Sometimes in our lives things happen to others that we know
and it just hits too close to home. It makes you rethink and sometime may even
be a revelation and even a turning point in your life or the way you do things or see things. Reality sets in. It makes you think.
Recently a person I know and speak with several times thru the course of most weeks had gotten
himself into a physical altercation, At first it was just a fist fight but later almost
ended with someone losing their life.
Even though this particular incident took place in a bar it still raised
some red flags in my mind about the training the majority of martial artist do
and if it is even practical and effective in this day and time.
It was the viciousness of the attack that sent my mind
spinning it made me look at how I train and prepare myself physically to
confront such a overwhelming attempt to end a life. My friend was literally stabbed and slashed
14 times by a guy who had followed him out of a bar after an altercation they
had inside the bar. The attacker ran up on him from behind and began stabbing and slashing him with a knife.
My friend was in the hospital in a coma for three days both
lungs had collapsed. He spent two weeks in the hospital. When I finally saw him
he took off his shirt and showed me his wounds. There were multiple stab wounds to both sides of his ribs. There were slashes
that covered his back, the back of his neck and both arms. The stitches were too numerous to count. It was evident that was indeed a wild, mindless
and violent attack. It was a raging, chaotic fast flurry of stab after stab and
slash after slash. I look and see how most people train to defend themselves
and quite honestly it just isn’t enough, and guys, it wont deal with such a
vicious attack like I just described.
Reading and learning from a book, learning from a video,
larping and other systematized type practices just isn’t going to cut it. This guy
didn’t make a thrust or a slash and just leave his fucking hand out there so someone
could disarm him. This was a fast and furious continuous storm of knife slashes
and stabs coming at you unpredictably from all directions. Forget the shit you see
from larping martial artists in YouTube videos. Live action role play on a motionless attacker
who just stands there while you do your thing will not even come close. IF you aren’t
training for a full blitz wild type of an attack you are dead. My friend could
have very easily lost his life. The attacker now sits in jail with no bond on an
attempted murder charge.
I looked at my friend with the knife wounds all over
his back, on both sides of his ribs, his neck and arms and it dawns on me now
more than ever. Over my years of training in self defense, and teaching self
defense I never saw any system, or style of knife defense that immediately
clicked in my head as being effective. I
have seen a load of self defense instructors who teach how to analyze the knife
from different angles with all these fancy, complicated, and downright
ineffective techniques. Some people though seem to buy into them because they LOOK COOL.
I found myself going back to my days in the military and
then things I was taught in basic and the Military Police Corp in the mid 80’s.
I DID NOT fight in a war anywhere. I DO
NOT have combat ribbons or medals. But
my stint in the military was really my first experiences in training with
dealing and preparing for the possibility of a serious attack, a life or death
situation.
My first exposure to Judo was in the military but the Judo
taught wasn’t for sport it was for combat and survival, it was life or death. It
was practical and effective. Your opponent come at you crouched and attacked you
realistically. First it was done slow and by the numbers but then it progressed
becoming more fluid and faster. The guy just didn’t leave his arm dangling
straight out in front of your face waiting for you to react. If you missed that
small window of opportunity to do something they would come at you again and
again. You kept doing it till ya got it right.
We didn’t learn a hundred and
something techniques, we didn’t pull guard or fight off our backs. We didn't strike some cool movie Bruce Lee fighting pose. It wasn’t a game it was how we prepared for what would be a life or death situation. A situation for me that keeps it all in perspective.
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