Quote:
Originally posted by quietanswer
the thread is still worth seeing, but I wanted to grab and post the juiciest part (imo). I hope this doesn't offend anyone or violate any forum policies. This is Protector speaking in this quote, and it's drawn from http://www.bladeforum.com:
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"The current technique that I teach as a primary defense, and that is taught at our state police academy, is a variation on the Kali/Silat dive entry. To understand this, picture a BG throwing a straight right punch at your chin. You bring both hands and arms up like you are about to dive into a pool, hands together, elbows out a little and head tucked, using the arms for cover. The punch would deflect off your left arm and the hands snapping out, combined with a brisk step in, would strike to the face, throat or maybe a shoulder stop, depending on the situation. The key here is to combine the step in and arm movement for a deep drive, that snaps the head back.
To change this into a knife defense you just change the arm position a little. If the knife is coming down or in on an FMA angle 1 (high right, coming down) the left arm drifts out enough to deflect the arm coming down and the right hand goes to the face. Your drive should snap the head back, maybe even knock the BG on his butt. If you picure 100% of your energy going forward, maybe 15% goes into the deflection and 85% to the BG's head. The strike is an open palm strike and when you make contact your fingers are attempting to gouge/scratch eyes and do other damage also. In training with attackers in FIST and Redman suits, if you do the initial strike right, the knife doesn't get to the intended target or doesn't have enough energy to do much damage. If it's a highline backhand, you go to the outside and over the arm, with the right deflecting and left striking. If it's lowline slashes, you drop the deflecting arm the necessary amount. If it's a straight thrust you sidestep and deflect with the appropriate arm. There are simple follow ups that work from all of these positions, but it's the intitial power shot to the face/head that makes everything else work."
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The key to making the dive work is to go *through* the attack. If you go around the attack or you try to avoid the attack or deal with the attack, then you lose some of the value of the dive (though you may still find a workable technique from where you end up). This is the largest problem I've seen with people trying to do the dive ... they try to manually deflect or avoid the attack instead of trusting the structure.
As far as using it against a knife ... I can see using the concept against a knife ... but I can't see using the full dive. If you do it against someone who has any depth of understanding with a knife you'll get gutted and dead very quickly.
This part of Protector's statement: "In training with attackers in FIST and Redman suits, if you do the initial strike right, the knife doesn't get to the intended target or doesn't have enough energy to do much damage."
A knife requires very little energy to do some serious damage. Also, the FIST and Redman suits are somewhat restrictive to their movement. Try this against someone not wearing a suit I would guess that about 6 times out of 10, you'll end up dead (if the attacker has no real knife training). If the guy has any understanding of the knife then you'll probably end up dead about 9 out of 10 (if you're lucky).
The *concept* of the dive, however, can be used against a knife ... but until you have a good understanding of the dive, you wouldn't even recognize the dive concept being used in most (valid) applications I can think of against a knife.
Now, having said that, I think the dive (as the protector originally described) is a good technique against a punch (and it works well as a "panic" response to an attack). The concept is great. I just don't think the *technique* is very valid against a knife (though the *concept* is still applicable).
Regards, Mike