke" is because effective use of a knife in an open combat situation is a joke. Possum's web page is correct (though I disagree with the downplay of formal martial arts training), in that most "knife fights" amount to little more than someone sneaking up on someone else and schiving them with a hidden blade. (My Sensei tells us, "You never see the knife that gets you.")

Knives are good for sneaky movements, i.e., walking up casually to someone with a knife concealed in your clothing or hand, brushing past them, and sticking it in a vital organ. In terms of attacking during military combat with full presentation using a knife, it's purely a question of your speed vs. their ability to draw down on you.

But, if you really want to know how to "attack" with your Ka-bar (and that's a pretty basic skill), then my recommendation for learning to "attack" with a knife is to study the full-body diagrams from Gray's Anatomy. Learn where the big vascular regions are, and learn where the nerves are. Once you know that, the "full-on attack" is reduced to just "pointy end goes into the other guy" stuff. Disable the weapon arm, disable the breath, disable the bloodflow, disable the brain.

But, really, the military is going to teach you all of this. Don't rely on us.

[dfaugh]

While I generally carry 2 knives (one each side) they are NOT for self-defence. I studied the martial arts for years (including training with various weapons, including knives), and basically its like this:

If I'm close enough to you to use a knife, them I'm close enough to use my hands/elbows/knees/feet....In short I don't NEED the knife.

[DanV1317]

go to SHIVWORKS.com and get craig douglas's video. He also has knifes available on his website. the site that sells them is MDTactical.

Check out shivworks, he has some of the best FIGHTING HANDGUN/EDGED WEAPONS stuff. It's actually using your hands and body in combat with your weapon, not what others instruct which includes no physical contact. It's cool to know how to shoot somebody , but what if somebody muzzle averts you or continues to attack after you shoot them. How do you defend yourself if your gun doesn't stop the immediate threat instantly?

[meanoldman]

Kali/Escrima/Arnis are weapon based (bladed) martial arts. They substitute the stick for the blade. Pekiti Tirsia Kali is a close quarters art that focuses very much on knife training.

David

[FS2K]

I learned alot from that article, and it did give me a different perspective, one that I appreciate.

[Scorch]

Like dfaugh, I have been trained in martial arts. I was taught "knife fighting" by an old desert rat that used to run back and forth across the Mexican border during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He taught me that a knife fight is putting your knife to the hilt into your opponent before your opponent knows it happened, knowing where to put the blade, and/or keeping it from happening to you. Kendo, Arnis, etc are martial arts, but they involve the idea of ritualized combat, and therefore are not very effective against people who just want to kill you.

The military's knife fighting training is very good if you get to a point where they are going to teach you how to kill with a knife quietly. Most of the rest of military training involves firearms becasue it is much easier to teach someone to kill with a gun than a knife.

[JoshB]

DON'T RELY ON A KNIFE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a trained (but not practicing) martial arts instructor, but wouldn't pick up a knife unless that was my last option (and that's after escaping is no longer an option). I have a lot of friends at work who put a lot of time into learning martial arts, but I always tell them that it won't do a thing for them if the other guy has a gun (and if you're going knife on knife, BOTH of you are in deep sh%t. When I'm off duty, I carry a 1911 24/7 (yes it goes on the headboard when I'm sleeping & in the bathroom when I'm in the shower). When I go to Iraq in a few months, I'll have my issued firearms. In either situation (in Iraq/or at home), if I have to pick up a knife or fight w/ my hands something has seriously gone wrong!!! Focus on becoming a good shot under the worst conditions and you'll be alright. Save the knife fighting for the kung-fu samari guys in the movies.

[Old Padawan]

Try some Escrima Stick training. A lot of the footwork will translate. Try some JeetKoonDo, a martial art focused on damaging an opponent not on an inner calm. As Bruce lee said, take what is usefull.