Original subtitles

Close-court battle.

Edge weapons are a force to be dealt with and to be respected.

This isn't something I'm going to learn overnight.

So you have to take and work at a style and say, well,

what are these tools that I need and what fits me best?

What kind of style fighter am I need?

One of the things that is important to me is, and this has come about after training

a lot of different groups and SWAT teams working with SEAL team, obviously,

individual law enforcement officers is that there's a general...

there can be a general lack of awareness when it comes to edged weapons.

People don't realize how quickly they can be deployed, how

damaging they can be, and that they're extremely hazardous.

If you task me or any SEAL, the mission of developing

knife fighting technique that SEAL team can use.

Well, you take and you go out there and you look at what SEAL team does,

we get the best parachutes out there.

We train our people to be some of the best in the world.

That's our mission.

That's our goal and our objective.

If I'm going to train these guys to be the best in the world at jumping and diving

and doing with their job, if you tell me go out there and get a knife fighting

technique, well, then I'm going to go out there and find out some of the best

techniques that are available in the world.

Now, that's going to take some time, it's going to

take some research, but that's what I'm going to do.

In keeping with our basic principles and strategy, using an edge weapon is a little

different for us than using our empty hand.

This is an edge weapon art.

That's where all the empty hand techniques came from.

So we're going to be concerned with ourselves to begin with, breath control,

relaxation, skeletal alignment, the gaze, how we use our eyes.

That determines how we access our mind.

We want subconscious mind absolutely.

Conscious mind cannot handle the variables or the rapidity of events that take place.

So it's really important that we pay attention to ourselves.

Most attacks are variations of these three.

A thrust, a stab, a slash.

Most attacks are going to be a variation of that.

So this gives you an idea how we're accessing the principles, and it gives us

some basic technical format where we can train.

So what we do is we go out there and we find out what techniques work.

Now it's really important to say, well, yeah, that's a good technique.

It looks good in the studio.

But let's get it out there and let's get in a practical situation and let's use

these techniques and start polishing them up, find out what techniques work.

The seal individual at that point, he gets himself a basic technique.

These basic techniques that he now can employ.

Now if he wants to advance himself further in these areas,

then he's free to do that and get better as a knife fighter.

Distance is extremely important.

I'm not comfortable here.

He can reach me too easily without any gross body movements.

Back up a little bit.

So I need to pay a great deal of attention to how far away from me he is.

So it doesn't matter what the weapon, there's a distance for every weapon.

The knife happens to be one.

Stick would be another.

His pistol is another yet again.

My timing is crucial.

The IKEA aspect of this art means that we have to, in our calmness and in our

accessing subconscious mind state through proper use of our eyes, start to become an

harmony with the movement of the other person and their breathing.

These are things we need to understand and pick up.

It's difficult at first, but if you practice that way,

you'll start getting a little bit of a feeling for it.

The worst thing is to be totally out of harmony with that other individual.

His movement seems sudden.

They come out of nowhere.

You're surprised.

You're not out of the way when you need to be out of the way.

This is bad when he has an edge weapon or a stick or a gun.

So I need to be relaxed and calm.

I need to understand my distance.

I need to keep a skeletal relationship in mind at all times.

We cannot get out here and concentrate on the weapon to the exclusion of all else.

He could strike.

He could kick.

He could access another weapon.

He could stick a finger in my eye.

He could grab me by the hair and throw me down.

It's bad to get fixated on a weapon.

You have to be aware of it, but you have to be

aware of it working from the center of him out.

The other thing that comes very difficult, those of you who have seen good Filipino

knife fighters most especially, that thing is moving fast.

And if you think with your eye you're going to follow that blade movement,

I think you're going to be shedding blood.

One thing I've learned in the past several years is the

effectiveness of a knife or a blade or edged weapon.

As an aggressor, I will use an edged weapon a lot of times and it's absolutely

amazing to me how effective an edged weapon is.

One of them is I can conceal the thing.

I can just literally be hiding.

I can give you the impression that I'm totally harmless.

They don't see a gun, they just see me sitting there and I don't have anything.

The problem I have is I can employ that.

As soon as you get near me, I know that I can employ that edged weapon on you.

And this does a lot of damage.

And a lot of times what's really scary about an

edged weapon is I can do silent damage to somebody.

I've been in situations where room entries have gone down.

I've just put myself around the corner.

And as that entry goes down, the first people go in the room,

they're going into their sectors to cover their sectors.

And next thing you know, I've got myself my security member

and I'm taking him and using the edged weapon against him.

He's out of the situation.

Well, the problem is nobody heard anything.

I've just silently removed this member from that team.

Silent, very silent and very deadly.

Now I can either access his weapon or continue with that edged weapon and use it

against other members that are coming into the room.

It's a very effective tool.

It scares me how dangerous that edged weapon is in those circumstances.

So it's very important for me to study the effectiveness of an edged weapon.

Well,

that's the image weapon.

There are times when my gun may be down.

One thing that seals do is we have an E&E mission.

Part of our mission profile is if we get compromised in

operation and I have to dump my gear and dump my weapon.

I'm literally running for my life.

We've engaged the bad guys that are all over the

place and we are literally running for our lives.

And that's an E&E plan that we have on every mission that we have.

And I may end up with just a knife.

And I need to know how to employ that knife.

I need to know how to use it in a situation where I may be.

That's the weapon of choice.

I may not want to make a big noise here.

I may have to employ the edged weapon in a way

that is tactically to my advantage at that point.

And so I need to study the style.

I understand who does it best out there and then learn

some basic techniques that are going to help me in my job.

He has a weapon.

He seems prepared to use it.

I don't have a weapon.

If I'm playing a game like this and I'm showing a threatening aspect to him,

maybe a little more cautious and a little more careful when he comes in.

He may not give me a really committed main body cavity attack.

I'm not going to get much of a chance at this.

If he comes in whittling ways at fingers and toes,

this can get to be a real difficult situation for me.

So I need to strategically give him something.

You have to be willing to get here.

So I need to strategically give him something.

The easier he feels it is to get a main body cavity

attack here, the better off he's going to be.

The other thing that I really disagree with is sticking arms and hands out to try

to deal with the knife or feet at the knife.

If he's properly trained, you've just given him exactly what he wants.

He's going to start damaging the corners.

He's going to start cutting you up from outside.

You can't afford to do that.

I need to keep my hands close to my body so that when he does make a committed

attack, I have something I can use to counter it.

I don't want to be a castle.

That means that I'm not going to stand here, even with my hands back,

and try to push that knife away from my body.

Okay, all by itself.

One of the things I'm going to do, and we do a lot of displacement,

is as he approaches and stabs here, I am going to move my body out of the way.

Now I have to be very careful how I do this.

If I just... I move my body wasn't out of the way.

I have to be very careful how I do this.

So we use displacement type turns by moving from the center and realigning our

skeleton in relation to his skeleton, and of course in relation to the attack.

At this point, by releasing my knee ankle hip,

I'm actually displacing out of the way here.

It's got to cut my gee top, no big deal.

I also don't want to move away from the knife.

I want to stay close to the knife.

Once I get close to this knife, it's got to be a piece of me.

I see some videos, kotage, people are out here, this reverse wrist lock,

and they're holding it out away from them.

They're spinning around trying to throw someone doing this.

This is bad.

If he pops me with his other hand real hard, he can get that loose.

Where's that knife?

It's all over the place with power to do something.

Once I get it close, by whatever means, this knife

is part of me now, and his arm is part of me.

And I cannot let this go again.

Once I make that contact, once I'm close, it has to stay close.

So in this particular scenario, not only am I going to remove my body from

the attack, area of attack, but I'm also going to redirect.

Many ways of redirecting.

If he stabs straight here, I can reach down this way.

That's called a cam.

I'm not knocking him away.

I'm reaching down.

Remember the base of the triangle, legs of the triangle.

As he's passing down here, he is already moving at an angle.

His whole body is moving.

The power is generated at an angle.

It doesn't matter how much he wants to make it linear.

It cannot be.

People aren't put together that way.

So as he does this, if I blend with that angle, I can redirect that.

I can redirect that.

This is just one particular way of redirecting.

Once I've redirected it, I'm going to come close.

I'm going to make him a piece of me.

Knock the wind out of him, cause other serious grief here.

Timing, of course, is essential here.

So if I'm going to take this particular strategy, this paradigm at combat,

I need to understand that his timing is the defining timing.

His attack timing is the defining timing.

The first thing I need to do is be in harmony with his movement, his speed,

his position.

I can lead that, but only after I'm in timing with it.

So as he's attacking here, I need to be in timing with that.

A little different situation this time.

He's connected to me.

The knife is secure at this point in time.

He's triangulated.

Knife's at his throat, his arm is locked.

There's no difference between attacking defense.

They're the same thing.

Our defenses are attack and our attack is our defense.

But we tend to, and the basic principles of this art adhere to, having the other

person show their hand first, having them attack first, being a counter puncher.

This doesn't mean that you can be defensive.

You can't take on a defensive.

If you're defensive in an lethal force engagement,

the chances of you surviving at our slim.

So in my defense is also my attack.

The defense of moving my body out of the way slow motion, please.

Redirecting, making him a piece of me.

That's my defense, but it's also my attack.

They become the same thing.

If I don't choose to throw him, if there's another situation here,

I can use a knife against him.

I can remove it from his grasp.

I can place him down.

Cut his throat.

So in this beginning, our introduction to knife defense, and also the use of the

knife itself in defense, we'll basically handle three attacks.

The first one we've just seen, straight thrust of the body cavity or even the throat.

The next one we'll deal with, Eric, please.

Knife is the stab.

OK, overhand stabbing motion.

Probably one of the most common attacks, especially by unskilled people.

A very threatening attack to deal with initially, because as he raises it and

that knife's presented, mentally it's hard to deal with.

It's even more aggressive to you mentally.

Being calm and having the ability to keep your mind

calm under all of this is why you need to train.

Calm mind and aware mind, a sensitive mind.

That's what allows you to deal with these types of attacks.

If you rush in and start banging out of fear and grabbing and budding and he's

going to win this battle, because he has a knife and it can

rend you in a horrific manner in a short period of time.

So understanding that his shoulders are the base of a triangle.

Whatever he reaches towards me is the leg of a triangle.

The point that he wants to make contact with on me is the apex of a triangle.

I'm going to cam or redirect.

He starts his downward stab.

I reach up the leg of the triangle.

This is a cam.

This allows him to push himself away from me.

And we do a lot of allowing the person.

In the presence of physics, he will move himself if

he creates that energy and he's cammed away properly.

In one of our training evolutions, we did a situation where we had a security team.

I think it was either 8 or 10 personnel that was in the security team.

They had taken Ken and I.

We were basically the aggressors on this particular situation.

And both of us were armed with just a knife.

All the security members were armed with some automatic type training weapons.

In the engagement, what happened is Ken basically got the focus.

He got into a confrontation with one of the security members.

In the process while he was doing that, their focus was now fixed on Ken,

which allowed me to start using my edge weapon on my particular individual.

Now what happened as the event went down, Ken

was involved with one of the security members.

He was pulling him in, started using as a shield, but he was also knifing him.

At the same time, when their focus switched to him, one

of the cover men actually literally came in front of me.

Well, the problem was all their focus was still on Ken.

Mine was very quietly doing, basically

eliminating the security member that was with me.

At that point, I still had this human shield.

When I realized nobody was paying attention to me, I was able to take his weapon.

And at that point, I was employing the weapon.

Once I started employing the weapon, all of a

sudden, the security members started hearing noise.

They started looking at me, and I started moving into the room, trying to find

cover, because now there's members trying to shoot me, which opened the door for Ken.

Ken slid down the room away from me.

Everybody's focused on me.

Next I know Ken sliding down the other side of the room, using his edge weapon,

removing two or three of their members, which enabled him also to get a gun.

At that point, the remaining members that were left alive.

We just got him across fire.

It was all over.

And it happened probably in about a 15 second period.

So within a 15 second time frame, ten armed men, attacking two men with edge

weapons, were eliminated in about a 15 second period.

Simply because they made simple mistakes.

Target fixation, mindset.

Our mindset was, we were just attacking.

And also we just used principles of attack and paying attention to my partner.

He was aware of me at all times.

I was aware of him at all times.

And that's that link that you have that you have with your partner.

We're going to use a knife, blade out, run along the

forearm, held primarily with the bottom two fingers.

With the index finger on top.

Let's always know where the cut is.

It's very effective.

If I need to stab, I need to have some way of keeping this from sliding out.

Same situation.

Calm breathing, gaze.

That point he has two cuts on the arm.

One cut across the neck.

And I still have control of his body.

I may want to come back over here, regain more

control of his center with another lethal cut.

Obviously this is, for you guys, naval special warfare primarily.

It happens very quickly in slow motion.

As he comes in, cut, cut, cut.

It takes it all.

Take the knife, thumb an index finger, turn it.

All the time controlling him.

The shock to his system and his arm, my goal here is, once

he attacks with that arm, he never gets that arm back.

At least not in serviceable condition.

So as he's coming in, the redirection also takes his balance.

See his balance come forward.

Cut, cut, cut.

And also retain his knife.

From a slash to the side.

Slow motion.

As he begins to slash, I meet it the same way I did before.

Instead of two hands, he now has a knife, cutting just above the elbow is my

preference because of the damage that it does and makes the arm more inoperable.

And then have a choice of coming back across the top, taking the arm down,

controlling him here.

Stab, cut.

Again, moderate speed.

Okay, combative situation.

This is a good scenario.

He cuts.

I move away, cut under the arm.

Back across the throat.

Stab just behind the clavicle.

Lots of goodies down there before you get to the lungs.

Can I step?

Displace.

Remove the weapon.

Even if he's in the process of dying, I need to be careful of this.

That knife could still be flailing around.

And as he's falling, it's even more important to be

careful because the thermal artery is a large one.

Okay, death throes can be violent.

If it moves strong enough, he could cut me deeply,

even if he's virtually dead in the process.

From the overhand stab attack, I do exactly the same thing.

I'm covering a little more, but let's do it in slow motion, right up the triangle.

The process of him driving through is he cuts

himself seriously on my knife in the process.

Okay, we'll do this a little quicker with a little more.

Okay, you have two cuts there.

One on the back side of his arm, one on the near side of his throat.

At this point, my arms up keeps the arteries from spraying in my face.

If I want to take a less lethal approach to this situation...

Okay, again, I have control.

I can arm bar.

I can dislocate his elbow.

I can remove the knife.

Okay, I can choke him.

The benefits, or the reason why I need a special warfare operator would want to

study the principles of knife fighting... is that the number one we carry a knife.

There are certain situations where, although rare, a knife would need to be employed.

A primary weapon goes down.

I would have some kind of long gun.

I'm in a close-quarter battle situation.

That weapon goes down.

And I need immediate access to an expedient weapon.

And a knife is certainly a lethal weapon.

And I can employ that.

The other side of it is, if I know the principles of knife fighting...

and I'm dealing with someone that is attacking me with a knife...

I need to understand what his strategies are, what he's attempting to do...

and basically what the threat level is at that point.

In order to defend against a knife fighter, you first have to become a knife fighter.

A lot of knife defense teach, as I'll show

you, from a really straightforward attack...

to directly how to defend against it, such as...

with your knife come with an overhead thrust, some styles...

teach something like this, some variation on it.

If that's how someone's gonna attack you...

you're in great shape, get that technique down.

Someone comes with a slash from the outside...

do something like that.

If you don't miss, you're still in great shape.

If someone doesn't attack you like that, which is

a pretty poor way to do it, you're in bad shape.

If I come with an overhead block, just do something.

If I come in a straight slash... again, Barry's already had some training...

again, bird's traditional attacks have fairly easy way to defend against it.

If you can do that, there's no challenge to that.

The idea is you want to be able to counter it to some degree...

and someone comes in with this sort of attack.

You want to be able to deal with that.

Someone starts coming in with something of this sort.

The second principle we're gonna deal with is remove the fang of the snake.

Very simply what that means, he has a weapon of some sort.

The actual weapon does not make a vast amount of difference.

Once you identify the weapon, you identify the characteristics.

You deal with the specific characteristics of that weapon.

Your techniques really aren't going to vary much.

So I know if he has an edged weapon, he's got a knife roughly six inches on the

blade... that defines the characteristics, one characteristic that defines his range.

I'm in good shape out here, and probably in real good shape in here.

If I stand right in this distance, I'm in trouble.

So one characteristic is a distance.

I know it's an edged weapon.

I don't know if it's single edge or double edge.

It really has to make a lot of difference.

As compared to if that was a gun which we'll deal with

a little bit later, slightly different characteristics.

Or even if it's an empty hand.

I know the range.

I know some of the characteristics of an empty hand.

It's not going to be a projectile weapon.

Whatever the weapon is, I want to remove that weapon from his arsenal.

Very first thing, as close to the first thing as possible.

So again, that's the fang of the snake.

You take that fang away.

I'll demonstrate that, then we'll try this.

He attacks with the knife.

My first move is to take that knife away.

I do that.

My motion is a cutting motion.

I'm going for the inside of the arm, which is a primary target.

It's soft.

There's very little coverings, tendons, or ligaments to cover up.

The vital parts of the arm.

I'm going to cut the arm.

Take that arm out of the fight as much as possible.

I don't need to take it out for a long time.

I've got him trapped.

I may have cut the flexor muscles on the inside of the arm and may have cut a

radial artery, which will cause him to bleed to unconsciousness in 30 seconds.

If the flexor muscles and nerves are cut, he's

not going to be able to bend that wrist at all.

At this point, I'm only going to need a second,

but I've got his targets in the back wide open.

The targets here opened.

Angles of attack are very critical.

Most people think on two planes, straight vertical plane,

and a thrust is either going to be coming straight down.

In some cases, well, not that often it might be

coming straight up or very often straight ahead.

It's probably the easiest plane for him to deal with, as Barry was just doing.

All he has to do is deflect slightly.

The other plane, a horizontal plane, usually about chest high.

If I'm coming straight across from either side, there's not a lot of rise.

It's fairly easy for him to deal with.

As a knife fighter, what you want to learn to attack

with and to defend against is multiple angles.

So what we'll work with is a basic star pattern where, if you just stand still,

as a target, I want to use a horizontal plane.

I've got one cut straight across, the vertical plane straight down,

straight back up.

I've got two sides of the X flashing across.

I can come back up the straight line.

I've got the other side left side of the X and a straight thrust.

So using just those lines, using your partner as a

training target, just practice to develop your stripes.

Now you can vary all of those angles with fine or detail.

If he has a vest on, obviously, coming across his vest is not going to do any good.

If he's, however, is attacking with that arm in some

respect, I just bring that angle out or down slightly.

It's still the exact same angle.

I take the arm out.

Or if my level of force is such that I need to finish

this fight and a deadly level of force is justified.

I just change my angle slightly and come into the throat.

Same thing.

If I'm going lower, coming from the center

part of the body may not make a lot of sense.

I just change my height, the same lines, the femoral artery on the inside of the

leg, cause a pump person to pump out blood loss and possibly loose consciousness.

When you're from 15 to 30 seconds, you have to cut deeply enough.

Additional has a psychological factor of they're

trying to move around on a floor covered with blood.

We have two basic types of targets.

One is a structural or functional target.

I'm going to define this for you in a little bit.

The other are systemic or sometimes called vascular targets.

The systemic or vascular are essentially your

blood system or major organ systems of the body.

Very often, attacking these targets is going to be lethal.

The problem with that is, however, I may thrust into the abdominal area,

cut the intestines while I'm going in.

He's probably going to die of peritonitis as some sort

of general systemic infection when his bowels are cut.

He's probably not going to die for a couple of days.

That's not going to help me in this fight.

I may cut a major vein in some part of the body, and it may take him a minute or two

minutes while he's losing blood and losing consciousness.

During that minute or two, he's a superior fighter.

I do not want this to be a fair fight.

Structural or functional targets, on the other hand, by definition affect

the functioning of the body or the structure of the body immediately.

In some respects are more simplistic and generally require a lower level of force.

You can go on to a higher level of force

afterwards, but initially require a lower level.

Example would be, if he thrusts a knife straight out at me, you talk about before,

you want to remove the fan of the snake, take the knife out.

Now, one of the things I'm doing, one I'm just trying to check the knife.

When I'm also doing, I'll expose the arm a little bit more,

we've got my first stop or attack was the bone to the wrist.

The wrist is composed of small bones, a hard strike

with a knife, or I may strike with a knife to stop him.

Check, smash with a bite of the knife and break or damage the bones of the wrist.

It's very painful, it's distracting, which is also a big benefit for you,

because as he's saying, that hurts an awful lot.

That allows you to take the knife out potentially, if you're going to come in

with something more lethal, you can do that.

What it also does, all the veins, tendons and ligaments, as well as the

nerves at the hand, in order to get to the hand, have to run through the wrist.

When I strike the wrist, if I can damage the wrist, I'm also

potentially damaging all the nerves, tendons and ligaments.

If I can damage at, I can stop the ability to use that hand entirely.

The hand goes limp or it locks out, it locks closed, can't use it any further.

Also have the weapons in the other hand, let's say if I do get a knife thrust,

I might have this arm check.

You can still thrust with the other arm or strike with the other arm.

Okay, we just went through what the lower arm targets are.

I can stop his attack, the bicep.

One, there are a fair number of blood vessels going through the bicep.

They said that's a vascular or systemic target.

That may take a while to bleed.

If I get a deep enough cut or cut off the origin, the anchor point of the muscle,

that arm is useless.

That arm will drop down.

He won't be able to lift it up.

It's lethal now, but it will stop the use of the arm.

If the person kicks at you, some styles of martial arts do, because they don't teach

offensive knife fighting, we'll suggest kicking a knife out.

He goes to kick, he's giving me a target.

There's no reason I should go to the body.

He's giving me the large muscle again.

If I can get a good cut there, when I let him step down, when he puts

weight on that leg, he's going to discover that it's not there.

The legs, because they're the largest muscles in

the body, have the largest blood flow to them.

So when you get a good cut on the leg, you have a very

strong force of blood pumping out of whatever you've cut.

If I cause him to chase me at that point, he's going to fall

over from loss of blood before I have to do anything else.

So it can be functional.

It's also a systemic or vascular attack to the leg.

If you try a kick like that again, depending upon how my knife is held,

I've got the tendons in the back of the knee that cut very easily.

I'll gladly trade a kick for one attack with a knife.

I can thrust in here, can cut the kill each tendon, which will destabilize the leg.

The popliteal nerves on the outside of the

ankle can get cut and they're heavy bleaters.

If he does a front kick or side kick, I can do the same thing.

I'll absorb the kick.

I'm going to get the knife cutting some part of his leg.

He then loses his ability to stand.

He loses his mobility.

I can get away from him if I need to, if that's tactically appropriate,

or it certainly turns a fight into my favor.

You can go to the body, however, if you end up there, if you end up close.

The targets in the body generally tend not to be as functional

or structural as the extremities we just talked about.

If he attacks in some respect...

If I end up inside close, where I want to be checking his knife hand, I can thrust

in, as I mentioned before, if I go into the abdomen

or intestines, he's going to die a day or two later.

That doesn't help me.

So I go to the liver, kidney or spleen, and kidney is particularly from behind.

Whether or not he's going to go into immediate shock is kind of up in the air.

He'll probably die from it from internal bleeding.

It doesn't help me a whole lot.

I can potentially get into the rib cage.

It's very tricky unless you have a very powerful knife, a very powerful thrust.

The ribs run at generally 45 degree angles, so you have

to come into the right angle, the knife can deflect out.

Even if I do get in, if I only get one lung, that lung collapses.

It may start filling up with blood.

He can still act right on a second lung.

It doesn't do me a lot of good unless I take both lungs.

You can potentially get to the heart from underneath, aiming up to the shoulder.

It's probably fairly difficult.

There are some major aorta and vena cava, blood vessels

that run through the body that are not too deep.

And it can be somewhat difficult to get to.

If you're there, it doesn't hurt to use that target.

If you're here, thrusting in, using something else at

that point would make sense, as I mentioned before.

You want to flow with your tabs.

You would never use one attack and stand there and

say, well, as you're going down, he's too close.

He still has a knife in his hand.

But I do end up with a systemic target here.

We talked about the angles.

We talked about going from a thrust to a slash.

I want to get a couple other slash techniques in until I know he's no longer a risk.

The throat is probably the primary target to stop somewhere.

It's both functional and systemic or vascular.

Cut to the throat.

He's got about three seconds before he's going to pump out his expression goes.

He's going to drop from a loss of blood and loss of oxygen to the brain,

as well as when you cut carotid arteries, carotid veins, and carotid nerves.

It actually paralyzes the heart.

And that's probably the highest level of force you're going to get to apply.

Someone's wearing a vest.

In most cases, that area is unprotected depending upon

your tactical objective and what the situation calls for.

NEXA is an ideal target.

There are not many wounding attacks on the neck.

One other target on the neck.

Again, if he attacks, find up inside, thrusting

straight in, going for the thyroid area.

It's very heavily vesseled.

With blood vessels, a cut there will tend to

bleed someone out very quickly and it'll pass out.

Again, several seconds, very often, or start losing

it within several seconds just from blood loss.

So it's functional.

From the point of view, you'll stop them very quickly.

Cutting the windpipe, as you see in the movies a lot, will not

take someone out as quickly as a thyroid area and the carotid.

Going to the skull is difficult.

With a knife, and again, you're talking about very high levels of lethality.

If that's operationally called for.

You would get in the same way.

If I'm inside, I probably wouldn't want to go straight to the head.

He's going to pull it back.

I probably want to hit some other targets, get his attention.

If I was going to go into the head area,

essentially what you have to do is get to the brain.

The brain's the control center of everything.

If you stop the brain, you stop the attack.

The way to get to the brain, the mouth is open inside the mouth and up.

Through the naval cavity, through the eye.

That's pretty much it.

Some people talk about going through the ear.

You can't get through the ear very readily.

They're not pleasant targets, and you're talking about your highest level of force.

Very easy to miss.

You hit a bone.

You bounce off.

Probably not targets you want to go for.

One of the important issues of studying knife fighting really needs to be

understood is that in order to defend or even deal in an environment where edge

weapons could be deployed, I need to understand the strategies of... am I going

to be defensive offensive or offensive defensive or am I going to be passive?

Am I going to be very aggressive?

These kinds of things I need to make decisions on.

I need to understand what's happening with these things.

There's a lot of different techniques, a lot of different applications.

And because I'm in a high-threat environment, I need to understand that.

It's critical that you be able to defend yourself with other weapons against a knife.

You may not always have a knife, your primary or secondary weapon.

You may have to use your primary weapon if it's a long

gun without being able to fire it for some reason.

We talked about distance.

It's critical importance.

The same concept.

He has to get to my body if he's trying to attack.

I, therefore, I now have a longer weapon, whether you have a straight baton,

your rifle is no longer functional, a PR24, anything of that sort.

You want to use the effective distance.

Now, this is not a really good trade-off.

I can reach his body, but he can probably reach my body.

Same concept of target selection, defining the characteristics of my weapon.

This is a longer weapon than a knife, so I have a little more distance.

If he attacks me, I want to stay out of his range.

Same thing.

I don't want to go in here.

They are trade-off.

So, as he would attack me, I'd smash his hand as a start, taking every target.

I might smash on this side as we talked about

the various small bones in the hand and knuckles.

I can smash just on the forearm to shock it.

Then I might close the distance.

And at this point, I can use the butt of the stick.

Same concept we talked about with the knife.

I can be striking here.

I can still be thrusting with the stick.

I can go into any number of takedowns or throws with the sticks.

With this arm, I can take the knife away from him.

Then use an knife on him.

What I want it to be able to do, again, is use effective distance to the stick.

I can also stay outside that distance instead of closing in.

I might just stay out here.

And just continue to be on that arm until that's out of the question.

Or out of the picture.

Probably be out of the picture after the second or third strike.

After I take this out, smash, smash.

At this point, I can sort of go into the head and take out whatever I need to.

The environments that a knife fighting technique or knife fighting might be

employed are obviously a close quarter battle situation.

Primary weapon goes down.

I need to access a secondary weapon.

Another environment would be some kind of

century stocks, century neutralization situation.

I would need a knife.

Unexpected situation.

I might be, as a SEAL team, typically operates in close proximity to the enemy.

They go deep into enemy territory.

And I might need to deploy my knife at a moment's notice in that environment.

Use any sort of improvised weapon.

Some of you may have collapsible Piro24s, collapsible batons.

Even if you just have a short stick, same concept can hold true.

If you strike, I can smash the hand.

Take the hand out of the picture and move in with the butt strike.

Same thing, even if I can't expand this weapon.

As he attacks, I can strike here.

Then bring the baton out.

Smash, smash, smash, lock.

And whatever else I want to do using baton.

Again, I can use non-lethal force.

I'm going through various chokes, throws.

Or if I need to use more force, I can do that.

The mindset that is important for any kind of engagement, whether it be knife

fighting or otherwise, but we'll talk about knife fighting is that, number one,

I need to have a calm awareness of what I'm doing.

I need to understand the principles I'm dealing with.

I need to go to, I need to fully understand them.

Work with them, train on a constant basis.

And I need to practice and work and work out in a realistic environment.

So the mindset is going to, again, it's going

to take a commitment to learn the skill.

It's not a skill that's learned overnight.

You can't just pick up an edge weapon and become proficient with it.

It takes time.

It takes a methodical approach.

And it takes dedication to learn how to do that.

The last type of defense against a knife and the one that you want to avoid at all

costs, if at all possible, because it gives you the least

chance of survival or winning is empty hand against a knife.

If you're in a situation you have absolutely no choice,

then you have to make the best of it that you can.

He's the exact same principles that we've gone over with the

knife against knife, stick against knife, whatever it's been.

We've talked about distancing.

We've talked about timing.

We've talked about angles of attack.

We've talked about the different targets.

We've talked about when you make contact with that hand,

you want to, the knife hand, you want to maintain contact.

Where target becomes very important, not just in what you're striking,

it's critical in terms of the target that you protect.

If you're going to get cut, if you're in a knife, you're going to get cut regardless.

You go empty hand against a knife, you're almost definitely going to get cut.

And you need to prepare for that mentally.

So you don't go into mental shock when you first see blood splirting.

The idea is not to get cut, the idea is to survive.

I'm going to have to give him a target when he comes in.

What you see sometimes, he goes to my midsection.

People have done back like this.

And I may be moving this target, but I'm giving him a little bit higher.

I'm giving him my chest.

I have to give him something less than that.

We talked about the back side of the arms, or the

parts of the body, probably the least vulnerable.

Arms, we talked about it on the inside.

There are a lot of structural and functional targets that you want to

protect, as well as vascular and systemic targets.

Back in hand, if you're going to take a cut, it's where you want to take your cut.

Another advantage that the back of the arms give you, if he's coming to my

midsection, if I have to give him something, by definition, when I bring

this arm in, my arm is also protected in the central part of my body.

So I said that might not be lethal right away,

but it'll probably be lethal in the long run.

So by using the backs of my arms to deflect, rather than grabbing,

I give him the least vulnerable target.

Seal team is an environment of constant change, combative concepts.

Our training cadre is in a state of constant change.

We're willing to look at all different types of systems and evaluate them,

break them down to their components, and look

at them and weigh them up against the mission.

And we get our ideas and principles from all different, competent individuals,

people that have studied in the field in the Filipino

martial arts and in Japanese martial arts, jiu-jitsu systems.

There's many elements that are common, and there's a

common thread through many of them, in terms of principle.

Specific techniques may apply in different situations, so we, essentially,

beg, borrow, and steal and integrate them into a package.

If I try and grab or push his hand away, we talked about, from his point of view,

that's an ideal target.

If he cuts the hand itself, I can't close that hand.

I may use complete loss of that hand.

If I don't lose complete use of it, it becomes bloody.

I can't grip onto anything.

If he cuts the fingers, the tendons, and the fingers, I lose the use of the

hand, so it's not a good thing to try and grab the knife.

I'll try and use, again, the back of my arm, and I'll try and get slept.

I'm trying to sidestep either to the outside and starting to close the distance in.

Again, this is his best-owned knife.

I'm going to get to the outside.

I need to close in the distance.

At this point, if I'm in a position, I feel comfortable locking.

I can do any sort of locks.

I can bring the knife back to him.

I can use his own knife on him, if need be.

At the very least, if I get inside here, I don't want to lose contact with a knife.

I don't necessarily have to get a lock on it.

Even if I'm just here, if I strike somehow to distract him, I may drop on his leg,

strike back to the head, take him into some sort of throw.

Then take the knife back.

I don't want to lose contact.

What happens if you do lose contact, I come in with his first attack.

Here, I let him pull the knife away.

If I don't get cut, he's going to get me the second time.

So from that initial contact, I don't want to lose it.

He goes to pull back here.

I stick with him.

I jam him up.

At this point, again, I can do striking.

You're dropping down on his leg, somehow distracting him with elbows,

other sorts of strikes.

Then I can cut the way I want, lock him up if need be, restrain him,

whatever is necessary.

Throughout my experience in training and trying to set up scenarios that are

realistic, we often employ the aggressor with edged weapons, training weapons.

And it's amazing what you see in there.

It's amazing the lack of awareness of the threat in general.

We see guys come in with four, five, six guys all with weapons raised ready to go.

And after analyzing the scenario, it was clear that two or three,

sometimes all of them, suffered lethal or serious injuries due to an edge weapon.

One individual or two individuals in there with

edge weapons that had a commitment to use them.

One last piece about defending empty hand.

When you deflect, and I can't go the other way through strikes.

Even if I end up reaching a cross, I'm still using the back of my hand.

I may not be able to always go after that knife arm.

I wanted to distract him.

So maintaining contact, I may come in and strike.

He still has a knife.

This is just going to be for a split second, whatever my strikes are.

At this point, when he's dazed and damaged, at that point,

I might take a knife out and I'm still tracking his leg.

I may want to use a knife at that point.

You can really want to be striking and attacking.

Knives are basically used for three things in combat with other human beings.

Stabbing, slashing, chopping.

Some knives are designed to primarily chop.

Some knives are designed to primarily stab.

Most knives have at least a stabbing, slashing capability of some sort.

And the design of the blade determines the qualities that that knife will have,

and to what degree they'll have it.

All knives are compromised of some sort or another.

No knife can cover every base at 100%.

This is an antique Japanese design about nine inches long.

Japanese differentially tempered their blades.

So the edge is very hard, and you can probably see here a firing line that

differentiates the very hard martensite edge from the perlite body of the blade.

Truesite and sorbite crystals make this cloudy formation right here.

This particular blade has a relief on the spine of the blade, on the mune,

and that allows a couple of things.

It allows the blade to penetrate easier.

There's not so much metal to move through.

It also allows for the blade to slash a little better, because

again, there's less metal here to be drug through the flesh.

And you'll find that many knives have ancient knives, especially people that

lived and died by their use on a daily basis.

You'll find many of these features.

I prefer a single edge knife.

I always know where the edge is.

If I apply along the forearm, which is most frequent for our style, I can apply

pressure through the bone of the forearm, put my hips

behind it, and know that I'm not going to be cut in return.

This knife by Cold Steel is typical of many modern combat knives.

It's a clip point knife.

Clip point allows it to penetrate easier.

Generally speaking, the point will be pretty much down the middle of the handle.

This is a flat ground knife from all the way from the back or spine of the knife.

Japanese will call it a mune.

It's flat ground all the way to the edge, so there's not much resistance here.

It gives it a good ability to slash for its size.

It's not very much steel in the way to cause resistance.

And slashing is very important.

Generally slashes are used more than stabs.

And they can be more debilitating than stabs used properly.

When we're doing a room entry and there's a need to access the weapon and control or

throw somebody, this is where we're holding it most of the time.

If we want to turn and stab with it, it's easy to do.

This is a larger knife, not generally used by military personnel, but certainly a

time-honored design going all the way back to the Vikings

and becoming in many forms famous from the use of Jim Bowie.

It has a clip point again, has a flat grind, very substantial spine,

really a very strong cutting serviceable blade.

Some of them have serrations along the back to help them to cut through

everything from the aluminum used in helicopters to thin sheet metal.

This also has a clip point, has a very substantial handle.

One of the advantages of a knife like this is the

fact that pommel strikes are very effective with this.

Some people like the firmness of the grip here, other people

would like to be able to move the knife around a little easier.

This one is a little awkward that way, but yet the grip is very secure,

hard to lose it.

It's become very common in naval special warfare and other military special forces

to carry some of the modern combat folders, clip knives.

Many makers, this is a bench made.

It is a very sturdy knife.

It has what's become called a Japanese chisel point.

This is a very strong cutting point.

It's a good slashing, good cutting point.

It's a very strong serviceable folder, may be used as a defense last resort.

Defense weapon has many other uses, especially when cutting away gear,

your meal, whatever you might need for a small knife that's not

as unwieldy as some of the larger knives that you might carry.

This particular folder by Benchmade has a grind that will penetrate quite easily,

so its ability to penetrate or stab is pretty good.

Blade's relatively thin, and it's a flat grind.

Slashing ability is not bad.

Again, you understand with a small blade like this,

slashing ability is not going to compare to a larger blade.

But still, you have some fairly significant slashing ability here and good

penetrating ability in this particular blade.

It's light, it's easy to carry.

One hand use is relatively easy.

I think it's interesting to note on most of the modern combat knives, unlike your

dad's K-Bar from World War II, the absence of

what is misnamed a blood gutter or blood groove.

You'll find that there's no benefit to a blood

groove for suction created by a stab in a wound.

Another interesting thing to me about some of

these old wives tail which span many continents.

If you insert this thing deeply and the muscle spasms

around it, you have an extremely sharp edge on one side.

It would be relatively easy to press down and

withdraw that knife by cutting its way out.

But certainly, there's not enough grip by muscle on a

flat edge like this to hold it in to any great degree.

You may have to apply a little more pressure depending upon.

But a blood groove is not going to allow the blood

to flow out and that type of suction created.

It's a muscle spasm that causes that and having grooves in

the blade doesn't benefit you at all from that standpoint.

This is another Japanese design.

It's an unmounted blade.

Fairly long, tanto design.

This one is a very good compromise between the three uses of the knife.

As you can see, the point will penetrate quite well.

Not quite as well as one blade designed specifically for penetration, but quite well.

It also slashed very well.

See the curve of the blade?

See how it moves?

Okay, this blade is going to slash very well.

It will chop reasonably well also.

Not quite as well as the Bowie design, but it will still chop relatively well.

So this was a good compromise.

Okay, again between the three main uses of an edged weapon.

Since the commissioning of the United States Navy Seals by President Kennedy for

the purpose of operations in the Vietnam conflict, Navy Seals have enjoyed the

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In this modern, high-tech world of electronic weapons, computers,

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of potentially following the trap of believing all is secure.

The foundational operating system, the man

himself, must be carefully examined and evaluated.

The mind, the body and spirit are inseparable components that must be

trained to act in unison when faced with life-threatening situations.

In order to maintain peak operational readiness, the Navy Seals are continually

pursuing the most effective strategies, techniques, and training methods available.

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The mindset for this course and this type of training is that you want to provide a

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Now the problem is, you come into my house, threaten my daughter, or my son,

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