You could live in the safest place in the world, but unsafe situations take you by surprise. There are some very important steps you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones, including the best ways to avoid confrontation. Here are some top self-defense tips for beginner about unarmed knife defense.
Keep Your Hands Up, and By Your Sides
There are things you can do within the first second of being attacked that can help save your life. If someone is threatening you with a knife, they expect certain reactions. For example, putting your hands up is a normal response to being threatened that criminals expect. If you are too jumpy or reach for your pockets, you risk getting slashed. For most beginning techniques, it’s important that you keep your hands up, elbows bent 90° with your hands close to your body. Having your hands in this position allows for faster movement when vying for control of your attacker’s arm and wrist. By not having your hands raised about your head, the extra millisecond gained by not having to move your hands down can make the difference between life and death.
Do Not Make Direct Eye Contact With Your Attacker
You should try not to make eye contact with your attacker because this can be perceived as challenging them and make them more likely to strike you the same as it would with a dangerous animal in the animal kingdom. It’s also important that you don’t telegraph your next move. By having shifty eyes, your attacker might become aware of what you could potentially do next and strike first. Stay calm. Try not to scream or panic.
Get Control of the Wrist and Limbs First
When defending against knife attacks, the most important thing is to get control of the limbs and wrist. That is your number one priority along with keeping the attacker in front of you. Control the attacker’s arm and wrist, and you will control the knife. There are different approaches to getting a two-handed control or a two-on-one on the knife attacker’s limb that involving blocking or grabbing the arm or wrist. This is usually followed up by striking your assailants face hopefully disorienting them for the split second you need to gain two-handed control and execute the rest of your technique. Once you’ve done this, you can use joint locks/breaks, throws, kicks or knee strikes to incapacitate them.
Understand that You Will Most Likely Be Slashed
There is very little chance of coming away from a knife attack without sustaining some kind of injury. Even if you perfectly execute a technique in training, there are variables in real life that can’t be foreseen. Often times, you won’t even notice you’ve been injured until after the confrontation because your adrenalin will be pumping, numbing any pain. However, a small flesh wound that can be easily stitched up is better than suffering a deeper stab wound that could end your life.
Most Knife Attacks You’ll Never See Coming
The truth is, most of the time if a person were to attack you with a knife, they will try to ambush you. Usually, an aggressor would aim to try to surprise their victim – if they wanted to play fair, they would not have brought a knife. If the victim can’t see the knife, they can’t defend themselves. It’s important to be very aware of your surroundings, especially when you believed someone might be armed. Aggressors will try to distract the victim and wait for a good window of opportunity to strike and won’t hesitate to attack the victim from the back. Whether it’s a knife, needle, or bottle – a sharp object can be wielded quickly. If someone is being aggressive with you, keep your space from them over an arms-length, even if no weapon is revealed. Typically assailants wait until the victim is 1) distracted, 2) cornered, and 3) the attack is launched at close quarters.
Victims who survived a violent confrontation against a knife-wielding assailant consistently reported that they were completely unaware of the existence of the weapon until after they had suffered stab or slash wounds. In essence, these survivors of edged weapon attacks state that they believed they were engaged in some sort of fist fight; only later, after sustaining injuries, did they realize that the assailant was armed.
Imi Lichtenfeld, Founder of Krav Maga
You Will Need Real Life Training and Lightning Fast Reflexes
Knife attacks are fast and furious. The truth is: reading about knife defense on the internet isn’t enough to keep yourself and your family safe in the real world. The only way to truly execute these techniques with any sort of confidence is to get proper training. At Kombat Group we offer a comprehensive Krav Maga and Self-Defense Courses. Krav Maga is the Israeli art of Self Defense. We teach Krav Maga at Kombat Group because the techniques are easy to learn and use, and are also extremely effective in case of an attack.
During the course, you will learn the tactics to help you deal with both unarmed and armed attackers. Our course allows you to defend and protect yourself from common street attacks using a variety of simple, basic and effective techniques and dirty tricks. People all over the world, men and women, the young and not so young are taking up Krav Maga due to its proven effectiveness as a street self-defence method.
