A Students guide to Edged Weapon Combative Fundamentals, EDC & Equipment

[ChrisFry]

http://www.mdtstraining.com/AStudent...nsTraining.pdf

[Rich]

A lot of great info there. A lot of stuff I wasn't aware of. Thanks ;D

[marlin336]

Good info, where is a good starting point for a basic knife defense/offense class?

[ChrisFry]

Good info, where is a good starting point for a basic knife defense/offense class?

Well, I guess I will answer your question with a question. What do you mean by a good starting point?

First, any training (within reason) is better than NO training IMO. So whatever your schedule, finances allow you. I am a firm believer that unarmed skills should be trained first because in the vast majority of criminal assaults you will be taken upon by surprise and have to fight to your weapons.

Why go to the weapons at all? Why not just go empty handed? Becuase the fact of the matter is there are way to many variables to deal with a situation solo without a defensive aid like an edged Weapon. For example - how much training have you had? I know guys who are x-mil, lifelong martial artists who have been beaten very badly in street assaults. The fact is we WILL NOT know the capabilities of our opponent. So, to be truly safe we need to "one up" him and go for a tool. It's good to have confidence in your skills, it's ignorant to be overconfident. Especially if you have never tested yourself under realistic pressure of an assault. What if there are more than one attacker? Your empty hand skills may be top notch and while you are taking out the first guy his partner circles round your back and digs his fingers in your eyes.. Not fun and some will argue with me and say "I would never let that happen, I would do this or do that". The fact is that under realistic conditions things happen so dynamicly all those things you THINK you can do will not happen and you will end up with that monkey on your back. This is why tool accessing is SO IMPORTANT and should be trained in the proper context.

Anyway, despite this grim picture you NEED to have some basic empty hand skill sets. Not so you can fight off your attacker but to enable you to FIGHT your way TO your weapons (gun, knife, OC, baton, palm-stick, pen etc) so you can even up the playing field or "one up" a better prepared aggressor. If you defeat your aggressor empty handed -GREAT! At that point it is not necessary for you to take that step to the next force level.

Once some fundamental skills are learned and integrated you can then move on to edged weapon funness! ;D

Many current Edged Weapon Programs have the fundamental unarmed components built into the class curriculum so you get the best of both worlds. Just make sure that this material and pre-fight material are addressed in the proper context and not a bunch of fairly-tale "knife fighting" bull****. Use your common sense. If something looks to you like it would probably never happen.. your probably right and you shouldnt be wasting precious training time on it.

Chris

[marlin336]

thanks chris.

My only "training" has been a year or two of Kali when I was back in HS, and was so long ago I really have nothing. I work with "difficult" people on a daily basis due to my career choice but so far have been able to verbally direct those difficult situations so that I physical confrontation has never entered the picture, but I recognize that I will one day deal with someone who will escalate the confrontation.

Because I am a strong believer in personal accountability and self-reliance, I have an interest in self defense (obviously, or why else would I be here?). My problem has been finding a good foundational class that could serve as a jumping-off point for more and better training. I have taken a basic pistol class and hope to build on that in the future, but I realize that to be able to even get to a gun or other weapon under many circumstances I will need some empty hand skills.

So, I guess a good unarmed basic skill class would be the logical choice.

[ChrisFry]

So, I guess a good unarmed basic skill class would be the logical choice.

That sounds like the best starting point to me. It is a building block process. Many people want to just go study guns and "Tacti-cool" shootng or become a knife-fighter but there is far more to it. It sounds to me that you have good control of one of if not THE MOST important skill set- the ability to verbally diffuse or control and contain a situation. That is IMO the least trained skills set out there today. If you can control a situation with good verbal challenge/diffusion and physical boundary setting you may never have to utilize the fighting skill sets we train.

What style of Kali did you train in?

[marlin336]

I was in classes at Collamer-Jones, but they only ever called it "Kali". I took it in conjunction with Iaido.

[ChrisFry]

I took it in conjunction with Iaido.

Wow, that is quite a combination! Cool.

[ChrisFry]

Updated 7/7/08

http://www.mdtstraining.com/A%20Stud...ng_Updated.pdf