Knife

[krys]

Wow Wow Wow....
I do not recognise the place I used to live for 18 years....

Gangs run rampant in Paris, it's very similar to the '80s in the U.S. where there were car jackings, gang warfare, home invasions and hard-core criminal activity. Gang fights within the confines of Paris are almost a daily occurrence. And the first course of action is not to ignore it but to be aware of it and prepare yourself.

There is criminality in Paris but the picture is not that dark. firearms and blades are not that common...
In some suburbs, yes, but inside the city it is usually limited to small fry..... pick-pockets, bag robbers, half drunken teenager looking for troubles..

Just like in the U.S. years ago, criminals in France train attack dogs to do their work for them, but here it's done in a special way. The dog is trained with a laser pointer, so whenever the light beam hits the victim, the dog attacks that area of the target. You can't pass without giving up your valuables.

This has been sevrely regulated, you will not see that many fighting dogs anymore, although i heard that some people bought monkeys from north Africa, and snakes they use to intimidate some tourists......

One of the renowned pioneers of self-defense in Europe is Charles Joussot. An experienced silat and edged weapons instructor and designer, Charles created FISFO, an organization dedicated to teaching civilian as well as police defense. Charles has taught many police agencies in Europe as well as the U.S. But besides Charles and Fred, there still isn't that much interest in reality-based defense.

Charles is an amazing fighter, he introduced me to Silat, and his teaching is very realistic and tough.
He has schools in the US and Canada now, but in my opinion interested students should have a few years experience in martial arts before joining his program. Anyway I recommend his tapes. Fred also used to train with us and we did some Arnis sparring. He developped his own system (mix of savate, tae kwo do,arnis, silat) and teaches somewhere in Paris.

Fred also believes in body protection whenever possible and when I met him he had shin and arm guards (with metal corners) under his clothes. This is necessary in Paris, especially when you enter dangerous neighborhoods. Muay Thai is very popular with much of the youth and you need that edge to survive.

Paris is not that dangerous...... I would say rather safe compared to other places If you look for trouble you will find it as everywhere else.....Tourists displaying their belongings openly may also get some unwanted attention but then they are looking for it. What can happen is that some people will insult you but if you don't listen and just walk away everything will be fine.

Yes Muay Thai is popular with some youth but the general level in the street is low.
I was myself involved in quite a few fights there but then I was working as a a part time bouncer/security guard during my first years at University. The others I could have avoided by just ignoring the troublemakers....


Mabuhay ang filipino Silat at Arnis.

[William]

Touching on Awareness again

Paris is not that dangerous...... I would say rather safe compared to other places If you look for trouble you will find it as everywhere else.....

Though I have never been there myself, this is the same comment I've heard from friends who have. Seemed like a dark picture he was painting.



The following article was posted on the Dog Brothers forum. I found it quite interesting, especially from a CQC point of view. I brought it over since it's relevant for what we train and touches on a few topics in this thread.


William

It's a bit long, but well worth the time.

*************************************************

Got a Second?”
Boyd's Cycle - OODA Loop
June 2000
by Ken Good
Director of the Sure-Fire Institute

Because all tactical operations are dynamic, they are also time sensitive. Decisions and actions that are delayed are often rendered ineffective because of the constantly changing circumstances. When an adversary is involved, the operation is not only time sensitive, but also time competitive. Time or opportunity neglected by one adversary can be exploited by the other. Recognizing the importance of this characteristic, Napoleon said, “It may be that in the future I may lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute.”

A useful tool for understanding the importance of this concept is the OODA Loop. The OODA Loop, often called Boyd’s Cycle, is a creation of Col. John Boyd, USAF (Ret.). Col. Boyd was a student of tactical operations and observed a similarity in many battles and campaigns. He noted that in many of the engagements, one side presented the other with a series of unexpected and threatening situations with which they had not been able to keep pace. The slower side was eventually defeated. What Col. Boyd observed was the fact that conflicts are time competitive.

According to Boyd’s theory, conflict can be seen as a series of time-competitive, Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) cycles. Each party to a conflict begins by observing themselves, the physical surroundings and the adversary. Next they orient themselves. Orientation refers to making a mental image or snapshot of the situation. Orientation is necessary because of the fluid, chaotic nature of conflicts makes it impossible to process information as fast as we can observe it. This requires a freeze-frame concept and provides a perspective or orientation. Once we have an orientation, we need to make a decision. The decision takes into account all the factors present at the time of the orientation. Last comes the implementation of the decision. This requires action. One tactical adage states that, “Decisions without actions are pointless”. Actions without decisions are reckless.” Then, because we hope that our actions will have changed the situation, the cycle begins anew. The cycle continues to repeat itself throughout a tactical operation.

The adversary who can consistently go through Boyd’s Cycle faster than the other gains a tremendous advantage. By the time the slower adversary reacts, the faster one is doing something different and the action becomes ineffective. With each cycle, the slower party’s action is ineffective by a larger and larger margin. The aggregate resolution of these episodes will eventually determine the outcome of the conflict. For example, as long as the actions of the authorities continue to prove successful, a suspect will remain in a reactive posture, while the commander maintains the freedom to act. No matter that the suspect desperately strives to accomplish, every action becomes less useful than the preceding one. As a result, the suspect falls farther and farther behind. This demonstrates that the initiative follows the faster adversary.

Written by Ken J. GoodObserve, Orient, Decide and Act. OODA
The acronym is easy to remember. The cycle itself is absolutely crucial to understand if one is regularly in harms way.

In order to consistently and effectively defeat opponents, you must sequentially move through the OODA cycle whether you are aware of it or not. It is model that can be used to dissect compressed timeframes in a logical and sequential manner. All engagements whether they are air-to-air dogfights or an up close and personal, hand-to-hand confrontation, conform to this simple, powerful, and insightful model.

I have noted that by studying and learning to apply this cycle, one has a effective way to segment, analyze, and improve human performance in confrontational situations. It is a gemstone to be admired and constantly examined.

Recalibrating the Internal Clock
The first issue is our perception of time itself.

I often illustrate people’s perception of the time by walking to the back of the classroom and then back to the podium while elucidating some tactical point. While the class is still trying to digest the point, I then ask several students, how long did it take for me to walk to the back of the room and return to the podium? Typically I get a few turned faces, questioning looks and frowns. They are non-verbally asking me, what difference does it make how long that took?

The answers I do receive will typically range from 2 seconds to 10 seconds, a substantial variance. Some will argue that I did not give them any preparation to ready their internal stopwatch. But this misses the point. No one in a rapidly developing engagement is going to stop and remind you to calibrate your chronograph. The point is, using recall alone, the same event witnessed by trained observers is perceived to have taken place in different universes where physical reality moves at different speeds.

The other interesting thing to note is that I will never get an answer like 3.345 seconds.
Why is this so? True sometimes I get an answer of 31ž2 seconds, but that’s as fine a gradient ever expressed. Our everyday existence does not require a division of time any closer than seconds for most events, in terms of verbal articulation. But in the world of close quarter engagements, using only full seconds to measure time is like using a sledgehammer to fine cut a diamond.

Tremendous and significant changes can happen in one second. A proficient adversary can fire three rounds out of a semi-auto shotgun while passing by an open doorway, horizontally and vertically changing position in relation to you in under a second.

To further illustrate the calibration point in the classroom, I ask someone to stand up and I give this volunteer a “red gun”, an inoperative hard plastic replica handgun. I tell them to put it in their waistband, and I do the same. I tell them that they are now part of a futuristic new game show that pits one man against the other in a six-foot gunfight. The participants face each other, winner to receive one million dollars. Both are wearing metallic braces on their wrist and ankles and are held in place by a strong magnetic field. Both will actually be using real, perfectly functioning firearms. When the green light is observed, you will be free to access your firearm and dispatch your opponent as required.

Now I throw a twist into the scenario. I tell the student, that he was smarter and more cunning than I and he offered 1ž2 his winnings to the operator of the magnetic field, if he would release his magnets 1 second earlier than mine. The operator says no, because one second was too obvious and the producers would have him executed for this breach of the rules. So the negotiations continue.

How about .9 seconds? How about .8 seconds? How about .4 seconds? How about .2 seconds? The operator finally agrees to release my opponent’s magnets .125 seconds prior to mine. At this point in the discussion, I then ask the student, would you take this time advantage if given to you, even if you had to pay $100,000 for it? The answer is inevitably, in the affirmative! Any sane person would take any and all time given in a gunfight, no matter how small the increment.

We zoom back out. How important is time? How important is learning to perceive time? How important is it to re-calibrate our internal chronographs? How does one get better and more efficient at anything?

A familiar shooting drill that many trainers use to roughly gauge a shooter’s proficiency is the ”El Presidente”.

The shooter starts out back facing to the target with a loaded and holstered handgun. At the sound of the buzzer the shooter spins to face 3 targets, 10 yards away, equally spaced 1 yard apart. The shooter is required to fire 2 rounds into each of the targets, reload and fire 6 more rounds, 2 in each target, attempting to hit the “A” zone of a standard IPSC target.

When you ask a new shooter to perform this drill you are not even looking for a time hack, but are more concerned about weapons handling and overall safety during the entire process. If the shooter safely completes the drill under 15 seconds, everybody is happy.

Give that same shooter some solid instruction and a few hundred rounds of practice and he or she should be hovering around 10 seconds consistently.

How does one go from 10 seconds to low 4-second runs? What should be examined is not how fast the shooter is shooting. But one should examine closely by what process did this shooter eliminate so much unnecessary motion and negative mental distractions in order to consistently repeat this performance?

For the remainder of this discussion, let’s assume that we are talking about split seconds of time to move through the OODA cycle. Let’s enter into the matrix.

Observe – The Starting Blocks - The First Quarter
This has to be your highest priority, find the threat before he or she finds you. An insight on the obvious you say! There is more than meets the proverbial eye!

Evaluating the modern battlefield, one should note that an enormous amount of effort and resources have been dedicated to “seeing” or observing the battlefield in real time. The investment in these resources has paid off handsomely during recent conflicts. The U.S. military exploits a tremendous satellite network, flies high altitude reconnaissance missions, deploys airborne and ground based radar systems, runs patrol operations, gathers real-time intelligence from a variety of sources, all in an effort to gain an overwhelming advantage as hostilities unfold. At this point in our military development, if we can see it, we can destroy it.

If you place yourself in the cockpit of a modern fighter jet, your prime directive is to find your opponent first and deploy your weaponry in a firing envelope advantageous to you before your opponent even knows your are there, just as it was when aerial combat first unfolded.

It is no different in a close quarter battle situation using handheld or shoulder-fired weapons. You must first find the threat through your main “radar system”, your eyes, deploy your weaponry in a firing envelope advantageous to you before your opponent even knows your are there.

Zooming back in, let’s examine some areas that can cause a degradation of our “on board radar system”.

Placement of the Weapon. Under the duress of searching for armed threats, we have noted that even very experienced operators have a strong tendency to place the weapon in the visual cone before they have located the position of the threat. (More often than not their finger is on the trigger, a well-known unsafe practice) The weapon, arms, and hands are now blocking out vital visual information.
This would be exactly like a fighter pilot placing a 3” by 5” note card over part of their radar display and putting their finger on the missile release button, all the time believing they are somehow more ready to defeat their unseen opponent or opponents.
Body, Head, and Eye Movements. The body obviously carries the head, and the neck articulates the head, and eyes are directed from within the head. This body movement coupled with head articulation, eye direction, angle, and focal placement allows for an almost infinite number of possibilities for employment your main sensor system, your vision.
This freedom can lead to large “gaps” for potential threats to move through unopposed. You must understood this and deal with it through proper training. An easy way to visualize this is to imagine watching a home video a friend filmed. You sit down and have an expectation that you are going to receive good visual information. As the videotape is played you soon become agitated because the camera operator was inexperienced and out of control. The recorded images are jumping and jerking all over the television monitor. Important details of the dynamic situation are lost and undistinguishable. Lot’s of good intent, energy, and activity, but unfortunately the most important aspects of the event go unseen.This video camera example illustrates the body, head, and eyes moving without intelligence and efficiency. To make matters worse, the individual who was operating the camera was using the zoom feature in and out with completely random patterns. This illustrates an individual improperly setting the focal length of his or her eyes while searching for an unseen threat. I have noted that individuals and teams have a strong tendency to tune their “radars” to one distance and angle and leave it there. This is especially true when the first threat is located and identified. Tracking one target, and one target only could spell death to a fighter pilot over the battlefield.

Cont...

[William]

Got a Second Cont....

Cont...


Since our visual sensors do not obtain data like phased-array radars, we must constantly change the distance and elevation of our vision, in a systematic manner.

One must relegate this cycling of the vision to the sub-conscious mind through proper training and experience.
A famous German Fighter Ace was asked, what is your secret?
Answer: “I have an acute awareness for the back of my neck”.

He was also asked what he thought about the P-51 Mustang. He response: “Three of the four that I shot down today did not even know I was in the same sky with them”

Notice he did not talk about hardware here. He drilled down to the inner man.

As our eyes are set in the forward area of the skull, representing an approximate 210 degree field of view. This leaves us with an additional obstacle to overcome, a large area unseen directly behind us.

What is the optimal sequence for establishing the best direction, angle, focal length, body speed, and timings to use the vision properly in a tactical environment? This is the art and science of using your vision to properly observe. This is where the inner man reigns supreme over the external tools deployed in the environment.

This is an area of combat that begins to immediately separate a highly proficient shooting sportsman and a combatant on the modern, urban battlefield or street.


Orient – Establishing Reality - The Second Quarter

Once you have obtained good visual data, ideally before your opponent has, you must orient yourself to the overall situation. You must put things in proper perspective based on real time input, previous intelligence, and generated assumptions. You are not processing in a linear sequential manner; you are processing in parallel. If you had the opportunity to freeze frame these moments and ask yourself, what data are you considering at this moment, the list would grow quite long as the subconscious is probed with the conscious mind.

To help illustrate the concept, imagine a personal computer with an outdated central processing unit, a few megabytes of memory, not enough data storage, a black and white 10” monitor all controlled by an antiquated operating system. Now try and run a sophisticated software package that requires significant resources. You will be immediately frustrated with the result.

When I was in the military, I had the opportunity to free-fall parachute out of a perfectly good airplane. When I immediately recalled the first jump experience, it appeared to be a virtual slideshow. Only key images where etched into my mind. I remember checking my altimeter numerous times, verifying the location of my rip-cord (this dates me!), seeing the beauty of an inflated canopy and finding the “T” and then contact with the ground. The entire event was 5-7 minutes long. After 60-100 jumps the staccato slideshow morphed into a streaming digital video. Same timeframe, but now my brain did not have to spend precious resources finding a “spot” to burn the information in since it was no longer new information but familiar territory. I could now casually see everyone exit the aircraft, immediately place myself in proper perspective to all jumpers, the aircraft and the ground. I was spending plenty of time doing relative work with other jumpers, flying my canopy and landing extremely close to the desired target. I was now able to assimilate huge blocks of visual data effortlessly, as well as recall them with great accuracy and clarity. I was now “oriented” to this somewhat stressful event.

The brain has an amazing capacity for data storage, recall, and decision-making, provided it has some meaningful reference points. But when we are presented with a totally new set of circumstances, with no prior reference points, we become disoriented. I.E., when is the last time your brain had a threat with a loaded firearm swinging in your direction displayed on its internal movie screen?

Hence, the need for realistic training that creates these movies and turns them into valid reference points. High quality training paves a new and much needed information access road to a now cached experience. The experience will be real enough to prevent disorientation when actual combat is faced.

Consistent with the personal computer example, you are giving your brain upgrades specific to orientation. A larger cache of stored experiences on the hard-drive, a faster CPU, memory, and data transfer rate, greater display size, resolution and color. You now have a greater probability of arriving at a sound solution in a shorter period of time.

I have spoken with numerous law-enforcement officers and military personnel following firefights on the street and in combat who have participated in good force-on-force training prior to the real thing. They were not disoriented, quite the opposite. They could articulate the details of the engagement and followed a logical and effective sequence of events during the engagement.

Since all participants in the engagement must move through the OODA cycle to achieve consistent and repeatable results, you must strive to disorient your opponent. Note I did not say, out shoot, out run, out shout, the prime directive is to disorient your opponent. Once in this state, he or she should be overcome by events as you move smoothly on to the next phases and around the clock again and again. The opponent’s perception of time becomes distorted, incoming data is dismissed, decisions are irrational, and actions become erratic and ineffective. This is an immensely powerful and often overlooked tactical tool.

You should have no sense of hurrying or waiting. You should be in harmony with what is actually happening.


Decide – The Pipeline - The Third Quarter

Practical decision-making can easily divided into two basic paths. The subconscious mind which can process hundreds of variables simultaneously, in parallel and the conscious mind which works in serial or sequentially, handling seven plus minus two variables before disregarding or misinterpreting incoming data.

Any process that must be accomplished in a compressed time frame should be relegated to the powerful subconscious mind, through training.

“If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late”
- Miyamoto Musashi
Japanese Philosopher/Warrior - 1645

Subconscious decisions are decisions arrived upon based on what we perceive, how we orient that perception and the time allowed to make the decision. If the threat is close and the time frame compressed we will automatically default to the sub-conscious pipeline. Whatever we brought to the situation, genetics, personality, training, assumptions, tools available, will pour out of us without conscious thought or effort.

I frequently use an example based on a real world incident in Southern California. A police officer has pulled over a motorist on the roadway to issue a traffic citation. Starting off, the officer does everything correctly. He finishes his initial assessment and begins to approach the vehicle to make contact with the driver.

As he makes visual and verbal contact, the driver reaches down between his legs to grab a handgun, with full intention to shoot the officer. The officer has just entered the OODA cycle in terms of this particular engagement. The suspect has already started cycling. As the officer reads the body language then moments later actually sees the handgun coming into view (Observation), he begins to orient to the situation. It is not something he regularly witnesses. During the orientation phase, he concludes that this is really a handgun, this threat is real and imminent and he must decide what to do. As the threat is relatively close and the time frame is compressed, the sub-conscious immediately dominates the decision phase and the officer is now on autopilot.

The officer is driven backwards by the pressure of the moment and rotates 90 degrees to his right and begins to accelerate and run to get back to his vehicle. The vehicle represents everything that is friendly and safe. It embodies familiarity, cover, concealment, communications, and additional weapons with which to neutralize the threat with.

Simultaneously, the suspect, attempting to engage the officer, immediately creates a decision-action by the officer to turn and leave the immediate vicinity, a subconscious decision he is now exploiting. The suspect continues to move through the OODA cycle again arriving at the top to observe. The suspect now exits the vehicle and observes a police officer with his back turned, essentially attempting to outrun super-sonic projectiles.

Let’s get back to the police officer. Where is he in the OODA cycle? He is in the unseen third O as in “Oh Sh#@”. He can no longer obtain any good visual information in relationship to the moving, now firing suspect. Only the grace of God can help him now. How did he find himself in this situation with little prospect of successfully overcoming the circumstances? A virtually instantaneous subconscious decision compelled him to arrive here.

Could it have been avoided? Most certainly it could have. How? Through well directed “Force-on-Force” training. Training that would allow an officer to observe this situation not for the first time while under extreme duress. These observation opportunities should be given progressively and repeatedly. This observation process starts creating a cache that ends up becoming a reference point from which to properly and efficiently orient. All the non-verbal cues, timings, the bio-mechanical possibilities and constraints of the combatants are now identified, sorted, stored and are ready for retrieval by the powerful subconscious mind. New courses of action will be discovered and can be experimented with.

The subconscious now has new experiences from which to draw upon. This creates an improved matrix of actions, increasing probability of success in the future.



Act – What we Dream About - The Final Quarter

We have finally arrived at the phase where most spend the majority of their time practicing and from my perspective the least significant in terms of what is really required. This is where you pull the trigger, push the button on your pepper spray, call for back-up forces, or any number of actions. Don’t get me wrong! You must be able to act powerfully. You must develop a smooth, accurate look-down, shoot-down capability with your shoulder-fired and hand-held weapons from a variety of positions and circumstances.

Let’s put this in perspective. If you were given just enough instruction to successfully fly an F-15 Strike Eagle off the runway and around the sky, and you also received good instruction on how to release a missile, by simply pushing the red button on the joystick, would you consider yourself ready for aerial combat? Combat taking place in 360-degree battle space flooded multiple threats, while sorting critical information and dealing with the physiological and psychological factors associated flight in combat.

To increase your chances of survival in this complex environment, you might construct a mock joystick at home and practice pushing the button really fast, over and over!

Operators love to show others how well they see the relationship of two pieces of metal and pull a lever. They will run down range, carefully pull their target and hold it like a newborn. They will cherish it and show all interested and non-interested parties, including their neighbor’s dog, their prowess at pulling a lever (pushing a red button). It’s comical sometimes.

If you simply learn to properly release a tiny metal missile from your handheld or shoulder-fired missile launcher. You are no more ready for combat on the street or the battlefield than your newly found piloting skills.

It is all that leads up to the point of missile release that ultimately matters. Your observations, orientation, and decisions are what allows a relatively minor action on your part define the difference between success or failure, life or death.

Whether you are in an F-15 or controlling a firearm, once you push the button or pull the trigger you are not going to make any difference on where that missile is going to strike. It will conform to its “programming” and the immutable laws of physics.

If you talk to the Gracie Brothers, you would find out that their best selling Brazilian JuJitsu videotapes are the submission tapes, the last in their comprehensive series. This hunger to learn submissions (pulling the trigger) is enormous. Nobody is saying submissions are not part of the total package and skill set, but the Gracie’s will tell you, “Position before Submission”. Prior to submitting someone a sequence is in effect. You must maintain proper distance and balance relationship to your opponent, close the distance with your opponent at the proper time, take your opponent to the ground, establish a dominant position over them, then submit them (force them to give up, damage them to point where they can no longer fight back or choke them into unconsciousness).
If you watch the greatest submission fighter in the world, Rickson Gracie, you will notice that he does not vary his routine by much. Rickson more often than not ends up choking out his opponents using the same dominant position and the same finishing hold. Why is he undefeated after over 400 plus no holds barred fights? Why can’t his opponents just counter the strategy employed time after time?

I believe it is his total mastery of the time and space prior to the relatively simple position and finish. It is the game within the game. The OODA Cycle in action.

I have had the opportunity to work with quite a few shooters that have the action phase of their personal development honed razor sharp. Their ability to shoot a handgun, shotgun, and rifle at paper and steel is literally world class, far outpacing anyone on our training staff if the only measuring stick is speed and accuracy on non-threatening targets. This is certainly not a negative, but can lead to a false sense of security and accomplishment.
When weapons are out and everybody is carrying lethal force at the push of a button, the proverbial wheels fall off the chariot until all phases of the OODA are understood, mastered and consistently applied.

A smooth running OODA cycle translates to good situational awareness. Situational awareness is the ability to collect, collate, and store data in a fluid, dynamic environment, accurately predicting future events based on that data.

Predicting future events in a tactical environment is a potent asset to have in your personal arsenal.



Respectfully,

Ken J. Good
Director of the Sure-Fire Institute


ken@surefire.com
714.545.9007
714-545-9009 FAX
18130 Mount Washington
Fountain Valley, CA 92708

[William]

At the Pekiti-Tirsia Kali gathering in Rhode Island this past weekend with GT Gaje and Maginoo-Mandala Tim Waid, knife maker and Pekiti-Tirsia Guro Zach Whitson who traveled from Tennessee showed us some of his exceptional hand made blades. A beautiful double-edged fixed blade, mirror polished and razor sharp. Exceptional craftsmanship in his metal and leather working (sheath). And all knives are custom made to the end user’s hand size for a perfect fit.

If you are looking for a beautiful, rugged, and very FUNCTIONAL knife…look no further than Iron Mountain Knives. Zach can make what you want and need…a work of art that can handle any job.

Here are a few examples:

https://www.pekiti-tirsia.com/IMKNIVES.htm

http://members.tripod.com/~russianmartialart/zknife01.html

http://members.tripod.com/~russianmartialart/z1knife01.html

I can’t wait to see the Gununtings.

William

[Roland]

RE: Crime in France.

I lived in Paris for about a year.

During that time, I saw ONE knifing attempt in the metro. A girl I know was a victim of a purse snatching gone wrong - she held onto the purse, they knocked her down and then proceeded to do the Mexican hat dance on her ribs (she was okay but had some cracked ribs). A buddy of mine who was living there at the same time saw ONE gang fight in a Micky-D's (which subsequently spilled out into the streets - high point of the fight was when one gang member Thai kicked another in the leg - the kickee fell to the ground and started CRYING) and some female friends of his got harrassed and punched by some punks while they were strolling about.

The only gunplay I heard about was mainly in the south of France. Mainly gangs holding up armored trucks.

Paris is a big city and like all big cities, there are some areas which you should steer clear of, especially at night.

But it was nowhere close to being a warzone when I was living there (at that was quite recently).

[William]

There is a wealth of information in Ken Goods OODA Cycle (see above). One point is something that was touched on constantly by my Krabi-Krabong instructor Chalambok (AKA Ajarn Wilson) is what's called the Tachypsyche effect.

Basically it is controlling/preventing tunnel vision during a confrontation by raising and lowering your line of sight
while fighting/training. In effect, it prevents you from getting tunnel vision during a confrentation and reatain the ability to focus on multiple factors/opponents.

Quoting Chalambok:
"Krabi-Krabong, though centuries old, had an early and unique view of what is
currently called the Tachy-Psyche Effect. The Tachy-Psyche Effect is a kind
of mesmerization that occurs under extreme stress, such as in mortal combat,
i.e. gun battles or knife fights. The fighter becomes fixated upon a visual
point of stimulus and seems to have tunnel vision. This is actually our
raptor vision (a remnant from our early evolutionary, predator stages)
coming into play, where we focus much like a predator intent upon our victim
to the exclusion of everything else. This causes a lack of outside
perception. As martial artists this is usually when the action begins to
play out slowly. This can be a good thing when you are attacking, but must
be taught out for defensive purposes. The ONLY way to break this effect is
to change one's horizontal plane of vision, by moving up and down".

In the OODA Loop by Ken Good (article above), you can see he is touching on this very same subject.

"Body, Head, and Eye Movements. The body obviously carries the head, and the neck articulates the head, and eyes are directed from within the head. This body movement coupled with head articulation, eye direction, angle, and focal placement allows for an almost infinite number of possibilities for employment your main sensor system, your vision. This freedom can lead to large “gaps” for potential threats to move through unopposed. You must understood this and deal with it through proper training. An easy way to visualize this is to imagine watching a home video a friend filmed. You sit down and have an expectation that you are going to receive good visual information. As the videotape is played you soon become agitated because the camera operator was inexperienced and out of control. The recorded images are jumping and jerking all over the television monitor. Important details of the dynamic situation are lost and undistinguishable. Lot’s of good intent, energy, and activity, but unfortunately the most important aspects of the event go unseen.This video camera example illustrates the body, head, and eyes moving without intelligence and efficiency. To make matters worse, the individual who was operating the camera was using the zoom feature in and out with completely random patterns. This illustrates an individual improperly setting the focal length of his or her eyes while searching for an unseen threat. I have noted that individuals and teams have a strong tendency to tune their “radars” to one distance and angle and leave it there. This is especially true when the first threat is located and identified. Tracking one target, and one target only could spell death to a fighter pilot over the battlefield. Since our visual sensors do not obtain data like phased-array radars, we must constantly change the distance and elevation of our vision, in a systematic manner. One must relegate this cycling of the vision to the sub-conscious mind through proper training and experience. "

This could spell death for the fighter pilot or to the Combative artist dealing with multiple opponents. Chalambok and Mr. Good are both touching on the dangers of tunnel vision. This tends to be an area that is overlooked by many Instructors and practitioners.

Pekiti-Tirsia has many drills that touch on this concept. Even basic transitory footwork drills will touch on this effect in the transitions from light, rapid movement to a power base and back to light, rapid movement.

Is this emphasis present in your system? If so, did you realize it? Just knowing can make a big difference.

William

[William]

Live blade training: A great motivator for heightening your awareness as well as getting students to see the point (pun intended) of the principles being taught.

Flowing and moving full speed with a live blade is not the same as flowing with trainers. The physical movement is the same, but the mental component is not. Being able to Flow with trainers is beneficial (but they also allow you to be sloppy), but you will find out real fast that a live blade changes the dynamic dramatically. I’ve seen people fly with trainers, but hand them a live blade and many look like their learning all over again. You need to be able to over come the fear of cutting yourself, and develop the heightened confidence, awareness, and skill to avoid doing so.

One (of many) training method I like to use, and advocate for advanced students is to practice being able to flow at full speed with live blades (single and double of varying sizes). You start out going slow working through movements from various drills and gradually speed up to full speed. Then just start free flowing while moving around utilizing footwork and simultaneously changing the height and angles of your attacks. Your awareness becomes much more heightened and tuned with the added danger of the live blade.

I’ll also practice this with different blade types and sizes which force me to be able to modify my technique to make the most of the weapons capabilities. Another variation is to add in moving targets (that I hang from the ceiling…or trees if I’m outside) that help me develop my targeting and hand eye coordination as well.



William


Anyone care to add one of yours?

[BB Wolf]

Very well put William.
Live blade training is extremely important. It teaches you real fast the importance of consentration and the reality of the blade (I've got the scars to prove it). Learning to fight with a knife without at least sometimes training with a live blade is like going to the firing range, pointing a dummy gun at a target and yelling "BANG!", and convincing yourself you're becoming profficient with a firearm. For safety's sake, a trainer is sometimes needed. To not do so in certain instances would be foolish. But sometimes you just gotta handle the real thing.

[William]

Learning to fight with a knife without at least sometimes training with a live blade is like going to the firing range, pointing a dummy gun at a target and yelling "BANG!", and convincing yourself you're becoming profficient with a firearm.

Great analogy!

And obviously I agree with you 100%.

I would also add that practicing quick draws with a live blade is important as well. Practice drawing from different positions/angles and from the ground as well. See how fast you can deploy it and launch into a free flow attack. You can even have a training partner knock you down from behind...see how quickly and effectivley you can access and deploy your blade.

You have to pratice with the real thing (at least occasionally) or...refer to the analogy at the top of this post.

William

Disclaimer: Please remember that you are working with a real, sharp blade in the above scenarios. Proceed with caution and at your own risk.

[adam]

Hi,

I am concern with learning more about how to defend myself against a knife. I've been looking around but in my opinion alot of stuff doesn't work very well. My main problem is in bridging/ touching the attacker's knife arm. I know about programing against different angles until it is unconcious and i feel that works fairly well eventually against random attacks that are real. But when someone comes in with small frame movements , and broken timing, i find it very hard to track and bridge his knife arm. HELP! Any info will be great, thanx. --adam

[BB Wolf]

Originally posted by adam
Hi,

I am concern with learning more about how to defend myself against a knife. I've been looking around but in my opinion alot of stuff doesn't work very well. My main problem is in bridging/ touching the attacker's knife arm. I know about programing against different angles until it is unconcious and i feel that works fairly well eventually against random attacks that are real. But when someone comes in with small frame movements , and broken timing, i find it very hard to track and bridge his knife arm. HELP! Any info will be great, thanx. --adam

Train with a partner who will come at you with small frame movements and broken timing until you feel comfortable (a dubious term considering the nature of the beast, as it were) dealing with this. Work reaction and aggression drills while you are in passive mode and being forced to react very agressively very quickly. Defending a knife attack is more than just deflecting or controlling the knife hand. You must aggressively counterattack until the subject is no longer a threat. That, or aggressively run away. Work on retaining contol of the weapon limb and/or disarms when you opponent is resisting. Learn to work your ranges, to be either be out of reach or too close for your opponent to use his weapon very effectively (the latter is risky, but sometimes nessesary ) Finally, learn to use the knife as a weapon. Its not only a 'know your enemy" sort of thing, but you may end up with it and the guy might want it back.

Hope this helps.

[William]

This is an addition to my post on the CRKT Bear Claw back on page four.

You can get a Bear Claw/La Griffe trainer (and a lot of other goodies) at:

https://www.szaboinc.com

The trainer is great for getting the feel for handling and manipulating the Bear Claw without cutting up your training partners. It also makes a pretty good SD tool in and of itself.


William

[William]

As Spanky posted in another thread, you are welcome to come and join us in discussing our passion.... the FFA's and Pekti-Tirsia Kali at:

http://www.schrodezine.com/forum/

The public section is hidden until you register and post in the "Roll Call" section. You must fill out the profile info. We want to keep trolling to a minimum. Trolls will be kicked out. The members only section is reserved for Pekiti-Tirsia PITBULL organizations from accross the world.


Hope to see you there.


William

[William]

Changing the world, one person at a time.

I still come across people with the flippant attitude that defending against
a blade is as easy as just kicking it out of someone's hand. I always
remember the TKD instructor who proudly claimed that his 15 yr. olds could
accurately kick a knife out of the hand as a realistic reliable defense.
This type of attitude is the very reason that I started this thread in the
first place. People who think that dealing with a blade is so easy, or just
a matter of doing technique A, B, or C. You have no margin for error in
going against a bladed attack. The bottom line is that you have to train the
best you can, as realistically as possible to increase your %'s of
successfully countering an attack. There are no certainties. One thing that
really helped open my eyes a long time ago was seeing a Coroners book that
had hundreds of pictures of people that had been killed with different types
of edged weapons/tools. Seeing what a sharp implement, even a small knife,
can do to the human body is an eye opener. Slashing attacks can be gruesome
and open up ghastly wounds immediately. Thrusts often just look like little
slits, but do major damage internally.
When I come across this type of attitude, I'll casually ask them if they
want to try kicking the blade from my hand. I'll start out with my blade
hand forward and let them try. Of course I don't just hold it still out
there for them to target, I use my footwork to move, feint, and gain angle
on them all the while keeping my blade moving in changing patterns. At first
I'll just stay outside and try to get them to kick. Every kick the comes
into my range is either slashed our stuck with a thrust. After I have
tenderized the leg a bit, I'll move in behind a kick and close to finish.
Sometimes I'll get the response, "well, you know how to use a knife, the
average person doesn't". To which I say; "Ok, this time I'll attack in the
way that you'll most likely encounter out in the real world". Then when they
turn to go back on the floor I run up behind them and "shank" them a bunch
of times on the back and sides of the body or neck. Not scientific, but a
knife attack your most likely to encounter. This usually throws them off and
they start thinking that I'm crazier than I really am...almost.
After they have re-gained their composure, I'll also show them that not all
knife attacks come with the blade held out front. We will go again and this
time I have my live hand forward and the blade to the rear and close to my
body. This doesn't present a weapon for you to target or to immediately try
to gain control of. You have to get past my live hand which will be
sweeping, grabbing, trapping, gouging, or eye jabbing as I enter to distract
and/or clear the way for my blade to come pumping in.
My point is that I want them to start looking at the knife in a more
realistic manner. Not just some innocuous implement that they think is so
easy to knock out of an attackers hand.
I pulled this (blade to the rear...training blade) on a Shoulin/Mantis BB
co-worker a few years ago. He was so fixed on the blade that I just reached
up and put my live hand in front of his face blocking his vision, and then
hit the vitals.

Again, the point is not to demoralize them, but to get them to start
thinking realistically about facing bladed weapons.

William

[William]

Morality of The Blade

A good question came up on another thread about the morality involved in teaching blade work. I would like to throw that same question out here, though not necessarily system specific (which is why I started it here as opposed to weighing on that thread).

To the instructors (or anyone else that wants to voice an opinion), what if anything do you look for in a student before teaching blade specific techniques? Obviously those of us in the FFA’s spend a lot more time with the blade than other MA’s out there. Many of the systems are based solely on blade dynamics (though there are a number of systems that have turned into basically “stick” arts). I know of some instructors who go straight to the blade from day one. Others take the more traditional approach of working from solo baton, to double baton, espada y daga, single blade, double blade, and then to open hand and ground fighting. Obviously what we teach and train is very dangerous in the wrong hands.
Personally, I like to wait until a person has been with me for a while before I get in-depth into blade specific dynamics. I like to try and get an idea of where their head is at before I go there. I know that this approach will not necessarily catch everyone who is mentally a bit shakey, but I have run into too many psycho types who come in wanting to just learn blade work and nothing else and from day one run on about “how to kill”, and what’s the “best way to kill” etc… For me personally it’s best to cut these folks loose. The monetary compensation for training this type of personality is not worth the possible consequences that can come back on you for teaching blade work to people like this (judiciously and morally). Besides, most people outside the MA’s (and some within) think we are on the psycho fringe training and teaching weaponry the way we do anyway.

I like the fact that there are some systems out there that have refrained from doing videos/DVD’s of their blade work. It’s really something that should be learned first hand from qualified instructors. Not something that should be available to anyone in the public at large that’s willing to through down the dough. There are just too many loose nuts, and too many people that watch it a few times and then try to pass themselves off as blade instructors. I personally think that applies to long-distance video training as well. It may be workable for experienced Filipino martial artists, but not people just starting out.

Anyone want to add their thoughts?



William

https://www.newenglandpekiti-tirsiapitbulls.com