How do you know if what you’re training really works with a blade? The purpose of this article is to reveal the primary attributes that make a martial art or combatives program a “blade system.” This will allow the reader to objectively evaluate the training options available to them and make educated decisions about what will best meet their objectives.
Firearms and blades are the same in the sense that they are both used to deliver a lethal wound that will stop an aggressive opponent who is intent on doing you or your family harm. There should be no difference in your mindset regarding the severity of a situation. If you deploy a firearm or a blade, your intent is to eliminate a threat that you feel requires deadly force. You don’t draw a blade in a fight for any other reason.
The training behind blade use in combat has to be striving for a kill shot with every move. If this is not the case, then you’re wasting energy and time in a violent confrontation where your life or the life of a loved one is on the line.
The first thing we need to do is define what we mean when we say a blade system. A blade system is offensive in training and in mind set. Every technique in the system strives for lethal entry on his opponent. Blade technology has to come first.
What a blade martial art system is not:
You train only how to ‘defend’ against a knife but never how to use it.
If you spend the majority of your training time defending against a blade, you are already on the losing side for several reasons.
Defending by definition denotes that you were attacked and thus are behind the curve. You are now trying to play catch up to someone trying to kill you. Since action is always faster than reaction, repeatedly reacting to some else’s attacks makes it only a matter of time until you fall so far behind the curve that you cannot react in time to save yourself.
If you only pick up a training blade to help your training partner learn to defend from blade attacks, then you do not have a developed curriculum for edged weapon use. In order to understand the options a person armed with a knife has, you must become proficient with the attacking side of a blade encounter. If you have never seen non-linear angles, hand switches, lines of cutting, half-beat attacks, etc. then how can you defend against them?
You use a blade to immobilize or subdue
There are systems out there teaching tendon cutting and and non-lethal controlling techniques such as administering wrist locks(?!?) with a blade. This gets back to the original premise above, why are you carrying a blade if you do not plan to use it for lethal confrontations?
Using the blade and gun analogy again, there are people out there that say you can shoot to wound with a gun. While that is true, are you really willing to put your life and the life of a love one on the line because you only want to shoot to wound and hope that does the trick? Of course not. The probability of success for these non-lethal moves are low in real world scenarios. If you are in a situation where you have drawn either a blade or a firearm you want the threat neutralized before you or anyone you care about is harmed. So why would you try a low probability action such as cutting tendon/muscle or putting a wrist lock while holding a perfectly good blade on someone in order to save yourself?
Your blade training is the same as your stick training
In many systems of martial arts they have angles of attack which they use for both stick and knife. There are several problems with using stick attack lines with an edged weapon.
The first problem is targeting. Blade targets are very different than the targets sought using a stick. If you are using a stick you are aiming for bony landmarks to strike to deliver the most damage such as hands, elbows, jaw, etc.
With a blade you are aiming for vital targets that will cause exsanguination such as carotid arteries, femoral arteries, abdominal aorta and so forth.
Power generation is another consideration. With a stick you need different body mechanics to generate the power required to hurt your opponent. With a blade, power is not part of the formula. What you need is speed and accuracy.
Sticks do not translate to blade.
Slashy Slash-Slash Slash?
Having seen a decent amount of training in my time in the martial arts, I see people doing a lot of slashing in their blade systems. The problem with slashes is that, with the exception of a few key targets of the human body, they are not fight stoppers.
As you can see from the pictures above, these are all slashes from an edged weapon. While the wounds may look bad, they are relatively superficial in nature and not life threatening nor would they have necessarily stopped an attacker. If you have ever been cut in a fight, you know there is a good chance the receivers of these slashes did not even know they were cut until after the fight was over.
Slashing should not be your entire system. Only with knowledge and understanding of human anatomy can you know where a slash will work vs. a thrust. Targets that are more superficial on the human body such as the carotid artery would be appropriate to slash for lethal entry.
Every time you move you should be trying to gain that lethal entry that will start the timer on your opponent bleeding out and ending the fight. Every entry should have a thought and tactic behind it not just a pre-ordered movement pattern.
If in a fight where lethal force is required there should be no attempts at arm bars or take downs. Leg reaps would also not be recommended as your initial move or entry. If you are trying to enter with these then you are inappropriately mixing disciplines. A person trained in a blade system will always lead with the blade. The power is in the blade. Use it.
This brings us to the question: What percentage of your system is bladed? 10%? 50%? There is a simple test that I encourage everyone to try and do. Put a training blade in each hand and practice your forms/katas/isolations. Try out your techniques in training this way. If you have to make changes so you are not self-cutting then you do not train in a blade system.
A blade systems technique can always change to empty hand and back to blade without modifications while an empty hand system cannot change to bladed without modification. The practitioner will end up cutting themselves because the techniques were not designed to avoid it.
This is not to say that other martial arts have no value; it is to say they aren’t blade systems. They may have blade components in their systems that have varying degrees of effectiveness, but as we’ve discussed, this does not make them blade systems. You should be able to trust in your training. Value what it has taught you but be able to be honest about what real world applications you’ve taken from it. If your system has only taught you defense, has taught you techniques that that are based on other tools, has taught you techniques that end in self-cutting or techniques you can only pull off with a “scarecrow” partner, your system needs to be modified if proper blade training is important to you. Any other training has been a hobby with little or no real world application in a life or death situation.