KerwinBenson.com Hidden Gems of Martial Arts

With the U.S. being now awake to acts of terrorism, there is a desire for martial artists to start practicing knife defense techniques.

Understandable.

The question is, which techniques are more likely to get you out of a knife encounter alive, and which are deceptively dangerous?

Sean Madigan of BIGJKD.com suggests practicing your knife techniques with a color marker (water soluble). If you do your technique, and end up with marks on you from the attacker's marker, then in real life you would have been cut.

I coat my practice knife (rubber, wooden, etc.) with chalk dust -- I used to be a teacher. I think this adds realism, because you can coat both edges of the knife. So, you can get 'sliced' in practice, rather than just 'poked' with he end of a marker.

Either way works.

So, let's apply this to a standard knife-defense move. By the way, I think this is one of the worst reactions you could have to a downward stroke of a knife. You'll soon see why.

Your attacker has a knife. He (or she) is holding it with the blade pointing down, extending through the bottom of the closed fist.

He stabs down toward your head, from above.

A standard reaction is to block with both hands. The good guy (or gal) crosses the hands a bit above the wrists and blocks upward, catching the knife-stabbing hand in the "V" formed by your wrists.

  So, what's wrong with that?