Are there any American knife fighting styles?

And the point there is that you touch it and let go quick. Have an asshat with a shock knife and it's like the drive stun with a taser.

Up to 25,000 volts from static electricity.

And the point is still amperage.

Oh. And the knife has settings. You dont have to go full noise.
 
Up to 25,000 volts from static electricity.

And the point is still amperage..
And static electricity in terms of duration is a strawman. A taser is proven, it uses a whopping 0.0021 amps. So yeah...the pain is still sure as hell equal on lower settings and greater on the higher.





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Tom Sotis trained FMA from my understanding. Their newest website does not have his bio on it that I can tell, but i'm pretty sure it was on the old one.

I know him rather well, did a lot of training at his house in Rhode Island for many years. Tom's trained a lot of things, he is a very serious man. And, yes, he's trained lots of FMA. Trained down there, in the jungles. He has, shall we say, a rather interesting relationship with many of the FMA Masters down in the Philippines.

Someone mentioned the "machete". Personally, I hate the damn things. Probably because I'm not very good with them. But he always made us include them in our training, you know why? Because it is the most common blade, worldwide, used for killing. Tom travels more in a two year span than I have in my whole life. And I travelled a lot. That's the only drawback to training with him, he's away a lot.

He lives in the world of Letter Agencies, a contractor for their field agents, both over and covert. He lives in the world of Military Camps, a contractor for them and mercenary groups working alongside the U.S Government. He lives in the world of some of the worst prisons in the world, training people who work there. And he lives in the world of the Jungles, maybe where he feels most at home. I actually knew of him, through Federal Law Enforcement, before I met him. Sure glad I did. The man knows the knife. He is as serious as a heart attack.
 
I know him rather well, did a lot of training at his house in Rhode Island for many years. Tom's trained a lot of things, he is a very serious man. And, yes, he's trained lots of FMA. Trained down there, in the jungles. He has, shall we say, a rather interesting relationship with many of the FMA Masters down in the Philippines.

Someone mentioned the "machete". Personally, I hate the damn things. Probably because I'm not very good with them. But he always made us include them in our training, you know why? Because it is the most common blade, worldwide, used for killing. Tom travels more in a two year span than I have in my whole life. And I travelled a lot. That's the only drawback to training with him, he's away a lot.

He lives in the world of Letter Agencies, a contractor for their field agents, both over and covert. He lives in the world of Military Camps, a contractor for them and mercenary groups working alongside the U.S Government. He lives in the world of some of the worst prisons in the world, training people who work there. And he lives in the world of the Jungles, maybe where he feels most at home. I actually knew of him, through Federal Law Enforcement, before I met him. Sure glad I did. The man knows the knife. He is as serious as a heart attack.
I haven't had a chance to train with him, or even really see his stuff. What I was getting at was that his system is not an "American" one as it is going to largely be based on FMA with regards to the knife.
 
I haven't had a chance to train with him, or even really see his stuff. What I was getting at was that his system is not an "American" one as it is going to largely be based on FMA with regards to the knife.
I suppose it depends on your definitions. We have plenty of people on this forum who will insist that modern jujutsu systems developed in the US or Europe from a foundation of Judo/Aikido/Karate are not really Japanese. By that same logic, FMA-derived systems developed in the US would be American, not Filipino.
 
I haven't had a chance to train with him, or even really see his stuff. What I was getting at was that his system is not an "American" one as it is going to largely be based on FMA with regards to the knife.

You might very well be right, I've never actually trained FMA.

Of course, then we get into other areas. When an art is changed, regardless if it's base is similar, there's usually some screaming about "That's not such and such!"

I'm used to being screamed at. I train American Karate. :)
 
I suppose it depends on your definitions. We have plenty of people on this forum who will insist that modern jujutsu systems developed in the US or Europe from a foundation of Judo/Aikido/Karate are not really Japanese. By that same logic, FMA-derived systems developed in the US would be American, not Filipino.
Oh I can see the debate now with Guro Dan Inosanto being Filipino-American. He can have it either way ;)
 
I taught an intro-to-FMA seminar last night and a student of James Keating was there. He had some good stuff, though it seemed to assume you'd be using the kind of knife that raised the philosophical question of when a blade stops being a long knife and starts being a short sword (whereas I tend to focus more on folder-size knives). Very much focused on the Bowie knife, which is certainly an American system to my mind. He had in his bag a head mask, boxing gloves, etc. that he uses for knife sparring to test his stuff out. Makes sense to me!

Speaking of the machete, there are certainly South American fighting styles focused on the knife and/or machete.
 
I taught an intro-to-FMA seminar last night and a student of James Keating was there. He had some good stuff, though it seemed to assume you'd be using the kind of knife that raised the philosophical question of when a blade stops being a long knife and starts being a short sword (whereas I tend to focus more on folder-size knives). Very much focused on the Bowie knife, which is certainly an American system to my mind. He had in his bag a head mask, boxing gloves, etc. that he uses for knife sparring to test his stuff out. Makes sense to me!

Speaking of the machete, there are certainly South American fighting styles focused on the knife and/or machete.
Yeah, my Guro was a student of Keating (Keating started Kali in 1982 and my Guro started with him in 1995). My Guro is also a huge fan of the Bowie knife. Last night he had us doing a technique that I would call a "generic" knife fighting technique that he said only works with a 6" or longer blade, so that seems to fit in with the "Bowie" obsession lol.
 
I don't know about you guys, but knives scare the crap out of me.
 
I don't know about you guys, but knives scare the crap out of me.

I will be honest, one of the reasons I study Kali is because a knife scares me more than a gun. If a person knows what they are doing you can be face to face with someone and not know they have a knife until it's to late. With a gun at least I know it's coming. We say "they should feel the knife before they see it."

Add to that the fact my vest will protect from a slash but not a solid thrust and it gets even twitchier. Years ago I actually acquired a old school metal trauma plate for a concealed vest. I have that behind the more modern soft trauma plate of my vest. It only covers the heart but it's better than nothing.
 
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It's an ambush weapon which is always a scary idea. But, it's also a great force multiplier at close quarter so, as already mentioned, I train it often.
 
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Is this all knife, all the time? Is there a subset of knife techniques? Defensive or offensive? Or Both?

It works without a blade too but than its just Kenpo, this is a method developed by a Marine Vietnam Vet, who became the Instructor for 10th Special Forces group, (retired from that as far as I know) his name is Mike Pick he was a student of Ed Parker. Not a lot of information out there about this method but anyone I ever ran into in the Military that had trained in it spoke highly of it and the particular knife they use. I believe the organization involved with this method is called UKF, United Kenpo Federation.

I don't know what you mean by Defensive Knife Techniques, The only knife techniques I know of are for killing with a knife.
 
And more importantly, how would you practice/spar using a knife fighting system?

I know there's eskrima (seems like everyone and their mother knows about it) but what little to now near non-existant training I had was with plastic bats.

I guess what I'm asking is, are there any knife arts that focus on using pocket/combat knives?
Robert redfeather his apache knife system is good
 

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