tonight in the FIGHT class at the National HaganaH Headquarters we covered Angle 3 and Angle 4 Knife Defenses and went into  2 drills with the techniques.  First in the angle 3 knife defense I had to clean up a few of the more beginners in the class with the concept of catching the attacking hand , the hand holding the knife, with a proper “Battery Concept” grip. This is a common mistake beginners do, but I tend to be Very picky with this concept from the beginning of a programing of my students so they build good entries from the very beginning. If the grip is not establish in a “Battery Concept” the attacker will be able to free his hand easily and change his angle of attack…further, if the grip is improper and the attacker doesn’t yank his hand free , the overlap going into the Point Of Reference (POR) will be completely incorrect and the grip on the attackers arm will be of two positives or two negatives rendering that hold completely ineffective!

After cleaning up the grips we moved on to angle 4 knife defense and covered the “By-Pass” into the POR…aggressive entries were emphasized to establish proper smothering on the “By-Pass” so the control would be tight and completely secured at the end of  it overlapping into a completely secured POR.

then we began with the first drill…attacker either attacked Angle 3 or Angle 4 , that forced the defender into “Reading” the in-coming angle of attack, learning to detect the negative outside of the body silhouette motion of the blade to ignite the proper direction footwork. As the footwork was fired, the students then went into total muscle memory of what they did in the class prior to the drill. You could see on some of the students faces the ” Holly Shit, I can actually do this”….then I gave them a reality check and put the entire class room in a circle formation putting one student in the middle and told the students in the circle to attack the defender one by one choosing to attack with either Angle 3 or Angle 4 attack. This is where things got tricky…student in the middle went from one attacker to the next thinking she was doing good on all attacks, while in reality she got  killed in 40% of the attacks. The best part of the class was that the students in the circle were actually realizing when she was getting killed. At the end of the drill I pointed out where she had been killed and how, she said : “on that one , afterward , I actually knew I messed up but it was too late” . Under stress all mistakes get amplified and all correct techniques get more effective! An improper POR because of a failed “Battery Concept” entry ends up being a fatal mistake. Lesson learned by all that attended the class…it was a Great Class!

this is a simple , but yet very effective format to teach these 2 knife defenses, that any FIGHT Instructor out there can easily implement on his/her mat. Have a Blast with it

***I have no doubt the next time that student does the drill she will perform better and pick up her survival rate to a higher percentage…