Defending a Straight Stab: Outside Parry & Strike

Video Transcript

"On this portion of the edged weapon defense we're going to deal with a straight stab. This is by far one of the most dangerous attacks there is with an edged weapon. Because this can begin to not only cause a great deal of damage to my initial tissue but it can enter my body and cause a great deal of internal damage as well. It's exceptionally dangerous. One thing that you're going to see in all of our edged weapon defense and that is on getting off the line of attack. That's really true in so many martial arts. But it's specifically true in edged weapons. I don't want to sit here and begin to wrestle with this blade. His line of attack is here. I need to get off the line. What I'm going to do is I'm going to attack the arm now. There's a principle called defanging the snake. I'm going to take the fangs out of the snake. So I'm going to parry that arm out to the side. Now I don't want to just walk by it. If I could lay my hands on it I can hit it. I don't want to be very anal about it and just try to really hit one specific point. But as I touch him I touch him with intent. So as Daniel comes in I move it. I get a good dynamic response. I begin to turn his body. Boom. It allows me all types of positions to follow up. Or more importantly to escape. The best defense against a knife is not to be there or have somebody else do it. That's your best defense. Parry it away. So the arm parry from a straight stab is a very strong technique for edged weapon defense."