Intellectual Honesty & Unpleasant Truths…
“A deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.” —Machiavelli
With thirty years of training in the martial arts, I can say this with absolute certainty:
There is no consistent, reliable way to stop a motivated attacker with a knife. Furthermore, there is no consistent, reliable way to disarm a motivated attacker with a knife.
That’s not to say that nobody has ever beat the odds and done it, of course they have. People win the lottery too. If someone is teaching you to defend against a knife assault with the caveat that in a real life situation it probably won’t work, but it may increase your odds of survival a bit, I have no issue with that. But if anyone tells you they can teach you to effectively counter a real-life knife assault they’re either delusional or they’re lying to you.
As a martial arts instructor I’m not supposed to tell you this. There is an unspoken agreement amongst martial arts instructors that such things are best left unsaid — it’s bad for business. We’re supposed to be in the business of selling answers. The bitter truth, however, is that sometimes they’re isn’t an answer. So rather than peddling comforting lies, here I am up on my soapbox pimping doubt.
I’m sure that some people are going to read this and immediately start rationalizing why this isn’t true and pontificating on how their system is different. They’ll assume I’m simply unaware of the magic bullet that was shared with them — the secret set of techniques that make such things possible. If you want to believe that, I’m not going to try to change your mind. If you find yourself having such thoughts, it’s probably best that you stop reading now, because it gets worse…
The issue of knife disarming is systemic of a much larger issue within the martial arts — another truth that is supposed to remain unspoken:
Most of what your are taught exists only to eat up class time.
A profitable martial arts program is generally 80% — 90% “busy work”. It’s designed to keep you occupied and to keep you paying. Most martial arts programs aren’t in the business of making you proficient, they’re in the business of selling you the illusion of proficiency.
Long complex routines, prearranged two-man drills with endless variations, convoluted locks and techniques, flashy knife and gun disarms — all of it is designed to you make you believe that you’re more adept than you really are. The money is in selling the belief.
Of course, there are ancillary benefits. You get exercise, gain confidence, meet people, and have fun. You also pick up a few fighting skills in the process. But this doesn’t change the fact that only 10% - 20% of the skills and techniques that are taught in most programs have realistic combat applications.
There are exceptions, but the masses don’t gravitate towards this kind of training. Mastering real fighting skills is boring, grueling, and repetitive. Techniques are simple and versatile, but generally not aesthetically pleasing to watch or particularly fun to train. Being prepared for real violence means having your ego checked — a lot. It means being put into scenarios where you will sometimes fail, and have to carry that failure home with you. It often means having to admit to yourself that a lot of what you may have learned elsewhere simply doesn’t work. Most of all, it means having a realistic assessment of your own skills and limitations.
