9 Ways to Adapt Your Knife Training

Contents

1 1. Practice hiding the blade
2 2. You have two hands, use them
3 3. Belief about cutting
4 4. Attack the eyes
5 5. Study footage of knife assaults
6 6. Train against multiple opponents
7 7. Low-light training
8 8. Train in tight spaces
9 9. Don’t think that a “lethal” shot stops the attacker immediately
10 Conclusions

9 ways to adapt your knife formation to the street.

When it comes to knife and knife defense there are some precautions and details that you must always consider in your training with a cutting weapon and that often in training and knife training in the gym are neglected.

So I want to give you some tips on knife training that you have to internalize when you train by providing these 9 ways to adapt your knife formation to the street.

1. Practice hiding the blade

You have no advantage in showing an aggressor or a group of aggressors that you have a knife unless you are sure that this is a possibility to lower the escalation of the situation.

Besides this aspect there is no valid reason to brandish the weapon right away because in this way you are just warning your attackers and allow them to adjust their tactics accordingly.

One important thing though is that it is true that you have to hide it but the extraction of a knife while defending yourself from an assault is incredibly difficult, it is better that you have your weapon in your hand, but hidden, when the tingling begins that you feel that the situation has now degenerated and that you will definitely have a fight.

It’s critical and useful that you learn to move, attack, and defend yourself with a hidden knife, especially when it comes to multiple opponents.

An experienced knife professional will be able to use the appropriate time and obstruct the attacker’s line of sight to use his knife several times before a group of attackers realize that you are armed.

9 Ways to Adapt Your Knife Training Fighting Tips - Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport

2. You have two hands, use them

During a fight, it is possible that at some point someone will try to grab your armed hand.

I have seen many experienced martial artists freeze during knife sparring when someone attacks the armed hand and grabs it.

Yes, there are many flashy techniques, levers, and movements that allow you to free yourself from such a situation, but the simplest and most effective option is sometimes to simply pass your knife to your free hand and stab the attacker.

If you can make the switch without it being seen all the better.

Also, your free hand is not there to stand still you always have to use it for:

Push
Grab
pulling/tugging,
punching,
to hit the eyes of your aggressor,
Divert
Etc.

In many systems such as the Filipino, the use of the living hand (bantay Kamay) is a fundamental aspect.

3. Belief about cutting

People tend to overestimate the cutting abilities of pocket knives.

Our tests have shown that layers of clothing often offer enough protection to prevent a shot from reaching the meat, especially when it’s a moving target where you can’t connect perfectly with the target.

Different speech with combat knives where it is easy to penetrate many layers of clothes and that are also able to pierce armor mesh.

The
sharpness
and weight of the knife have a great impact on this aspect.

4. Attack the eyes

Every time I teach in a seminar I ask if anyone has ever received a bounty or been stabbed.

Almost always there are one or two who for fun or for bad luck had a knife cut that required points.

The next question I ask is whether they realized they had been cut or stabbed during the altercation.

The vast majority of the time the answer is “no.”

And of those who noticed, they all said that the wound did not prevent her from defending herself and attacking in any meaningful way.

Eye attacks, however, are a different story.

The attack on the eye line creates a primal fear that instantly blocks movements.

It’s something ancestral and that’s why when they threaten you with the knife they make you see it well in front of your eyes, making it sparkle well.

Look at a knife that threatens you, freeze!

In cases where professionals attacked attackers in the eyes in the street with a knife, the results were generally immediate and deeply dangerous, and often the aggression ended instantly.

5. Study footage of knife assaults

We live in an incredibly prosperous time for martial arts, and it’s a whole new world for all martial artists.

Never before have we had the opportunity to examine videos of hundreds of real-life clashes and learn from them and if you go to my Instagram profile you will find different videos of aggressions or street fighting situations.

Today the exchange of information is at unprecedented levels, the possibilities to learn and get to know professionals in the field in the world are many although it is necessary to be very careful to avoid wasting time with charlatans.

In times past, someone may have survived a knife attack, or seen a stabbing, but it was always and only lived in real time you could not re-examine dozens of times with the videos footage.

Now, we can study the nuances of these attacks and see exactly how criminals use knives in modern society, then adapt our training accordingly.

This is an incredible possibility that you have at your disposal but you always have to turn to a professional to learn.

This is also part of the knife formation.

6. Train against multiple opponents

Your training against multiple opponents is often reserved for advanced students, and even then sometimes it was just a novelty, there was no chance to try this several times.

However, if you are using a knife to fight for your life, it is very likely that there may be more than one aggressor.

When more attackers are involved you have to be able to stop them early because you will have to move very tired and then like any other element must be trained in its condition to understand the dynamics and exploit them to your advantage.

Your technique needs to be adapted.

7. Low-light training

You can’t assume that an attack will happen in broad daylight, and working in varying degrees of darkness alters the dynamics of violent confrontations dramatically.

It is important that you feel comfortable wielding a blade in low light, in the dark or in a strobe light situation.

Once you learn how the human eye perceives movement in low light, you can maximize the effectiveness of your fakes by exploiting the limitations of the human eye.

8. Train in tight spaces

Rarely will you have the luxury of fighting for your life in an open space, and if you have this luck you have to if you listen to my advice exploit the space and give you to escape rather than risk your life in a fight to the death.

Working in confined spaces creates new considerations and changes the way violence unfolds.

There is no “duel” without space, therefore, the tactics of “duel” will be rendered useless.

Your training and sparring in tight spaces is essential for the development of real-world survival capacity.

9. Don’t think that a “lethal” shot stops the attacker immediately

Even if an opponent has received a mortal wound unlike in movies that show you that the opponent instantly stops in reality he simply won’t fall dead right away.

An attacker who is also mortally wounded depending on his health form, type of injury and various other circumstances will allow him a wide range of possibilities and time that will not change his fate but can change your therefore WARNING!!!

Of course some shots are deadly instantly but you don’t have to consider that everything is over when you’ve hit target.

Even if you have caused a lethal wound you must be ready to fight for a minute or more while your opponent bleeds.

Therefore, it is important to learn to control the situation and maintain the ability to inflict further damage, minimizing the risks that for yourself, until the opponent collapses to the ground forever.

Conclusions

The study of cutting weapons is something extremely complex that requires many hours of training and structured with professional teaching methodologies.

It is not a type of practice that can be practiced once a month for a few minutes because it is a form of combat that has intrinsic problems much more complex than barehand combat and that is why even today the knife is one of the deadliest weapons on the planet in its simplicity.

Now train with a knife daily and do it also taking into account the considerations you have read now and doing sports practice that does not mean that you are working in a self-defense perspective where the dynamics of aggressions is different (beware of false beliefs about knife aggressions) but allows you to acquire fundamental skills and abilities.

Leave nothing to chance! Knife is not a game!

Street Fight Mentality

Andrea