Which martial art is most effective for self defense?

Originally Posted by eidolon

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I'm going to stay away from replying to anything else in this thread because I've said my piece, but I have to absolutely refute this.

This could absolutely not be more wrong. Yes, there are very few people on this Earth that have ever been trained to use knives in "close combat." All that does is make them as dangerous to themselves as they are to you. The loser of a knife fight dies, the winner goes to the hospital or bleeds out in an alley somewhere. Knives are worse than guns, people don't hear stabbings and call the cops, people don't get hit by recoil with knives and run away, people aren't intimidated by the knife in their own hand. They don't think about it. They don't bring their arm up so you can do some ******* Aikido move and get under them and get them off-balance. They don't stand in one place and wait for you to grab their wrist so you can do some awesome wrist-lock maneuver. Knives are a wild card, it doesn't matter if you're some streetfight super gangster and you've been training in martial arts and you're tough as ****. You're not made of stone.

This is a horrible way of thinking, this is a stupid way of thinking, this is a way of thinking that gets people killed. One of the reasons you don't want to get into fights in the first place (besides the fact that they're ultimately moronic and that the human body has awkward "weaknesses" that could lead you to severely injuring and crippling yourself for life just by falling down abnormally) is because you don't know who has what. You don't know who has a knife, you can't always see a knife, and you don't need range for a knife (which you do with a firearm, obviously).

There is a reason police officers stay back from people with knives, but if they have enough of a presence rush people with blunt objects. You can't accidentally impale yourself on a baseball bat, in a scuffle on the ground you don't have to worry about an ASP baton hitting you in the wrong spot and severing an artery that leaves you dead before EMS can arrive. Small knives are the single most dangerous object to everyone in close combat, and believing that you can ever at any time be capable of disarming someone with a knife in close combat is dangerous stupid, it is false bravado and confidence that will ultimately hurt you.

+1 - the better instructors I've had teach knife defense, but stress that it's a last, last resort - if you're cornered and can't talk someone down, then there's nothing left to do but go at it and hope for the best.

Incidentally, I recall reading something from Bruce Lee where he felt that an inexperienced person with a knife was at a disadvantage for a number of reasons. Where a trained empty-handed fighter has hands and feet and knees and elbows and forehead, the person holding the knife considers that first among his weapons and fights from that angle only - like a dog and his teeth. Unfortunately, dogs too can do some serious damage.

Ninja, obviously.

Originally Posted by Gradstudent78

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In a relatively short time you can learn to do palm strikes safely with little chance of breaking fingers, where even a trained boxer like Mike Tyson broke bones in his hand while he was in a street fight.
absolutely. Ive been doing it for years, always wrapped, and am currently nursing an injured left wrist courtesy of hitting a moving mitt. Caught side, wrist bent, Matt yelped. Been about three weeks now. Without wraps and gloves, I would be dealing with this far far more often.

On the topic of multiple attackers, I used to work at a gas station, and I got attacked once by about 5 or 6 guys from the local high school (I was also in high school at the time). I picked out the smallest one from them, and went straight for him and started beating him to a pulp. The rest of them got scared and started pleading with me to stop, so I stopped and they all ran away.

I think this is the best strategy to use in a situation where you are attacked by multiple people and you have nowhere to run - attack the smallest guy there with as much violence as possible.

Originally Posted by m@T

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absolutely. Ive been doing it for years, always wrapped, and am currently nursing an injured left wrist courtesy of hitting a moving mitt. Caught side, wrist bent, Matt yelped. Been about three weeks now.

Without wraps and gloves, I would be dealing with this far far more often.

which sort of comes back to why I wouldn't have suggested boxing as a first choice, even though I think that boxing probrably teaches the best fighting skills. if you have only learned a few boxing skills, you could probrably hit pretty well and hard, but you might not have the judgement to know when to punch where, and when you should be using an open handed technique.

in most of these styles, you are learning a strong preference for one set of tools - throws, punches, kicks, grapling. what is really an advantage is to first learn how to defend yourself, and to have the tools all be equal parts of your arsenal. one of the big advantages of krav is that it tries to show a wide range of tools, in their simplest form, and it tries to teach you how to use the right tool at the right time.

Originally Posted by eidolon

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I'm going to stay away from replying to anything else in this thread because I've said my piece, but I have to absolutely refute this.

This could absolutely not be more wrong. Yes, there are very few people on this Earth that have ever been trained to use knives in "close combat." All that does is make them as dangerous to themselves as they are to you. The loser of a knife fight dies, the winner goes to the hospital or bleeds out in an alley somewhere. Knives are worse than guns, people don't hear stabbings and call the cops, people don't get hit by recoil with knives and run away, people aren't intimidated by the knife in their own hand. They don't think about it. They don't bring their arm up so you can do some ******* Aikido move and get under them and get them off-balance. They don't stand in one place and wait for you to grab their wrist so you can do some awesome wrist-lock maneuver. Knives are a wild card, it doesn't matter if you're some streetfight super gangster and you've been training in martial arts and you're tough as ****. You're not made of stone.

This is a horrible way of thinking, this is a stupid way of thinking, this is a way of thinking that gets people killed. One of the reasons you don't want to get into fights in the first place (besides the fact that they're ultimately moronic and that the human body has awkward "weaknesses" that could lead you to severely injuring and crippling yourself for life just by falling down abnormally) is because you don't know who has what. You don't know who has a knife, you can't always see a knife, and you don't need range for a knife (which you do with a firearm, obviously).

There is a reason police officers stay back from people with knives, but if they have enough of a presence rush people with blunt objects. You can't accidentally impale yourself on a baseball bat, in a scuffle on the ground you don't have to worry about an ASP baton hitting you in the wrong spot and severing an artery that leaves you dead before EMS can arrive. Small knives are the single most dangerous object to everyone in close combat, and believing that you can ever at any time be capable of disarming someone with a knife in close combat is dangerous stupid, it is false bravado and confidence that will ultimately hurt you.

agree with you 100%

Originally Posted by Shraka

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Ha ha, oh man. Yes you can try to defend against anything and there's a technique for most kinds of attacks, including knives. How effective they are varies. While knowing martial arts raises your chances significantly over an idiot when you're both unarmed, knowing really good knife fighting doesn't give you a better chance of winning than joe dumbshit with a stabber. Chances are, even if you win that he will have cut you badly enough that you are now in serious need of hospital, while if you'd just run the **** away you'd be fine.
never mind.

Originally Posted by eidolon

Click to expand...

I'm going to stay away from replying to anything else in this thread because I've said my piece, but I have to absolutely refute this. This could absolutely not be more wrong. Yes, there are very few people on this Earth that have ever been trained to use knives in "close combat." All that does is make them as dangerous to themselves as they are to you. The loser of a knife fight dies, the winner goes to the hospital or bleeds out in an alley somewhere. Knives are worse than guns, people don't hear stabbings and call the cops, people don't get hit by recoil with knives and run away, people aren't intimidated by the knife in their own hand. They don't think about it. They don't bring their arm up so you can do some ******* Aikido move and get under them and get them off-balance. They don't stand in one place and wait for you to grab their wrist so you can do some awesome wrist-lock maneuver. Knives are a wild card, it doesn't matter if you're some streetfight super gangster and you've been training in martial arts and you're tough as ****. You're not made of stone. This is a horrible way of thinking, this is a stupid way of thinking, this is a way of thinking that gets people killed. One of the reasons you don't want to get into fights in the first place (besides the fact that they're ultimately moronic and that the human body has awkward "weaknesses" that could lead you to severely injuring and crippling yourself for life just by falling down abnormally) is because you don't know who has what. You don't know who has a knife, you can't always see a knife, and you don't need range for a knife (which you do with a firearm, obviously). There is a reason police officers stay back from people with knives, but if they have enough of a presence rush people with blunt objects. You can't accidentally impale yourself on a baseball bat, in a scuffle on the ground you don't have to worry about an ASP baton hitting you in the wrong spot and severing an artery that leaves you dead before EMS can arrive. Small knives are the single most dangerous object to everyone in close combat, and believing that you can ever at any time be capable of disarming someone with a knife in close combat is dangerous stupid, it is false bravado and confidence that will ultimately hurt you.
Ok I need to respond to this. First I totally agree with a lot of your comments about knives being a wild card and hard to predict. Also you don't know if the guy who pulls a knife is a cold blooded killer who will just go for your throat or just another drunk who is sure having a knife makes him the baddest man on the planet, if it is the first you are in trouble. I agree that a lot of people have fantasy lives in which some complicated throw or wrist technique will enable them to disarm all the mad beasts out there. I am not 15, and I am not quoting some Ninja manuel. I am not a badass but I have been around a little. You say the loser of a knife fight goes to the hospital. I guy I knew pulled a knife in a bar fight and stabbed a guy. He (the stabber) woke up in a hospital bed. Then he went to jail. Now I know there are always exceptions and the fact that it happened once does not mean it happens every time. Think of it this way a knife is an advantage just like height, reach, weight, and skill. It CAN be overcome. It just becomes a matter of having other advantages of your own. To be clear I don't think the the various techniques are 100% safe I don't think they are 100% effective. I do think there are techniques that can be learned that increase the chance of surviving an knife attack. Notice I did not say "make a knife attack risk free" I would like to relate a brief example. This actually happened to me. Long story short, I was out walking with a friend, two men walked by and then one of them pulled a knife. We retreated looking for a weapon of our own. I saw a recycling bin and went to look on it for a bottle, it was empty so I just picked up the bin (it was a small curb side deal about the size of a milk crate) at this point I turned and faced him. My friend did the same. Worlds were exchanged and I circled for a better position. Then he backed down and left. His advantage: a knife, my advantage: a willingness to fight and a bad attitude. Now clearly he did not really want to fight just throw his weight around. If he had been willing to stab me it might have been a long night, but I have been in too many situations and seen to much **** to just assume I would have been the one going to the hospital. I have more than one friend who has survived a stabbing and put the other guy down, usually the difference being not some esoteric eastern art or technique but just sheer violence and desire. The problem with mixing it up with a guy with a knife is that the consequences for misjudging his and your relative advantages/skill can be pretty dramatic. I also agree that a knife is not something to take lightly and I hope you don't get the impression that I am blithely claiming that knives aint **** if you just know the dred "grip of super death" taught only in strip malls across America. I don't take violence lightly. I am not a violent person and almost never get into fights. I KNOW I am not a badass having met (one of ) the baddest men alive. I totally agree that ******* around with knife wielding A-holes is often a quick ticket to the ER. But I don't agree with the attitude that the minute a knife comes out it is game over. Experience has shown me otherwise. I really want to make this clear. I am NOT suggesting people treat knives as no big deal. I DO NOT think that if a guy pulled a knife I would just pull some slick move and be back bragging to my friends in seconds flat. I DO NOT think it is a good idea to mix it up with knife wielding jackasses. I totally agree that the best defense is to simply not get into the fight to begin with. Finally I would like to agree that running is often a good solution. Has anyone else on these boards been in a violent situation involving knives? Please chime in.

Originally Posted by Gradstudent78

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In a relatively short time you can learn to do palm strikes safely with little chance of breaking fingers, where even a trained boxer like Mike Tyson broke bones in his hand while he was in a street fight.
Where did you get that from? I'm a Tyson fan.

Originally Posted by Thomas

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Incidentally, I recall reading something from Bruce Lee where he felt that an inexperienced person with a knife was at a disadvantage for a number of reasons. Where a trained empty-handed fighter has hands and feet and knees and elbows and forehead, the person holding the knife considers that first among his weapons and fights from that angle only - like a dog and his teeth. Unfortunately, dogs too can do some serious damage.

Yeah, but unfortunately I've never seen someone waving a knife wearing an "untrained n00b" T-shirt.

If someone who really knows about knifing wants you dead, you most likely won't even see the knife until it is too late--if ever.

I haven't trained in weapons defense very much, but most of what I've seen looks like it was dreamed up in the dojo with no concept of how a real attack might go down. Things like the basic prison yard grab + sewing machine are rarely if ever dealt with.

Originally Posted by TyCooN

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Where did you get that from? I'm a Tyson fan.

Google Mitch "Blood" Green

Originally Posted by NorCal

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Has anyone else on these boards been in a violent situation involving knives? Please chime in.

first, your story reflect luck more than anything else. I'd have to ask why you felt the need to go back and face the knife, armed with a milk crate? what did you gain from this?

second, I am just as stupid, or I was when I was about 15. very similar story - I am out walking aback from some social interaction at age 15, maybe midnight or so. some kid, probrably 18 or more, walking the other way on the sidewalk slaps me, pretty lightly all in all, for no reason. he keeps walking. I turn and yell at him something to the effect of "WTF?". he turns and makes a threatening remark, shows me that he has a large pocket knife. I pull out a straight razor, that for some totally assinine reason I thought was a cool thing to carry around, and I take a few steps forward. he leaves. I continue home.


sure, I had a badass attitude.


maybe 10 times a year, for the past 20 years, I have thought about that evening, and how lucky I was that I didn't kill him or get killed that night.

sure, a knife doesn't end everythign, but it should if you have a brain

I've never been attacked with a knife, but I have had friends pull knives out on some dudes we were about to throw down with once. The dudes ran. It was probably the right decision for them.

I've been fortunate enough to avoid anything more serious than having a dude whom I did not want to fight in the first place popping open the sheath on his Buck 110 folder. He walked off when I apologized for whatever it was he thought I did.

I've witnessed a stabbing firsthand. The victim apparently thought he was in a one-on-one fistfight until his opponent's friend walked up on his flank, pulled some kind of icepick-style shank, and stabbed the victim twice in the side. The guy didn't even know he'd been stabbed until he reached down and felt the blood oozing out through his shirt.

Having seen that, I always assume that every idiot (1) is armed, and (2) has backup.

Learning to walk around or away from trouble is a better self-defense method than having the world's best physical MA training and being a complete asshat. This is especially true of the barfights that everyone seems to worry about.

to tell you the truth, i havent been in a fight in over 4 years, and the last one i was in was on the basketball court. if you dont want to get into a fight, you probably wont. i can think of dozens of times i probably should have fought someone for what they did, or had good reason to, but just never wanted to. ive also stopped countless fights with people im with and others in the club and other circumstances. fighting just isnt worth it, and really isnt much fun. when i go to a club i sometimes when im pretty drunk ill dance like crazy. ive stepped on millions of toes, elbowed countless people in the head and in the face, bumped into people etc. but i always apologize and make sure things are okay etc, and people dont generally get mad at me. i think its pathetic the people who find any reason to get into a fight. theres tons of times where i have an oppurtunity to get into a fight, and the guy is puny as hell and chubby and im pretty sure i could take him. but i always say in my head, if this guy was 6'5 250, you wouldn want to fight him, so dont fight him now. and i treat everyone as if i was fighting some beast and dont treat people differently. if i was angry enough that i would fight that 6'5, 250 dude, then im going to fight him, if i dont want to fight that big guy, i wont fight the little guy. i hate the people who are quick to get into fights with guys who they feel are easy prey, but will let anything slide with someone theyre intimidated by. i hate those people. and thats my rant!