

Leading with the free hand will allow him to keep you at the right distance to prevent you from (i) reaching and controlling the knife, (ii) reaching him (e.g. You will react to what you see first, and that will be the free hand coming towards your face not to the knife that will still be concealed.Ģ- it will allow the aggressor to keep you at a distance So, let's do a bit of reverse engineering.Ī leading free hand will change the dynamic of an attack in several ways:ġ- it will condition your initial reaction Understanding how it works for the aggressor, would allow us to find solutions.

Greg Elliffritz ( Active Response Training) perfectly makes the point here: They won't necessarily hit you with their free hand, as Pentecost contends in the case of experienced fighters, but the use of the 'leveraging arm' makes the whole situation a lot worse for the victim. The study of these footages reveals that even inexperienced aggressors tend to use their free hand instinctively to latch on their victims. More than 70% of knife attacks happen that way. This is something we clearly saw in our analysis of CCTV/surveillance videos (Part 1). His side until the empty hand has done its job and created an opening" Don Pentecost " The fact is, an experienced fighter will have his knife hand held close to within 3 feet) and they will use their free hand. In his 1988-book, Don Pentecost insisted that aggressors won't lead with the knife when they're within striking range (i.e. Let's start with the elephant in the room: The best way to proceed in this review of the various bare hand options to block a knife attack, is to tackle problems that stem from the situation and the possible solutions that are often offered. Techniques should therefore be seen more like tools/skills that you can use to adjust to various situations.

And no technique is fool-proof.ĭue to the variety of possible situations, my opinion is that you'll need to incorporate in your knife defence training a range of empty-hand techniques that will allow you to improvise and adapt to different situations. Once you're engaged you'll need to defend yourself and you might not have the time and opportunity to deploy a weapon.Īlthough priority should be put on escaping, you'll need to fight your way out while minimising damage as much as possible because each new cut or stab could be fatal.Īt this point, it's important to say that there's no silver-bullet empty-hand technique to stop a knife attack. "If someone with a knife tries to attack you, then guess what? You're in a knife fight whether you like it or not."Īt such a short range (we saw that most assaults are launched within 3 feet of the victim) it's not possible to avoid the fight. This being said, we've also seen that a knife attack is decided by the aggressor and it will happen on his terms. When it comes to physical assaults, it's fair to say that a person armed with a knife is at a huge advantage so it's best to avoid physical confrontation if possible.
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How to defend yourself against a knife attack Namely, we will look at the various empty-hand techniques renowned instructors from around the world teach. In this final chapter, we will review the most effective ways to defend against a knife attack with bare hands. In Part 2 ( How to Survive a Knife Attack), we discussed how people manage to survive real life knife assaults and we explored a number of concepts and ideas commonly encountered in the martial arts and self-defence industry such as Awareness and Avoidance. In Part 1 ( Knife Attacks: A Analytic Study), we saw the main findings of a research carried on 150+ street attacks caught on CCTV and phone cameras. We've already reviewed lots of illuminating information in the previous two parts of this series. In this part, we will go through empty-hand techniques against knife attacks and discuss them in view of the data from the previous chapters.
