Grappling with the Blade (diary entry)

03.04.13

Private Lesson

Continuing with edged weapon defence, we arrived at disarming. This option is only reached if a civilian’s exist is barred and they have no immediate incidental weapons. We worked off the drawing action. However, prior to covering this aspect I went through some basic familiarity with grappling. The student needed to control the weapon hand, which is something that can be derived from combat grappling.

We covered wrist control and controlling the shoulder. The main point emphasized here was for the student to keep a straight arm as they held onto the weapon arm. This changed to a two-on-one wrist grab.This then led onto the two-on-one arm position. Next I brought in the practice knife. The student practiced close-range interceptions of the weapon arm from all angles.

Striking from the wrist control was then drilled. The student pushes the weapon arm back to the attacker and strikes the highline target repeatedly until it goes down. There is also the option of a shoulder barge. If striking isn’t immediately accessible the student needs to resort to more grappling in order to get to another striking position. This is where the two-on-one arm position came into play. The elbow joint is hyperextended and the student is positioned behind and to the side of the attacker. Here he has the option of smashing the weapon hand into nearby objects or to bite in order acquire a release.

We covered striking and other attacks from this position. This included switching arms if the blade was taken by the attacker’s free hand. The two-on-one is the default position in this series of close-quarter tactics.

Looking at a diagonal angle of attack we cover the single underbook position to control the attacker from the front. Once again, we also defaulted back to the two-on-one. The same principle was carried over from the back position, which is particularly useful in multiple attack situations when you can use the attacker as a shield.  

Going back to the basic angles of attack we covered natural evasive responses, which were turned into parries and blocks. This served as drill for getting to the controlling positions from any angle.

My weapon defence teaching owes a lot to a variety of coaches, including Mo Teague, Dennis Jones, Karl Tanswell and Hock Hocheim.