True, true, but Jehovah"s Witnesses speak out against blood transfusions, and Christians and Muslims have slaughtered more people in the name of the God of Love than we can shake a staff at. As for wasted training, I don't think so, cuz it seems our society is hell-bent on creating living conditions much like that "enjoyed" by the southern chinese of the late 19th century. I wonder, though, does anyone know if Taoists and Buddhists are any better at adhering to their tenets than members of other religions?

my beloved rumbrae,

truth aches, I know, but quit saying I insulted you, 'cause it's false. Not being able for you to answer doesn't mean I called you with bad names, it's just your fault.

Would you now stop chatting with me and WRITE
down the day you are going to surprise Emin? According to that, people of ShenWu will accomodate to witness.
I'm not insulting you, just requesting you do what you promised, so loud. C'mon!
Maybe scared? Not so easy as hiding behind a monitor? Starting to feel your kali-chisao not so good? Forgive me 10.000 times if I'm wrong, demonstrate everybody who you are for real.

I've nothing to demostrate myself, I didn't say I knew better than renowed teachers (Latosa, Boztepe etc.), quite the opposite. I remarked I have much to learn from lots of people, from those who can address their sources, for example, many of those who attend this board.
Have a good day.

erpoean

haha - you try so hard

Gosh, fellows, it occurred to me that disagreeing on everything is not the best way to come to an agreement of any kind. Serious martial artists are probably a dwindling species in our "punish those with a sense of responsibility" age. When we fight amongst each other, it's a tragic waste when we live in a world full of scum who'd make much better objects of our wrath.

you ladies ought to start your own website and disagree with each other somewhere else.

Here's a title you should consider:

WWW.THINGSNOBODYELSEGIVESACRAPABOUT.COM

What a heckler.

Rumbrae, can you explain some of the details that make balintawak so much safer than WC Chi Sao against weapons?

Bob, I already bought that domain name, and have reams of material ready to put on it.

The short answer. You show up at WC one night and the instructor tells everyone to pair up for chisao. Then he hands out a knife to one partner in each pair, and says to go ahead with chisao. Your partner got the knife. How comfortable are you feeling at this moment?

Here’s a longer answer.

If an art is NOT designed from the ground up with every single nuance adapted to a bladed attacker it won't work as well against a bladed attacker. Take for instance karate - the knife defence is most often different than the regular defence, so what will be the natural reaction in the street?

A blade only requires the skin to touch to draw blood, add to that any subsequent motion in almost any direct from you or the attacker and the cut just gets bigger and deeper. Also, the point of a knife is so small that only a tiny amount of force is required for penetration. You can sacrifice a shot or two(except from rum soaked fist) or accept a glancing blow when skin fighting, but with a knife you just lost perfectly sealed skin to let out your life’s blood a perfectly good working tendon.

I never said WC chisao was ••••, in fact against one unarmed opponent at a time it is the most advanced system I know of. And there's the rub in my experience, it is so advanced and so fine tuned for skin on skin that it is very specialized, just for that. So what happened to the knife factor? Where is it? It doesn’t exist, WC doesn’t practice with that in mind for everything that it does.

Someone with no knife experience and 1 hour of some basics of knife attack, give him a no lie blade on a WC person and watch the red cover the arms and body in seconds. Most often the WC guy will quickly beat him, stand there with red lipstick on his throat convinced he won. I’ve done this. This was my introduction to knife fighting, as it was for everyone else who joined. I sadly realized I had to modify my WC in a real hurry.

Knife attacks are not always the same as unarmed attacks. If you block my knife hand at my wrist, I can fold at the elbow, pull back, push forward, twist, hand sweep, pass, etc. The defence for this in WC and many other arts, if there is one, will lead to a self inflicted cut. Knife work is based on this. There are so many setups. You think there are feints in boxing or Xing Yi? Try knife fighting.

More important, most techniques in unarmed MA require power and skill to win but the knife hand can move in weird ways, very small circles and tangents requiring very little body force which is not normal to the non-knife fighter. Most assume a knife attacker will make large committed moves and not use all other weapons he possesses at the same time. Balintawak taught me how to deal with all this, and stick.

Balintawak taught me to listen and know WHEN to disengage one part of my body while sticking or making new contact with another part even while in a seemingly advantageous position, not to have a constant passive forward aggression, how to bob and weave while sticking, how to pass hands or the opponents knife hand off, etc. The dynamics of how a blade can work are countless. The really cool thing is if my attacker does or does not have a weapon the same techniques apply.

These examples are all just a glimpse, knife work is a whole lifetime pursuit just as any other MA is. The sole difference is what I learned is with respect to a knife.

So back to WC chisao. Where is the knife?

Rumbrae,

Blaise Loong, a Jeet Kune Do instructor who's familiar with both Wing-Chun & blade work (both offensive & defensive), doesn't seem to have a problem teaching chi-sao to his students -- and they don't seem to have a problem using it either. Mr. Loong is a very skilled fighter -- with & without a blade, & so are some of his students.

Mr. Loong pointed out (in his introductory knive-fighting video) that all things being equal, the loose odds of surviving a bladed encounter (in general) at best is 1-out-of-3. So, I trust that being unarmed & un-armored in a knife fight makes the odds of surviving even less.

So with this in mind, always remember what the rules are in a knife fight (see "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid").

And where's the knife in WC, you ask? There's two of 'em: those big ol' "butterfly" knives.

How can you discern between a personal deficiency from a system's deficiency?

So back to Balintawak. Where is the training against a gun? *yawn*

Hi,

I just wanted to say that, imho, it's difficult to compare the relative effectiveness of knife-training practices among various martial arts. I feel that, no matter how you practice, even with sharp blades, the critical element is that the other guy doesn't really want to kill you and you have no intention of killing him. A clumsy weapon wielded by a madman, or someone gone 'amuk', can be psychologically "lethal" for even the experienced defender. Anyway, I think the martial art that Gurkha's practice might be worth discussing.
Respects,
Steve James

Steve,
why do you feel the need to tell us you're a ho?
I don't understand.

If you want to simulate a serious knife attack- hand your partner a sharpie pen or magic marker.

have them try their hardest to 'stick' you as you try your hardest to unpen them. If the numerous marks you get aren't over arties or tendons- you win. Either way- I bet you'll get marked up.

Roberto Number Dos (NOTHO)

I understand that there is a hardcore group of JKD enthusiasts who scorn the idea that it is an art, but rather a philosophy of freedom moldable to an individual's needs. The only thing that impressed me about it from what I had seen of it is the filipino arts of Inosanto. I have tried to explain things in my limited way on this post, just to find that people can only relate to it within the limits of their experience, so Mike, I think that Rumbrae may have a point or two designed to open our eyes. He seems familiar with WC chi sao, whereas we don't really know that much about Balintawak. He doesn't say WC chi sao is bad, in fact, he says it is GREAT for its INTENDED purpose, which is NOT knife fighting. Which brings me to cup 72: for defence against a gun, I refer you to the martial arts masters Bill Jordan, Masaad Ayoob, Ed Brown or Jeff Cooper. Unlike the majority of dojo instructors, these gentlemen have actually "been there, done that"! Steve, good points, but what is the art that the Gurkhas practice, I'd love to know (my dad used to tell me about them from his army days). As for bob 2 (the heckler), I WAS in a real knife-fight like you describe, but I concentrated on the assailant, and pounded him so hard snot and blood exploded out of his face. I was in another (this time, I had a knife, too), I was concentrating on my assailant's knife, I got cut WIDE open. What does this prove? Nothing. Go figure. In closing, I'd like to add: no sparring or sticking method is ultimate. The true martial artist explores as many different types as possible, cuz none of them are close to real fights, but varied versions offer models of physical movement that can add to our understanding of the physics of combat.

Mike,

The question was raised WC chisao vs balintawak. My basis was that the WC guy has no real knife training, pretty much WC only. Sure, I too could do WC chisao and switch up for knife because I know both but that wasn't the point.

I don't know who Loong is but if that's what he wants to teach other people, caveat emptor always applies...

Note also that I didn't throw away my WC chisao, I modified it, they are still fairly similar but the subtle nuances are different, with respect to a knife.

Balintawak is not IMO the best against a knife. Check into http://www.pekiti-tirsia.com/
and check out the Sayoc Transition Drills at http://www.sayoc.com/multimedia.htm
These guys also were the TECHNICAL KNIFE ADVISORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS(Tom Kier and Rafael Kay) for the movie THE HUNTED with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro.

Also, if you want more info from people who have lived the real deal with knives check out:
http://www.realfighting.com/0102/edgedwea.htm
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/

Hi,

Ho, no, punk, yeah. My only point was that its hard to get out of a knife fight without getting cut. But, ymmv. If ya can practice so that you won't get cut, that'd be a better method.
Umm, I don't remember the names of the Gurkha martial arts. Easy enough to do the research, but I was hoping someone who did know would interject. In general, I tend to think that methods are somewhat similar --only so many ways to skin a cat. But, the methods might be different. I just thought it might be more enlightening to get a little more specific than "this works better than that."
Btw, I'm also sure that practicing improves skill and confidence. I think that "bad intent" is also an important element. But, maybe I'm just being psycho-illogical.

Oh well, my -.02.
Cheers,
Steve James

Some people claim I missed the point again; but in a knife fight, that's part of the objective.

Rumbrae,

Blaise Loong is an excellent instructor for blade work. You would be most fortunate to have him as an instructor.

Chi-sao drills are sensitivity-developing drills. A highly-developed sense of touch & awareness of movement or lack thereof is a plus in any fight: armed or unarmed. A WC practitioner isn't going to toss out any feedback stemming from his chi-sao training just because he's in a knife fight; instead he'll use it to his advantage; so he too will miss the point (& the edge in general as well).

Living here in Balintawak central, it's something I have a passing acquaintance with. IMO, both methods would work as a learning environment. However, due to the quantity of stick work in B, obviously it has the advantage of familiarity. Without this awareness of reach etc there's a tendency to cut the angles too fine & not recognize situations where the attack needs to be stopped rather than redirected.

Mike, I don't believe rumbrae was suggesting we throw out WC chi sao, just that it could be augmented with weapons work as well. Steve, I'm fairly certain the Gurkhas practice a type of silat (just to direct your thoughts into a VERY general ballpark).

"A Nepali boy is likely to have his own kukri at the age of five or so and necessarily becomes skilful in its use long before his manhood. By the time a Gurkha joins the army, the kukri has become a chopping extension of his dominant arm. This is important, because it is not the weight and edge of the weapon that make it so terrible at close quarters so much as the skilled technique of the stroke.•••••••• is important to remember that the kukri is a tool of all work, at home in the hills and on active service it will be used for cutting wood, hunting and skinning, opening tins, clearing undergrowth and any other chore..."

The above comes from a British government website. There's your Gurkha knife-fighting martial art in a nutshell (much like "The Seven Samurai" which featured a samurai from the tongue-in-cheek "wood-chopping school").

Hi,

thanks for the refs. So, this seems to be their "special technique": "the kukri has become a chopping extension of his dominant arm". Yup, sounds like it would work for anything. Mike, I think your allusions are well taken. Kenneth, thanks for the silat suggestion.
Best,
Steve James