I am going to get away from the politics for awhile but I want you to consider one thing. Obama is not a stupid man, I do not believe he acted stupidly when he ignited this mosque firestorm. Nor did he do it without a good reason or by accident. Remember my blog on Sheng tung? "Sheng Tung, Chi Hsi:" Uproar in the East, Strike in the West. Keep your eyes to the west.
Sun Tzu Now on to something about knives.......
Recently a young man said he wanted to do some more knife training with me. The last time we worked out he held his own pretty good. He was in the Army Rangers but I do not know how much actual knife skills they teach. His techniques were simple and powerful; rush your opponent and smother them with stabs. In a prison shanking against an unarmed opponent this is the preferred method. This technique will always work in the dojo or training hall too. How many times have you heard me say that? Would it work in actual combat? Maybe. In the dojo there are two things at work: One, you are not really going to get stabbed by the defender, unless you count the jabs of a rubber or wooden knife, to physically stop your assault. Two, there is no instinctive fear of being stabbed to mentally prevent you from driving right in. Combined, these two create an unhealthy sense of invincibility.
Talk about acting stupidly, life is not so simple with live steel. I did not tell you about stabbing myself with my iaito (Japanese training sword) did I. A bit of a cock-up as the Brits would say. I was teaching my sword student a new draw, and as I pushed my katana to the rear for an overhead cut, the tip caught in the opening of my left sleeve. This drove the tip downward into the top of my forearm, where it dug in and then bounced off the bone, and skipped across my arm lightly grazing me. When my young, impressionable student saw blood trickling down my forearm he got ashen faced. So with mild disgust at my own ineptitude I stopped and stuck a bandaid over it. Had I been working that night with a live blade I would have needed a dozen or more stitches. As I have said many times before blades show no discretion they will cut friend and foe alike. But how quickly will a blade stop a person who is under attack and adrenaline ridden?
By many accounts it has been proven that a person shot or stabbed in the heart can continue to function for as much as ten seconds. (If you are the attacker do you know how many times you can be stabbed by your victim in ten seconds? Try it.) Even with no blood flowing, it takes roughly that long for the brain to run out of oxygen, unconsciousness to take over, and the body to collapse. Now in our practice session while this young Ranger was busy stabbing me, I can assure you that I was doing likewise. After all, every good deed deserves another! Therefore in the real world probably both of us would have succumbed to our multiple wounds. I don’t consider this a good policy. So, two points to learn from this: One, in a knife fight ‘tis better to give than to receive. Two, working with blunts or training weapons (while necessary) is a far cry from the reality of bladed combat. When people tell you techniques are not important because you have a knife, don’t you listen to them. When they say they can teach you a killer one-move “stopping-technique”, don’t you listen to them. Do your homework and learn everything that you possibly can, and as always, be discriminating about what techniques you save and what you throw away.
Sun Tzu Now on to something about knives.......
Recently a young man said he wanted to do some more knife training with me. The last time we worked out he held his own pretty good. He was in the Army Rangers but I do not know how much actual knife skills they teach. His techniques were simple and powerful; rush your opponent and smother them with stabs. In a prison shanking against an unarmed opponent this is the preferred method. This technique will always work in the dojo or training hall too. How many times have you heard me say that? Would it work in actual combat? Maybe. In the dojo there are two things at work: One, you are not really going to get stabbed by the defender, unless you count the jabs of a rubber or wooden knife, to physically stop your assault. Two, there is no instinctive fear of being stabbed to mentally prevent you from driving right in. Combined, these two create an unhealthy sense of invincibility.
Talk about acting stupidly, life is not so simple with live steel. I did not tell you about stabbing myself with my iaito (Japanese training sword) did I. A bit of a cock-up as the Brits would say. I was teaching my sword student a new draw, and as I pushed my katana to the rear for an overhead cut, the tip caught in the opening of my left sleeve. This drove the tip downward into the top of my forearm, where it dug in and then bounced off the bone, and skipped across my arm lightly grazing me. When my young, impressionable student saw blood trickling down my forearm he got ashen faced. So with mild disgust at my own ineptitude I stopped and stuck a bandaid over it. Had I been working that night with a live blade I would have needed a dozen or more stitches. As I have said many times before blades show no discretion they will cut friend and foe alike. But how quickly will a blade stop a person who is under attack and adrenaline ridden?
By many accounts it has been proven that a person shot or stabbed in the heart can continue to function for as much as ten seconds. (If you are the attacker do you know how many times you can be stabbed by your victim in ten seconds? Try it.) Even with no blood flowing, it takes roughly that long for the brain to run out of oxygen, unconsciousness to take over, and the body to collapse. Now in our practice session while this young Ranger was busy stabbing me, I can assure you that I was doing likewise. After all, every good deed deserves another! Therefore in the real world probably both of us would have succumbed to our multiple wounds. I don’t consider this a good policy. So, two points to learn from this: One, in a knife fight ‘tis better to give than to receive. Two, working with blunts or training weapons (while necessary) is a far cry from the reality of bladed combat. When people tell you techniques are not important because you have a knife, don’t you listen to them. When they say they can teach you a killer one-move “stopping-technique”, don’t you listen to them. Do your homework and learn everything that you possibly can, and as always, be discriminating about what techniques you save and what you throw away.
The next blog will be a review of the excellent training knives from TAK knives check them out at http://www.takknife.com/
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