The Piper System Blog

Ok, so all you need is a knife and, uh, another guy with a knife. Yeah, so now all that’s left is a damn good reason to stick the sharp pointy end in the other guy. Well, there you go. A Knife Fight. The End.

Or is it??

What is this fascination amongst us as martial artist, with a weapon that is synonymous with murder, violent rape, assault, armed robbery and 70% of all serial killings? Am I missing something? No disrespect to all knife handlers, but let’s put a few things in perspective. All the weapons in the martial arts we currently study have been used on some battlefield in some war centuries ago. We also study the weaponry used during invasions of past cultures, and of course, the inevitable resistance or rebellion that follows. For example, the samurai and the ninja, the Spanish and the Philippinos, the Chinese and the Mongolians, and let’s not forget the African continental wars to name but a few. I only mentioned a few (more popular) cultures everyone’s familiar with, to help my point.

You see, all these cultures have at some point in their various historical time lines experienced major conflicts which caused massive socio-economic change due to these small battles and larger scale wars. Of course,these are documented, which we inevitably study for various reasons. However, upon closer inspection we find that the knife wasn’t and could not be the deciding factor in any of these battles, no matter how large or small. So our attention is drawn to CRIME - the only thing that affects a modern day society in a major way. As civilians not experiencing large scale foreign invasions, a street scuffle, car jacking, drunken brawl and typical mugging is the order of the day (besides, in modern-day warfare, guns are used, not knives or sticks).

Now crime is not a competition. It doesn’t give you time to prepare or warm up. It doesn’t guarantee 1-on-1 match-ups. It’s not a fair match. Its, uh, not a match at all. Commercial sponsors don’t usually advertise their products during a mugging. So why the need to call it knife fighting,when no sane person will ever want to engage in a lethal blade vs blade exchange? If you are ever faced with a knife in a threatening manner it simply means you are a victim of crime. When this happens the criminal assumes you are unarmed, and if you were armed, he’d rather get the jump on you before you retrieve whatever it is you’re carrying. Now the question is, would he have done the same if you were already brandishing a like weapon before his initial attack?

I think not. To quote Marc McYoung, “a criminal is a middle-line predator. He’s the hunter and the hunted’. This simply means that if a criminal sees that you’re no push-over, he would try to extract himself from this situation and find a weaker, more compliant target, otherwise he risks serious injury or death to himself. Note that I used the word ‘criminal’ and not the usual ‘opponent’, because only a criminal would pull a knife on somebody, an opponent is usually found in a dojo or martial arts studio holding a training knife, which also means that an opponent lacks the one necessary component vital to the attack - INTENT !!!

Without proper intent there can be no attack, no urgency to defend oneself, no motivation to stay alive. So why then do we train knife attacks in the same way as ordinary sparring, when knife encounters are assaults dependent on surprise and your lack of preparation? If you were to spar with your classmate, would you start to attack him while he is busy putting on his gloves or when he’s at the urinal? Thats how a knife attack works. It’s unfair, scary and usually occurs when you least expect it. In a dojo however, you are already psychologically aware and prepared for any attack, and the chances of you succeeding in your defense will be greater just because you know your opponent will not possess the intent found in a typical street encounter. We tend to overlook that factor most of the time when we train.

While we are looking at a more in-depth discussion of the issue of what we prefer to call knife assaults, this beginning article should get your mind questioning and reevaluating the concepts that you may have learned about how knives are used and are trained in the modern dojo. The Piper System is a study of how skilled, experienced and murderous criminals in our culture use knives and other improvised weapons, and the lessons we have learned from our and others’ experiences, as well as from criminals directly have iven us an entirely different perspective from what we have found to be the common (flawed and incomplete) paradigm in dojos and training halls today.

Knives are generally the tools of the criminal. They are short-range weapons, they depend on concealment and surprise, and criminals seek to avoid knife duelling at all costs. Think about these points and we’ll come back to the subject again soon.

Your comments and input are welcomed, as always.

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