Why we teach Knife Fighting at the Ninpokan (Phx)

We teach knife fighting techniques to improve your combat self-defense skills!

Knife fighting isn’t about fighting, it’s about surviving and defending yourself against attack. If you want to learn to defend yourself with a knife, you need intelligence, balance, and precision. You can learn to carry knives safely and legally, as well as how to defend yourself properly against potential attacks.

Any confrontation against a blade is dangerous, even if you know what you are doing. The difficulty increases when you oppose someone who knows how to fight. The best defense is flight, not fight.

As far as technique being functional, if you’re thinking about technique, you are going to get cut and most likely lose. But a little education in defense using the forearms to protect the neck and abdomen is at least a start. If given enough techniques you do have something to fall back on. These techniques would be used only when you can’t get away and you know you are going to die. At that point you have nothing to lose.

There is still danger to someone who is good at defense against someone who is inept at the use of a knife. One small cut, one lucky thrust and you are dead. But, if you have no choice, something is better than nothing.

At the Phx Ninpokan we teach Combat Survival Techniques:

By Kent Kenryu Hayek

I´ve trained traditional martial arts, sportive martial arts, combat sports and self defense systems and they are all different.

Honestly, I believe that only someone with a vast experience in different styles and systems, as well as vast experience in sports competition and real world situations can truly understand the potential, the value and the limitations of any one style. But this cannot be done by a youtube video critique or a prejudice based on what someone famous once said or did, but by actually getting into a school or dojo, and actually puting in the work, the hours and the training into that thing you wish to understand until you see more than techniques and skills and you understand principles and paradigms.

The biggest myths and missconceptions  about martial arts, combat sports and self defense:

  • Street fighting and self defense are two different things. Most people think about this as the same, even martial artists and fighters. They are not. In street fighting you are basically a fool that lets their ego expose them to danger. Street fighting is for people that believe they have something to prove to someone, and there´s only few things more foolish.
  • Most people think Self defense is what you´ll find in most martial arts academies as that segment of practice where a student would simulate an attack to the master only to freeze afterwards while the master shows 4 or 5 moves to “solve” that attack. In other places, you´ll find self defense as a list of “simple tips and tricks” you can learn in one session to get yourself out of that muggers hug and reach your car. Both are equally wrong. Self defense is fighting for your life, or to protect someone you care about, or to get yourself out of the shittest situation you find yourself in, self defense is ugly, dirty and scary, self defense is the worst or the last 30 seconds of your life.
  • What can a middle class white kid from california teach about self defense to a brazilian favela kid? What can a middle age white dude from europe teach to an african girl? How about the other way around? The ones that really could use self protection or self defense skills are often times the ones that won´t get to learn them, and the ones that get to learn them, are often times the ones who need them the least. However, beyond that, experience teaches a lot of things that don´t fit in a dojo, but the dojo cannot teach you what it´s like to be actually in that spot.
  • Self defense is only a part of self protection. Self protection is above all a mental skillset of a NINJA. A ninja avoids fights in order to complete a mission. In the modern world, a ninja wants to survive.  Situational awareness, tactical planning, understanding body language, assertive communication, etc,etc. Punching and kicking, the “self defense” part, is only for when your most important skills have already failed.
  • Most people still believe that most fights end up on the ground. Let me tell you two things almost nobody talks about when they mention that myth: 1) most fights involve untrained people that have no idea how to keep their balance while fighting or grappling, so they are very likely to fall over one another. But that´s not the case with trained people. Fighters, martial artists, grapplers, they all have a developed balance. 2) There´s a reason most fights END on the ground. Because the ground is terribly dangerous, specially concrete. You hit a bad spot in an ungly fall and you´re hurt, injured, crippled or dead. You fall down safely but eat a punch, your head bounces off the ground, good night. Most fights END on the ground because when someone hits the ground, his changes of not being able to keep fighting grow exponentially. Now, i know that´s a myth perpetuated by the Gracies to sell their product, and i know there´s value in brazilian jiujitsu for self protection, but the premise is all wrong. The value of BJJ for self protection is the opposite, being more prepared to avoid going down, being more prepared to avoid hurting yourself with the fall, being more prepared to avoid eating punches, and being more preared to get out of there and stand back up. Engaging with someone in a street fight with the intention to take the fight to the ground, is one of the dumbest things you can do, and even more so if instead of a street fight you have a self defense situation. Apart from that, i believe BJJ offers the best skill set and tools for women´s self protection, because unlike men, women are far more likely to be attacked by someone they know, at close proximity, and with the intention not to punch them but to control them and pin them down, and BJJ offers the right set of skills to get out of that kind of situations.
  • Most people still believe that what you see in martial sports sports is what will work in street fights or self defense. What you see in martial art sports is what works in that martial art sports, within their ruleset, with trained opponents, with the intention to score points or reach a winning condition, none of that applies to self defense and very little would apply to a street fight. Just a couple of simple examples: Boxers and kick boxers often times hurt their hands when they punch without gloves. Grappling athletes are so used to go forward and engage in close proximity that they often overlook other dangers around them. MMA fighters suck at dealing with weapons or multiple opponents. That´s simply because they don´t train for that but they think what they do applies to everything. It´s like thinking that just because you are a swimming athlete you could easly swim in rapids, you´re bound to make big mistakes.
  • Most people still believe that a style or school or system will determine the winner of a fight, or they look for the “most effective style” or “most dangerous martial art” and that sort of thing. Fighters, the knowledge and skills they have and chance, determine the outcome of a fight, not styles. People and the skills they learn and develope are dangerous, not martial arts. Training methods and principles determine the acquisition of skills, not traditions or linages.
  • Lots of people still believe that if you don´t sparr, your skills are worthless. Stress inoculation training, mental training and live energy training put skills to the test and help you hone them. But you need to develope those skills first and you need to keep working on them afterwards. There´s no point in just sparring for the sake of it. Apart from that, sparring is not the only way to train with live energy and sparring is not the same as stress inoculation training. Finally, sparring is not the same as fighting, and fighting is not the same as surviving.
  • Sport Competition does not simulate real life violence. A competitive fight is the closest you can get to a real world fight, but it´s still nothing like it. Competitions and combat sports in general are developed and adjusted with two goals, avoiding serious and permanent damage to the contestants and making the event last enough time. That´s why most competition fights try to be “fair”. About same weight, about same skill level, about same style and goals, a ruleset, a referee, a determined area with no obstacles or objects, etc, etc. If you have a fair fight, and you forbid the most dangerous and incapacitating moves, then you have a lasting show for people to pay to see. If you want to know the most effective moves for self protection and real world violence in combat sports, check the banned moves and why they have been banned. Self defense situations are nothing close to a fair fight. However, there´s a lot of value in combat sports. If you have never even sparred and you try your deadly eye gauging move on a seasoned fighter, you´re almost certainly getting owned. Like i said above, fighters, skills and chance determine the outcome, not secret techniques. However, if two fighters with similar skillset and experience engage with no rules, yeah, a hard kick to the nuts will tip the balance.
  • You can keep fighting after a kick to the balls. Well, anyone can do it if they´re high on bath salts or some other crap, but addrenaline alone is not going to be enough for the average dude. Most people that have been kicked to the nuts, have been so by mistake. The other dude was aiming for their inner thigh, or their stomac, and the kick just deviated or you moved. The closest thing to a serious well aimed kick to the balls is a liver shot. And yeah, some seasoned people might take a deep breath and keep going, just like they would with a liver shot, but you certainly can´t say the same thing about the average joe. Apart from that, even if they take it and keep going, that move just bought you a second against a dangerous dude. A second you can use to knock the man down or to disengage and get away. You can even see this in pro fights all the time, sometimes the action gets stopped, but other times the referee doesn´t see the blow, the hit goes in and the other guy flinches and before anyone knows, they are getting overwhelmed.
  • The best self-defense is to avoid altercations with pyschology and awareness of your surroundings.

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