Thoughts on Edged Weapon Defense

I read through a lot of literature and what Internet “experts” have to say about edged weapons training. A lot of people say that there is no way to defend yourself from such an attack. The conventional wisdom is that no matter what you try, the “knife fighter” is going to prevail. I recently read a post that stated that “No matter what you do, it is hopeless to defend yourself empty handed.”

I do not believe that is a true statement. It is my personal opinion that type of mental programming creates failure. If you do not believe that you can survive and prevail, you won’t. It is pretty plain and simple. You will only be able to do what your programming allows you to do and to a low level of performance at that.

I teach edged weapons defense to a large number of people on a pretty consistent basis. I have been a Police Officer and Police trainer for a good part of my life and have always tried to train people to survive an edged weapons attack through the use of physical and mental tools. If you do not give people the tools and tactics to survive all forms of attack, you are cheating them. You are neither an ethical, nor complete trainer. You are depriving your students of a chance to survive and move forward through a horrific attack.

In almost every case that I have ever come across as an student and trainer, the attack has never been from 21 feet away .Edged weapons attacks are not like the High Noon Shootout. The edged weapons attack comes from the push, shove, clinch or even grappling on the ground. The attacker is in close and doing the damage now and it needs to stop now.
You have to have the ability to stop or at least slow down the attack to be able to go to your guns, knives or other weapon system that you are trained to use. What choice do you have? The attack is happening; you are being cut and possibly going to die if you fail to respond to the attack. This is where I differ from the experts out there. You have to have some idea how to defend yourself from the edged weapons attack. You are there and have to get out of that situation with the least amount of damage done to you.

Can you survive an edged weapon attack? Yes, without a doubt. Is everyone you face on the street a trained “knife fighter?” The majority of edged weapons attacks are from angry, out of control people. They are in an intense rage, on drugs or mentally unstable. The last person that I had to deal with that was actually carrying a knife had slashed his own throat and was on drugs and mentally unstable. He was not a trained knife fighter, but he was still dangerous. Was he going to attack me like Remy Presas or like a crazed maniac? The attacks differ. The trained fighter comes at you like an action movie star, super small movements with the intent to kill or disable you quickly. The maniac will usually attack with the overhead ice pick, stab to the belly or a wild back and forth slash. The maniac is out of control and might not have a plan other than hacking you up.

They each have different mindsets and different aims, but if you are not trained to at least attempt to defend yourself, the results are the same. If you are not trained to deal with an edged weapons attack, you have no chance to survive. You are missing a tool from your massive tool box of self defense construction equipment. If your instructor tells you that there is no way that you can defend against an edged weapons attack, find a new one.