Haganah instructor Dave had me doing a cool drill on Saturday morning. With time to kill between combat fitness class and FIGHT class, Dave asked, "Want to do some knife sparring?" Don't ever pass up the chance to train one-on-one with someone who knows their shit.
We got two rubber knives and started sparring in the boxing ring. Time after time Dave was connecting to my shoulder with a slow straight stab (while sparring, we use the shoulder as a target in place of the neck for safety purposes). OK, so he got a lethal stab in. I won't let that happen again, I thought to myself. And then, in another minute he got me with the same move. In hindsight I understand what he was doing. Dave was able to read my attack and change the rhythm of his own attack to score the lethal stab. Every time he got me with the straight stab it was after I had done an angle 1 attack (slashing from my right shoulder to my left hip. When my knife was at the bottom of the slash, in came Dave's blade. It was not a fast attack, just a well thought out and properly executed stab that was able to penetrate because he read my rhythm.
After Dave "killed" me several times, he changed up the scenario to incorporate open hand knife defense. We would start knife sparring, but on Dave's command I had to drop my knife and deal with his knife attack while unarmed. This added a nice element of realism to the training. It would not be unusual to drop a knife during a knife fight and have to continue to deal with the attack.
With any training, the more realistic you can make it the harder it becomes to perform. I know the various open hand knife defenses. I can recite each step. I can visualize every move. I can perform every move .... that is, until the situation approaches real. Once the situation becomes stressful and pseudo-real, my intellectual understanding of the techniques does me no good. My reactions must be based on muscle memory and impulse, there's really no time for thinking. This is a critical lesson I'm really starting to appreciate.
Like a real knife attack would be, once I dropped my knife and had to switch from attack to open hand defense, I had no clue as to what angle Dave would be attacking from and I had to execute my defense in real time. This meant that my grip used to seize his arm was sometimes wrong - not using positive and negative grip, and on an angle two attack, once I seized the arm I did not transition it properly so I ended up in the incorrect point of reference (I was behind him instead of being squared up in front of him). There were also moments when I realized I did something wrong and I hesitated. While it's good to realize a mistake, it's bad to hesitate. No matter what position you find yourself in, you just have to work with what you have.
It was only 30 minutes that I got to spend training with Dave, but those 30 minutes taught me more than weeks of regular training could.
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