Knife fighting skills for unarmed combat.

As we all know that knife fighting is different from unarmed combat but can we use the skills that we learn from knife fighting to enhance our unarmed fighting skills? The benefit is not much and may not be obvious to many but studying it can benefit one's unarmed skills by enhancing his reflexes.

To make it easy and simple to understand, I will share an experience that I had when I was sharing knife fighting to my MA friends. The group was composed of high ranking martial artists/instructors from unarmed martial arts but also had been training knife fighting and stick fighting. One of the member had trained Modern FMA and he has passed the skills that he learned to their group. They are not beginners obviously but I was called in to share my BS. Basically they don't need me because they know the moves and the drills but what they were looking for was something coming from CQC-FMA.


I had a feeling that they were expecting something similar to their past knife fighting training but since I came from a different study, I gave them something a bit different. They had their sticks and dummy knives ready but since I never trained with dummy knives, I passed around my dulled kitchen knives. They looked worried because those knives though dull can still cut, lol.

I divided the group and set them as partners basing on their ranks and skill level. One knife per group and the attackers must attack their partners free style and at full speed. The defenders role was to protect themselves in anyway that they can. There was no time limit, no rules, and even if they got hit, they must continue unless that it was really a kill shot. They can punch, kick, grapple, whatever... They were chasing each other, rolling on the floor, towels, helmets and gears were flying and it was a brawl. I made them play several times and asked them what they noticed and what they learned.

They were all laughing and gasping for air and they said that it was intense and fun. Then their comments came rolling in. They said that it was very different compared to their older training. First, they said that kicking was near to impossible and punching was difficult because of avoiding getting their leg or wrist sliced. Two of them got small cuts on thier hands which made the group more jumpy. They couldn't deliver hard blocks and was left to parrying and grabbing. It was more of a cat fight that MA.

They said that their MA performance was much better when they were using dummy knives and could ditch out more techniques but with dulled knives, the experience was different. They said that getting stabbed with their plastic dummy knives was not painful and it really didn't have the fear factor of real knives. Real dulled blades are thinner and hurts when stabbed plus knowing that they still can cut kept them on their toes. Another big difference was that dulled real knives have the real shine of the metal that made it more realistic and more fearful.

Next I made them do several more rounds but this time all of them have knives and then immediately told them to do unarmed sparring. Naturally they went back to kicking, punching, and takedowns but their techniques became a little different. These guys are all full contact hard hitters. Their bodies are trained to receive heavy blows but they noticed that instead of accepting the blows, their bodies are automatically contracting or evading the blows. Their movement became more "cat-like" and this was because of their knife fighting reflexes was still working.

Then one commented basing it on the sparring that I did before, that he had a hard time landing a solid hit to my body because my body was evading his hits by automatically contracting. He said that for a body hit, they will normally make their stomach or chest muscles to get hard in anticipation of the blow which is OK but is a lot more painful. To be honest, I never noticed that I was doing this but probably it just became natural???

The best comment that I got is that this new experience training with thinner dulled knives at a fast pace made their eyes work faster and they became more careful. Punches and kicks seems to look a lot slower and that they could anticipate their opponents movements a lot better. The technique that I gave them was not really a technique but skills to enhance their reflexes more by using fear as the main tool... HAHAHA!
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After that, they asked for more techniques and wanted the weird stuffs :)
Gave them some CQC-FMA weirdo attacks plus a bit of lesson on tools, size, shape (single, double, barbed, ice pick, triangular, clawed, tube, blood groves, serrated, flexible, with poison groves, syringe, fragile or breakable, ballistic, etc.) weight and length, gave some lessons on more weird tools like wood, glass, plastic and stones.  A short lesson on infection, time, climate, weather, the effects of the moon (clotting or gushing). I'm sure that they have forgotten most of it by now because these are basically useless for MA knife fighting but can be useful for survival purposes for example you got injured by a weird looking tool in the woods and can estimate the time you got left before the hemorrhage or the organs to collapse, blood will clot or will it continue to gush out... Also taught them the magic of Super Glue, etc. and how these stuffs can save their lives in a survival situation. They said that it was a very different dirty game compared to duels and knife fighting but worth the study.

After ditching out some weird stuffs, they were sneaking, faking and conning each other like wannabe ninjas. Some of of their movements were super fake and corny, and some were like what we see in the movies and it was a good laugh. We had lots of fun that day and I hope that they will remember some of them :)