The 1 Litre of Blood Test

Continuing on our knife defense theme, last night in our Street Edge class, our teacher Paul told us to go home and conduct an experiment. In order to prepare us for the realities of a knife attack we need to know that we will get cut and will bleed. Now bearing in mind that the average adult has about 6 lt of blood, he asked us to make up 1lt of fake blood and pour it out somewhere to get an idea of what this much blood would look like. Well the above photo is the required amount, the coin in the middle is an Aussie 20c piece, just to give a sense of scale. I found it to be a compelling reason to avoid knife attacks at all cost. As a mate of mine once said "I intent to win all my fights by 500 metres."

Hock Hochheim's New Knife/ Counter Knife Combat Book

Hock has released his new Knife / Counter Knife Combat Book to coincide with my recent posts on Knife Fighting...Nah! Just kidding. Hock has released the new book of his own accord as we've been psychically willing him to, using our Special CIA Jedi mind powers.

This tome may well become the new textbook for knife enthusiasts, with it's 1750+ photos and 291 pages of information.

As Hock says on his website:-

“As a police officer, both Military and in Texas, people have died in my hands, arms and before my eyes. As victims of the knife, I have had to investigate their woundings, maimings and deaths. I have arrested these attackers in the act or hunted them down afterward. I have been to dozens of intense police, Assault and Violent Death Schools conducted by leading forensics specialists from around the world.

Since 1996, each year, I've taught combatives in 40 cities in 13 allied countries and examined the performances of thousands of soldiers, police and citizens. I have been a paid consultant for The US Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines.

Plus, I am an avid, lifelong, obsessed student of crime, violence and military history. Through the years, all this has given me a certain unique perspective about edged-weapon combat, human learning and individual, athletic performance.

Knife/Counter-Knife combatives is extremely situational. It's chaotic, wet and ugly in a way few people, even most knife instructors, can ever imagine. It is often trained haphazardly and ignorantly with over-simplistic, dueling practice or endless, arsty, looping drills, or worse, totally ignored. Then, vital parts of it, such as knife ground fighting are often omitted, or treated like sporty, high school wrestling matches.

Military, police, martial arts and the aware citizenry - I am all of these things, yet none of these things. While each group knows things about fighting, survival, crime, war and violence, no one group captures the essence of knife combat in this mixed-weapon world, or matches it with fast-breaking, training psychologies, physical methodologies and cutting edge tactics and strategies. I bridge this gap. I assimilate and organize. We evolve to face the cunning criminal and the enemy soldier. Inside a continuum of weapons, we use the knife to save our life and our way of life."

To purchase this book, go to Hock's webpage on the book, here.

Pictures and text are all from Hock's website and copyright to Hock Hochheim, and are used under the fair use provisions for academic purposes only.

First Fight Day Bookclub

Last nights training session included a few rounds of knife fighting with chalk knives, however instead of chalking them we used stage blood for added realism. First two fights, one on one, yielded what would have amounted to four fatalities in all likelihood. Witness my shirt above, looks like a punctured lung and a few stabs to the chest plate. Everyone else who participated would be in similar or worse shape. Bear in mind that you can't see the numerous defensive wounds to the arms in the picture either.

Now some people may say "well you didn't do very well, my master has shown me a technique for disarming a knife that works all the time". My answer to this is simple - your master is either a fool or full of sh*t, unless he/ she is bringing a gun to the knife fight!

Now you may think I'm being harsh, but harsh is giving students false hope in a technique that gets them killed. But hey you may disagree, and that's fine. But don't take my word for it, test the technique. Have a friend with a chalk knife attack you with multiple stabs and slashes, at real fight pace. Then try your technique. How did it go?

This brings me onto the topic of the post, the First Fight Day Book Club. My book of the week is a golden oldie from 1988. Written by Don Pentecost and published by Paladin Press, "Put 'em down, Take 'em out! Knife fighting Techniques from Folsom Prison" is a look at the tactics and techniques used by maximum security prisoners to kill each other. Wait a sec, why the hell am I reviewing a book on how to murder people? Simple, because this book represents the REALITY of Knife Attacks! This is the stuff you may face on the street. Let me make one thing perfectly clear - I am not advocating the use of any material contained in this book. If you go out and use this material to kill people, well I hope you enjoy your time on death row. I am suggesting that you use this book for research purposes to learn how to defend against knife attacks.

This book is short (54 little pages), to the point and contains only one exercise at the end. In short it is everything that most martial arts books are not. And that is what makes it so useful. Reading this book and practicing the exercise contained in the last chapter opened my eyes. I have never looked at knife defense the same way since.

Here's some choice quotes from Put 'em down, Take 'em out!

"Contrary to the teachings of "noted" knife fighting experts, certain accepted techniques are ridiculous and will get you killed in a real-life situation. Unarmed joint-lock takedowns against an armed opponent and kicking a knife out of an attacker's hand are just two of the more common examples. Such "sanitary" approaches make knife fighting acceptable to the general public - they do not burst the viewer's television fantasy bubble.
The traditional martial arts are, in fact, busy perpetuating the most useless shit imaginable! These "noted experts" are writers, not fighters! The battles they engage in take place on paper...Use of these techniques would result in death of the technique user!"

"Martial arts publications are fond of showing how the attacker makes a thrust and then leaves the knife hand extended and stationary, letting the defender immediately gain control. The attacker then watches in an apparent trance while the defender applies technique after technique on him. Does this sound even remotely possible the you?"

Here's some video inspiration for you - here, here and here. As always these videos contain disturbing material.

Good luck with your knife defense and keep on training.

Ninja and Samurai Movies you must see!

As a huge fan of Chanbara /Jidai Geki, or Samurai era films, I thought I'd do a quick list of some of my favourite "Ballets of Blood". This list is not extensive, so feel free to comment on this post adding your own favourites. My criteria for a good film is simple - Lots of action, some story line (but not enough to get in the way of the action), 'Rivers of Blood', staunch main character (with or without humourous witicisms), wicked sword work. Desirable but not essential are Ninja or Yakuza, exotic weapons and psychotic bad guys.

Akira Kurosawa's movies are good, great acting, high brow sort of stuff. Seven Samurai has a great sword duel, imparting some important lessons about Budo. RAN has some bloody battle scenes.

Toshiro Mifune in anything usually makes for a good film. His role in the Miyamoto Musashi trilogy is good, but as always I preferred the book (by Eiji Yoshikawa). Having said that, their is plenty of sword work, the intial battle scene is cool and the duel with Shishido Baiken, the Kusarigama master, fulfills my need for exotic weapons. See an excerpt from this series here, notice also the use of Hasso No Kamae and Yoko Aruki. Musashi also keeps his back to the rising sun and fights with Bokken vs Live Blade.

I've watched quite a few others in the genre, but that real stand outs for me are two series, the Lone Wolf and Cub series and the Zatoichi series. Now whilst I liked the Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi) version of Zatoichi, I LOVE the 1960's & 70's series starring Shintaro Katsu.

The wicked backhand sword style of Yakuza/Blind Massuer Ichi, is so inspirational that Bruce Lee wanted to do a version of Zatoichi as part of a series of period dramas. I used to have a VHS video tape (you remember these right?) which had a picture of Lee dressed up as Zatoichi. Watch some great backhand sword carnage here and here, also here, here and here! Zatoichi has a keen sense of humour and justice (for a criminal) and is not a man to gamble with...

Lone Wolf and Cub is also awesome. The actor who plays Lone Wolf, Tomisaburo Wakayama, is the brother of the dude who plays Zatoichi, Shintaro Katsu. I don't know what their mum fed them but I wish I could get some, then maybe my swordwork would improve! Or maybe I should just practice more ;)

Lone wolf is the Shogun's executioner. but the Shogun fears his power and tries to have him killed. Bad move. Lone wolf is out, so his wife is killed instead. This forces Lone Wolf (Ito Ogami) to 'walk the path of demons' as a sword for hire, leaving behind 'rivers of blood'. He takes his infant son, Daigoro, with him in the pram from hell and spends his time killing Ninjas, Samurai and Yakuza. He has no sense of humour, never sleeps and goes on with gritty determination despite various wounds. Again the sword work is wicked. Check out his Seagull style Kenjutsu here. Oh yeah, he's also an equl opportunity killer, as shown here.

These two series are my favourite, both are available for purchase online. Having said that, these two brothers made a whole lot of other films, you should check 'em out.

ps. I just found some footage of Tomisaburo Wakayama playing a ninja, rather than killing them. It is from a film called "The Black Hood", which I hope to see soon. Check it out here. Even has a bo shuriken being thrown in it.