The knife as a training tool

[Brian King]

There are some whose understanding of knife work is the familiar stick the sharp end into the soft parts and repeat as necessary expressions. This is certainly one dimension of blade work and martial artists should certainly have an understanding of this type of stick and slash work, but at the same time it is my opinion that we would be wise in guarding against the narrow belief that the stick and slash work is all that can be gleaned from training with the blade. Instead of viewing the knife as a self defense tool only but rather seeing it as also a training aid can unleash many training opportunities. It can be used to gain a further understanding of our fear, our greed, our impatience, the strengths and weaknesses in our psyches. It can also be used to motivate movement as well as breathing while under tension and stress work. It can become mind expanding as possibilities are drilled, explored and experimented with. Awareness and sensitivity as well as trust and teamwork and timing and rhythm all can be enhanced by working with the blade. This requires seeing possibilities and a willingness to explore multiple dimensions of training and living.

With this on my mind, I am wondering if you have any favorite blade drills or exercises that have helped you experience some of the ah-ha moments that make training interesting and worthwhile?

Thank you
Warmest regards
Brian King

 

[Brian King]

One such blade drill that helps teach many lessons yet is not really a combative drill per say is a simple version of the toss and roll drill. In this drill the partners (can be two or more partners, if four or more partners then you can increase the number of knives in play) Depending on the skill level of the partners this drill for most should be started with them sitting or kneeling on the ground until their rolling skills and then they can start either standing or kneeling at their preference. The partners simply toss the knife back and forth to each other. The toss is not a combative throw where you try to stick the blade into the target but rather a toss as in passing a basketball to another player on your team. The knife should be tossed so that the partners have a chance of catching it. Notice I said chance of catching it, the knife should be with-in range of the partner but after each couple of successful catches the range should increase. As the partners catch the blade they should continue the movement needed to reach the thrown knife and turn it into some kind of roll or turn or transitional movement and then return the toss to their partner. The return toss should happen also while in the movement not waiting until the movement is finished and then throwing. Both hands should be worked by using whatever hand catches the knife to throw the knife or switching the knife from one hand to the other with-in the movement. If the knife is not caught the person should roll or use some other ground movement to reach the knife and continuing the movement pick up the knife and toss it back to their partner with-in the movement. If repeated misses the partners should close the distance a bit and continue the drill. Some different versions of this drill is to have the partners in the push-up position which requires limiting the range of the knife tosses to with-in arms reach or so of their partners but the distance between partners is only limited by their accuracy and the training environment. The partners catch the knife while in the push up and roll or do some other ground movement while catching the blade and continue the movement to return the knife to their partner and also to return to the push up position. This can also be done while in different levels of the squat exercise which is interesting and helps people learn how to work even while transitioning from standing to ground and from ground to standing. For those that enjoy the challenge of working with live blades I suggest practicing with trainers first and when deciding to move to live blade to go back to the beginning and start closer and slower at first and work up to the more complex movements. Working with throwing knives is a good start to live blade work as they are usually sharp but with a working edge and not razor sharp. If working with throwing knives you can work in catching the knife tossed by your partner but instead of returning to your partner you can throw it into a wooden target.


Brian King

 

[Rich Parsons]

There are some whose understanding of knife work is the familiar stick the sharp end into the soft parts and repeat as necessary expressions. This is certainly one dimension of blade work and martial artists should certainly have an understanding of this type of stick and slash work, but at the same time it is my opinion that we would be wise in guarding against the narrow belief that the stick and slash work is all that can be gleaned from training with the blade. Instead of viewing the knife as a self defense tool only but rather seeing it as also a training aid can unleash many training opportunities. It can be used to gain a further understanding of our fear, our greed, our impatience, the strengths and weaknesses in our psyches. It can also be used to motivate movement as well as breathing while under tension and stress work. It can become mind expanding as possibilities are drilled, explored and experimented with. Awareness and sensitivity as well as trust and teamwork and timing and rhythm all can be enhanced by working with the blade. This requires seeing possibilities and a willingness to explore multiple dimensions of training and living.

With this on my mind, I am wondering if you have any favorite blade drills or exercises that have helped you experience some of the ah-ha moments that make training interesting and worthwhile?

Thank you
Warmest regards
Brian King

Could you explain more on:
"It can be used to gain a further understanding of our fear, our greed, our impatience, the strengths and weaknesses in our psyches. "


Fear of the Blade?

How is Greed in the equation?

Impatience in learning or in understanding or ...?

And how does training show strengths and weaknesses of the psyches?

 

[tshadowchaser]

I had a student that would do almost any drill with a rubber trainer but if a steel blade (dull to the extreme) was placed in the drill the student would freeze and then break down crying and run from the floor. How do you overcome such a situation

 

[Darth F.Takeda]

I had a student that would do almost any drill with a rubber trainer but if a steel blade (dull to the extreme) was placed in the drill the student would freeze and then break down crying and run from the floor. How do you overcome such a situation

I don't think you can, sounds like this is a person not made for any type of combat.
Some things you cant teach, some things are just part of what makes you, you.
For better or worse.

 

[Brian King]

Rich Parsons wrote:

Could you explain more on:
"It can be used to gain a further understanding of our fear, our greed, our impatience, the strengths and weaknesses in our psyches. "

Fear of the Blade?
How is Greed in the equation?
Impatience in learning or in understanding or ...?
And how does training show strengths and weaknesses of the psyches?

OK Rich I will try. I am neither an expert writer nor expert on the blade but I do have some experiences and opinions I will attempt to share.

Fear of the Blade?

That is one fear that many have and it is easily recognized in how their movement is effected when holding a live blade. There is no reason for their movement to change other than they are now holding a blade. Most noticeable is excessive tension resulting in jerky movement, poor timing, and being stuck (pun intended hehe) in one movement loop.
Here are a few examples of exercises to help people get over this fear.
1. Have them use their cooking knives when preparing meals by holding the blade and not the handles when doing any cutting, peeling and chopping.
2. Taking your live blade and starting slowly outline your entire standing body with the point and edge, the blade should follow exactly your bodies outline by running along the surface of the body but without touching (LOL or cutting) your body with just a hair of separation between the blade and the body. After a few minutes start to speed the outlining and switching hands. Do not forget the feet, fingers, eyes and groin as these areas and others such as the throat and spine and face can also start teaching about sensitivity and pride/ego and fears other than merely fear of the blade.
3. Same as above but now have a partner outlining your body with their blade and sometimes your own blade. Besides standing also do the exercise while kneeling and lying down. Start to add movement by doing the exercise while doing push-up, squats and sit-ups.

But other fears can also be experienced and explored as well.
The simple fears like the fear of being cut, the fear of cutting, fear of success, fear of failure, fear at the sight of blood, fear of being human, fear of falling (especially while holding a blade or having one on your person unsheathed) are usually pretty easy to identify but really there are as many fears as there are people. We all have our buried fears and working with the blade can if we are lucky and honest like an onion help expose their layers for our examination. This is important because becoming familiar with these fears and recognizing them in ourselves helps us recognize them in others, a useful tool for both combative purposes and of course healing work.

“How is Greed in the equation?”

Well one way we can see our and others greed is in the way we work while free sparring with blades, while doing sensitivity work with blades and while doing awareness drills. The way that people will rush thru a movement in order to “win” often reflects both their fear and their greed and their sacrificing of the timing exposes this. It is often most easily seen when working multiples with weapons and when doing slow drills and how some will speed up to get in their cut or to avoid the cut. The trick of course is to start to recognize it in ourselves while doing the training and to be able to pull back, grin and admit to our greed and then get back to working honestly and doing what is needed when it is needed, not what we wish to do when we wish to do it. If an issue it can be worked on by doing limiting drills. Doing drills such as slow sparring with an armed training partner while your arms are handcuffed behind your back or handcuffed one arm to a prone partner while being attacked by another training partner and of course working with honest training partners during multiple opponent drills.

“Impatience in learning or in understanding or ...?”

Yes sir to all the above, as well as impatience with our skill at the moment, impatience with our training partners, impatience at our endurance, impatience at our bad luck and at our training partner’s good luck and impatience with our teacher/instructor/coach among many others. Impatience is also tied to pride and greed. You can often see it when we feel bad and upset at not being able to do a specific new movement up to our preconceived standards even while being upset we lose a valuable training moment
One blade drill that works on many things but can also work on our impatience is to have your training partner stand about six paces from you; the partner then makes a bladed offensive forward motion towards you but freezes at the first step while at the same time you make a forward defensive movement defending against whatever attack your partner showed then freezing, your partner makes a second attack from whatever position they had held at again stopping after one step and again at the same time you defend and freeze, then the final attack and defense (say to a takedown and pin or whatever) then switch and the defender after again separating the required distance becomes the attacker and the drill is repeated. It is an interesting drill allowing work on many different offensive and defensive movements, learning distancing and experiencing the timing and precursors to many different attacks and combinations of attacks and defenses and of course ample opportunity to work on our patience and impatience.

“And how does training show strengths and weaknesses of the psyches?”

By training honestly we can observe the changing balances of our body’s health, our spiritual health and our mental health conditions and how they are entwined both independent and interdependent. When anyone of the three is weakened or broken it affects the others and it shows in our training/living. If we are able to see/feel this we can address the weaknesses to again gain the balance that is needed for a good healthy life. If we can see these weaknesses and strengths in ourselves then with a little work we can start to see and recognize them in others and we can utilize that knowledge for both combative and healing work. Drills can be worked specifically to address these issues.

Brian King

 

[Brian King]

Tshadowchaser wrote:

I had a student that would do almost any drill with a rubber trainer but if a steel blade (dull to the extreme) was placed in the drill the student would freeze and then break down crying and run from the floor. How do you overcome such a situation

How do you overcome such a situation? You do the best that you can for your student, which I am sure judging by your posts that you did. I can not tell you or anyone else how to deal with a particular situation that can have so many different details that are best observed first hand or at least explored through back and forth conversation. That is lacking here so I will provide my initial thoughts on the situation you described with the caveat that I do not know all or even most of the details so will be making some gross generalizations. Every student is different and every situation is also different, that is not a curse but a blessing.

First start with the knowledge that patience and understanding is needed. Second realizing that you will not overcome the situation, you might be able to guide and help you student to overcome the situation but your student will be doing the lion’s share of the work and will deserve all of the credit for whatever success that they are able to achieve. They do the work both externally and internally, we as instructors merely provide them the opportunity to do the work safely. It is easy to see that your student is already a hero. We all have meet hundreds or maybe thousands of people that wish to learn martial arts, they sit in front of the television watching some star spin kick his way into the girls heart and wish the ability, the fitness, the grace that the star shows yet they never do more than wish for it. Your student showed up for training, walked thru the front door and confronted their fears to the best of their ability, so many never even attempt this. You wrote had a student so I am making the assumption that the student has since moved on so we will likely never know the students issues, but we can guess at several possibilities.

1. If the student was having issues with blade fixation crowding their mind interfering and interrupting their OODA cycle causing them to freeze inducing panic and frustration resulting with a breakdown in overwhelming emotions, anger, fear, shame and embarrassment. One way to address this particular situation is to have everyone slow way down and do the drill in molasses, slower than tai chi slow.

2. If the student was having issues with fear you will need to determine what the fear is of and what is causing it. You will need trust and patience with this. There are so many fears that people have to face and many do not have the courage initially. As an instructor you can help your student or hurt them. That is why you will need patience and not rush your student and support them with each little victory. The student will need trust, in both you and your instruction and confidentiality and in them. We have had extreme cases with students who have in the past been attacked and stabbed and slashed, we have had students who have had family members and friends attacked and murdered and we have had students who were abused by people in authority using a blade for intimidation and arousal. These people may be extremely sensitive while working with a blade and will have to monitor their own reactions even while you carefully observe them paying attention to excessive sweating even while working slow, look for distressed breathing excessive suspended breathing, pay attention to their color and take opportunities when near the student to feel their heart rate (just by touching their back their chest or their arms with a open palm you should be able to feel their heart beating) They need to monitor what they are feeling on a deeper level. Look at my prior post in this thread for some drills working with fear and feel free in using them. Also have the student carry the training knife on their person, skin contact is important. They can learn a couple of things by doing this. One is that the blade may hurt now and then but it wont kill them, the body must get comfortable to having a blade close to keep from feeling the need to react at a distance, the student will start to learn to use body tension (in specific limited areas not the whole body) to hold the blade next to their body even while moving about and doing their specific workouts, katas, drills whatever. This skill will come in handy in so many different levels and ways, strike absorption, weapons retention, tension management. Do some work from contact (think worse case scenarios) starting to push the student (slowly) with the blade and having the student simply move from the contact, important in these cases that they do not yet fight, no take downs no blocking no nothing except moving from the contact. Make sure that they remember to lead the movement with breath.

3. You wrote that the student would do almost any drill with a rubber knife and that is a strong observation. Knowing what drills the student was comfortable doing and even more importantly which drills they were uncomfortable doing can give you a plan for future lessons. Take the drills that they were uncomfortable doing and see what the difference was between them and the drills that they were comfortable doing. Take the drills that they were uncomfortable doing and break them down. Be willing to back up a couple of steps and simplify the drills. Take your time and allow the students to take their time and work the drills from step half instead of step one then go to step three quarters then finally step one before step one and a quarter. The ability to see when students are getting lost and confused and being able to step the drills back to allow the students to catch up strengthens the students and is an invaluable training tool and attribute for an
instructor to possess and to continually develop.

4. If the combat of the drills is the problem pull back from emphasizing the combat of the combative drills and emphasize the breathing, sensitivity and awareness attributes that can be trained while doing the very same drills.

5. Have fun. Make the drills fun and challenging. If they are not laughing they are not learning type of drills.

Well that is a few basic ideas and thoughts to start with anyway

Brian King