The Truth About Knife Defense Part 2: You Can't Fight Mother Nature

The previous blog we spoke about why knife defenses fail and I demonstrated a Self Defense Training System tactic that was an empty hand defense without using he environment and without using a weapon. It is a given that leaving the scene, using a weapon or items in your environment are your first options. In the Self Defense Training Systemwe step you through how to train to accomplish this. In this instance we're talking about facing a dynamic knife attack when you have nothing at your disposal and no escape.

That being said, this happens without fail, people who agree with me on the self defense subject up until the "controlling the weapon" issue. This tells me that they really don't have a full grasp of the tactics and principles that make the SDTS successful. In module 1 we tell you, you have to assume your attacker is armed, even if you don't see a weapon. Which, according to the Uniformed Police Use of Force report, is true about 75% of the time. We tell you to always attack the man. We tell you you need to injure your target as fast as possible. The same principle holds true in all aspects of self defense.

But yet, the compulsion to go after that weapon is so strong. People still feel the need to want to try to control it. They get all warm and fuzzy knowing that the weapon is tucked away some place safe, not getting into any trouble. Now if you happen to have the advantage and the weapon arm falls in your grip, OK so be it. But the split second you decide to chase the knife in a dynamic situation, you are making a grave mistake. NOTE: This is not a STATIC situation where the knife is being pressed against you or used to threaten you in extreme close range, like in a mugging or threatening situation.

Why is chasing the weapon a bad idea?

You can't fight mother nature.

No matter how much you train and prepare your body and your mind are programmed to act a specific way under stress and there's nothing you can do about it.

Instead of responding with urban legend, martial arts myth, Hollywood movies and dojo speculation, I will let science, real life examples and fact prove my point.

No matter how intense your training, it's not real life. Your training only begins to scratch the surface of what you will experience. The government spends billions on trying to create realistic training stress and they still can't predict if the training was accurate until the situation is live. Unfortunately neither will you.

So instead of training for the training exercise, you must train for what is really going to happen to you and operate within those parameters.

You don't need a behavioral psych degree from Johns Hopkins to understand how the mind works under stress and you don't need to be a combat war vet either. All you need to do is some reading. There are several books you should check out if you haven't already: Grossman's "On Combat" and "On Killing", Applegate's "Kill or Get Killed", Debecker's "Gift of Fear" and Strong's "Strong on Defense".

Grossman really get's into the science of it. In "On Combat" he offers a list of what you will experience when you are fighting for your life:

Perceptual Distortions in Combat

Diminished sound (auditory exclusion)
Intensified sounds
Tunnel vision
Automatic pilot ("scared speechless")
Heightened visual clarity
Slow motion time or Fast motion time
Temporary paralysis
Memory loss for parts of the event
Memory loss for some of the subject's actions
Dissociation (detachment)
Intrusive distracting thoughts
Memory distortions

You may experience some or all of these effects. In addition to the above, you will lose control of your finite motor skills. This means you will only be able to perform gross motor movements and simple, primary thought functions. This is why troops are trained to operate their weapon in a manner that enables them to function under fire. The simple act of acquiring a target, firing, reloading, clearing misfires and maintaining position becomes extremely difficult (and that's with extensive, focused training). Yet martial artists will learn many, many different self defense techniques with far less time and intensity in training and are expected to recall them under stress.

Plus, you never know what you're mind is going to hook into. A popular example is the California Highway Patrol. On range they were told to collect their shells after they emptied their firearms. So every time their gun was empty, officers would bend down and pick up the brass. What happened next was completely unexpected and deadly. When the officers were under fire and their firearm was empty, they would leave safe cover and bend down to collect the brass shells on the ground and put them in their pockets. Without any rhyme or reason, they would leave the safety of their position because they were programed to in their training. While a reasonable person would know not to pick up the shells, the stressed person followed their training.

One thing can be deduced from these observations:
1. Complex locking motions are impossible to perform under stress. The finite movements of performing a wrist or an arm lock will be reinterpreted under stress ad a gross movement. The result is a movement void of any effectiveness.
2. You never know what you are going to hook into. Chances are, you're compulsion to control the weapon will override your priority of injuring your attacker.

This problem is solved by training to hit with power, take ground on your assault, keep your attacker off balance and focus on attacking high percentage targets on the body.

Personal Note: I love the internet and for every 10 positive comments I receive, I always get some misguided chuckle head. This one is from "GS" who commented that in the SDTS defense I should have abandoned the strikes to the back of the attacker's neck to stomping his knee. Why on earth I would abandon a sure knock out strike for a tertiary target like the knee is beyond me. Also, when you are attacking someone, taking ground and your legs are busy doing something like moving and keeping your balance. He also commented that the heel of hand strike was "weak." The only response I have to this comment is: you're a moron.

What has worked since Cane hit Abel with a rock.

The only logical proven solution is to attack the man and cause as much injury as possible as fast as possible. Since you'll only be able to do one simple act, make it a damn good one. You must attack as soon as possible. Every second you wait, increases your chances of failure and incurring more injury.

You can't reason with self defense.

Martial artists like to take a self defense situation and inject it full of reasoning. "Do this because he does that." To you, this seems reasonable and logical. Unfortunately when you're placed in a situation, in fact, most of the decisions you make during your life are not based on reason at all, but are based on coping.

When you view a situation as an observer, you use reason and logic. It's like watching a pro football game or a fight. "Why doesn't he pass it to that guy?" or "why doesn't he just punch him?". When you're an objective observer you can see the field and weigh all of the options. However, when we are placed in that situation we use coping skills instead of reasoning skills. As you may have guessed, coping has little to do with reason and logic.

The study on Coping vs. Reasoning (ENHANCEMENT OF COPING THROUGH BLURRING 1 Manfred KOCHEN The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, U.S.A.
Study is HERE

"What is imprecise about the situations of real life is how they are perceived,
interpreted and evaluated. The situation of the fleeing patron of a burning,
crowded theater could be objectively measured by others with great precision. To
him [the person in the fire], the situation is vaguely threatening: he may not know exactly where the fire is or how serious it is; he may not know exactly how to get to the nearest exit, or the effect of his fleeing behavior upon all the others, or theirs upon him. He is unlikely to resort to reasoning in this situation, partly because he is not certain that reasoning will help him survive. (This is not to say that: he ought not to stay cool and resort to reasoning.) Yet many people can cope with such situations, and not necessarily only those with superior reasoning or precise thinking abilities."

In survival mode you're going to act instinctively not reasonably. You will not react the way you think you will react. While the reasonable mind will logically provide a solution, your coping mechanism will prevent you from performing those actions. All martial arts based self defense systems are based on reasoning skills. "Control the weapon", "De-fang the snake" and "control the chaos" are nice tag lines and good notions, but in the heat of battle you can only fight what;s directly in front of you and you can only perform one action. Don't "de-fang the snake", "kill the snake".

The only plausible solution is to program yourself to react in a way that gives you the highest percentage of success. In order to do this you must resist the temptation in training to let reasoning creep into your solutions. Martial artists and other experts love to provide "reason based solutions" for coping based reality. It sounds good in class and makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy. Plus they look cool twisting some poor volunteer around in pain.

Don't believe the hype.

Techniques like joint locks and submissions give you a false sense of power and confidence because they feel empowering. When you can cause controllable pain over another human being it gives you a real boost. I'll admit, it's cool getting someone to tap with a finger lock or pass out with a strangle, but in reality those methods are inefficient and improbable. While joint locks are appealing and look bad ass, they are improbable and a handful are only successful after a subject is under control. Submissions do work, there is no doubt about that, but they should be viewed as secondary techniques since they require more time in training and should only be used when striking is not an option. Depending on your position, most strangles can still be replaced with a strike.

The more you know, the worse off you will be.

Ever heard of the Hick-Hymen Law?

The Hick-Hyman Law, named after British psychologist William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman, describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has. The Hick-Hyman Law assesses cognitive information capacity in choice reaction experiments. The amount of time taken to process a certain amount of bits in the Hick-Hyman Law is known as the rate of gain of information. Given n equally probable choices, the average reaction time T required to choose among them is approximately

T = b \cdot \log_{2}(n + 1)

Translation: the more choices you have the slower you're reaction time. If you have several choices, it will take you that much longer that if you had a single choice.

When you have multiple self defenses to recall for a multitude of situations you will freeze. Single minded, simple solutions will give you the fastest reaction time. In the quick and the dead world of self defense, it's better to be fast than accurate. Any counter attack you provide creates an opportunity for another attack. Chain a few together and you have the momentum. Gain the momentum and you can cause injury. Cause more injury and you will win the day.

Now, while most experts will agree with what I have to say, their actions are contradictory because they still let reasoning and conscience fears creep into a situation that is devoid of reasoning and common sense.

Proven defensive tactics must be:

1. Extremely simple with limited options
2. Based on distance, position, balance and momentum
3. Inflict maximum damage on your target and minimum damage to yourself

Getting cut with a knife will not kill you.

You will get cut, it's a fact. Most martial artists will say that before they teach their twisty-wristy technique. These are the same guys who will comment, "look the knife nicked him in the leg".

In response I would like to offer medical fact and a quote from Grossman's "On Combat" to your keen observations.

"Your resolve to succeed must include the possibility of losing some blood. You can loose a half-gallon of blood and your body will continue to mechanically function. Ceasing to fight before that much blood is lost is due to a lack of will, not lack of hydraulics."

Did you get that boys and girls, you can loose a half gallon of blood before you start to seize up.

So let;s recap the facts as we know them:
1. You can not perform finite motor skills under stress, this includes small circular motions or precision type movements (read: trapping or catching the weapon!!!!)
2. Your mind will hook into one single act. Your best bet is to ensure that act is the most productive act possible. Injuring your attacker trumps chasing the weapon.
3. You will not die instantly from any stab wound, even less from a superficial stab wound.

Some people get it, others don't or aren't ready too. Personally, I've spent years and thousands of hours of training on methods that just didn't work. And before you say "well you weren't training the right way or you weren't good enough." I think 3 black belts, several national championships, being all state in two sports and a division 1 college athlete will qualify me for having the skill, the will, the determination and the hand eye coordination to perform physical acts under stress. Plus my coaching and instruction reads like a who's who list (you can see that list a the bottom of the page HERE).

When I started this in 1989, all I wanted was the truth. It would be very easy for me to offer up what everyone offers, the right dialogue with warmed over martial arts. I'm sure the people offering other solutions really believe what they are saying, but they get caught up in reasoning and let the solutions satisfy the conscience of the people watching, from a distance and far removed from the real life situation, these methods appear to work. But in the crucible of reality they fail miserably.

I didn't let ego and time invested determine what works. I prefer science and fact. Hey, I was one of those guys. I knew tons of self defense techniques, I knew over 30 katas, I competed in everything from point fighting, kick boxing to grappling. But when I reflected my own real life experiences against my training I realized there was a huge disconnect. What I did in my real life was more like MMA. I found myself "fighting" with people. This took a lot of time and energy. There had to be a better way.

The other observation I made was that when I witnessed tough, accomplished martial artists use force in the real world...it looked the same. One strike and grappling. No wrist locks, no fancy breathing and mind control. Just destroy what's in front of you. Any other "hold" was performed when the subject was pinned down by other team members OR when the subject was knocked unconscious.

I also love the story of Gichin Funikoshi in "Karate-Do". In it, he recalled his only real life self defense situation when he was about to get mugged. He didn't even punch the guy, he simply grabbed his testicles and squeezed until the guy fell down. Not only did I find the passage revealing, I found it honest and right on point. For all that training, he just grabbed his nuts.

The problems I found with all methods of self defense was that the situations never happened the way I was trained or told they were going to happen. I found myself looking and waiting for the right opportunity to strike. This almost got me killed. Thank God I wasn't alone.

Which brings us to MARTIAL ART'S FATAL FLAW.

There is one major problem with all technique-based self defense systems. This flaw will get you beaten and left for dead. The flaw is not in what you train, but more in how you train. The flaw is training to wait. Waiting is the biggest mistake you can ever make. When you train you wait for him to grab you, you wait for him to show the weapon, you wait for him to punch, you wait for him to make an aggressive mood towards you. You wait, you're finished.

This training trains you to hesitate. Does he have a weapon, does he have friends? What does he want? Listen, and listen good, once someone attacks you your chance of survival decreases dramatically. Speed beats accuracy.

You need to system that takes all of these possibilities into account with every move you make. This way, it doesn't matter what he does. It doesn't matter if he has a weapon, it doesn't matter if he has friends, none of that will matter. It can't. The only decision you need to make is GO or NO GO.

I used to know hundreds of self defense techniques. Now I know only one and it's based on DISTANCE, POSITION, MOMENTUM and BALANCE.

Some people see the SDTS and get it like I did in 1989. Others will try to cling to their wasted time, money and effort. Martial arts has it's place, it's just not in self defense. Hey, it doesn't matter to me, I know the truth. I've been down that road. It's funny, I know exactly where you are, just by the comments I receive. Some people aren't ready for it. No problem, there are millions who are...I'll talk to them.

Train Honestly,
Damian Ross, CEO The Self Defense Company

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