Lots of things to consider J.T When my instructor bet me £10 that he could disarm me in around one second, I agreed just to see how it was done. He handed me a rubber knife and I pointed it the right way (at him!) and he proceeded to slap my hand so hard that the knife flew away through the air 30 feet or so. He then dropped me (which happens a lot) and was about to elbow smash me in the face. Apparently the whole thing took around two seconds. He told me if you carry a knife like a bunch of flowers, then that's happens... He proceeded to tell me how to hold it properly. Slapped my hand again and I managed the knife this time, then he dropped me and was about to you guessed it elbow smash me in the face. So it is all about, observation, know how and being two or three moves ahead. You never see some one do one move at a time in a fight and if you do, they are gonna be the loser. Have you thought about making a hand to hand fight scene instead? It would open up a world of possibilities and it is worth considering a H2H fight would last longer than a knife fight. That would give you an option of a rematch with knives!
Most people learn these lessons the hard way. That makes some sense. You'll still have to repetitively teach her how to get a lot tougher over the course of the novel though. She'll lose a lot more fights than she'll win without the experience.
For the most part, all her fights have been hand to hand with the exception when she wants to join the guard and shows off her "fancy" skills, and then when she and that guard get in a real fight where both of them are injured. The knife has sentimental value (touched on in the WIP) so she always carries it around, and its her go-to weapon when pushed i to a corner. In the fight with the guard, he takes her knife during the fight and she escapes without it and its a big emotional thing to be without it. In short, knife stays lol. But i can incorporate more hand to hand. Thats a heck of a lot easier to write than weapons...
Not sure if this will help, but from 1989 USMC boot camp our instructors told us "The winner of a knife fight is the one who wakes up in the emergency room." I love a good Hollywood knife fight (Tommy Lee Jones vs Steven Seagal in Under Siege was a miracle of choreography) as much as anyone, but... The other things they taught us (and this was a one afternoon evolution, not a comprehensive course) were to, if possible, wrap your weak arm in a jacket or something. Hold it in front of you to use as a shield. Hold the knife (a Ka-Bar or bayonet in our case) blade down along your forearm and try to slash your opponent with it, then bring it back quickly. Ideally you might be able to slash the throat and then drive the point of the knife into the back of the neck as you were pulling it back towards you. Or something like that, it's been a long time.
When I was the army I once heard a sergeant telling his class "winning a knife fight is easy... creep up behind him and stab him repeatedly in the neck and kidneys before he knows you are there" that aside this video summarizes my favorite technique when your opponent has a blade
COVID-19 stupid lock-down #4 now, Spike TV is showing repeats of "the deadliest warrior" and they had one about the Apache vs Gladiator. One of the Apache experts is a world champion knife fighter. I *THINK* his name was "Snake Blocker" but if you Google, you should find some info. There's apparently a world knife fighting championship.......?????......I'm wondering how that is supposed to work....
You'll find a lot of stuff on youtube or what i do with combat writing is watch movies and just describe it as i see it or how the directors are putting it across. As far as terminology goes i tried reading some historical fiction about medieval england, the romans. Books about the vikings just stuff like that i read a book called The Wolf Of Wessex and that boy captured it really well. I done a fair bit of close combat and weapons training in the army, Krav Maga and stuff like that that also helps going through the movements and things so you know where the power and the balance and all that good stuff is coming from! Best of luck anyways !!
They use what they call a soft knife -its made out of plastic foam. Interestingly until recently the Filipino Kali championships was fought with real Basilongs... until unsurprisingly that was deemed too dangerous, then they moved to short sticks, and only recently to 'soft knives" I understand that rubber knives would pose a major problem for the USMC though as many recruits might try to eat them
That approach is OK if your opponent is armed with a knife or a pointed stick. But your knowledge of self-defence is incomplete if you don't know how to deal with a man armed with a banana:
I like this guy's channel on YouTube, but he mainly deals with swords from a HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) emphasis but he may have some videos on shorter blades. Regarding sparring with real blades, in this one he discusses a video of some fools 'sparring' with real blades and why their method is dangerous and unproductive but does point out ways it can be done for some benefit (provided the people involved have the right training and safety equipment):
Ha! Aye you're not wrong the British Army isn't much better, eat em` or f*@k em` that's you're options.
I've spent my life Fencing, with a primary interest in traditional skills, not athletic pursuits. That said, you need to decide what culture your knife fighting comes from. Europeans are far different than Asia, and worldwide much modern "Technique" seems to be complete BS practiced by people who've never been in a an actual fight. Over the last 20 or so years a movement called "HEMA- Historical European Martial Arts" has been growing. Their method of practice includes translating old, actual martial texts and then using them as training manuals. 20 years ago, other than Meyer and a few others, there was little available. Today the amount of translations over a wide time period is mind-boggling. Here's a link to their "Resource Page" with links to other sites that often have downloads of translations available: https://www.hemaalliance.com/resource-library Decades ago the Maestro I studied under was also a fight choreographer in Hollywood. He explained that movie/ book fights have to nothing to do with actual technique. They're simple up close and passionate scenes between a couple of characters. IN Shakespeare's day everybody knew how to use a sword. Fights had to be realistic. In real life a sword/ knife can kill you in 1/70th of a second (placed in the right spot). That's faster than 70mm film can even capture, so every fight scene in movies is 7 to 10 times bigger simply for the camera to catch it. Decide how much energy you need to spend in the fight. The texts by Joachim Meyer cover many weapons, including daggers and the like. It's among the oldest known that much of Europe looked to in following centuries. For modern 20th century knife fighting, look up the manual by Lieutenant Colonel William Ewart Fairbairn. He was co-inventor of the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife, and his method was born out of actual conflict just before WW2.
Way back when, in my days of youth and immortality, when I was much more invested in learning the pugilistic arts, I was once told the best skill you can have in a knife fight is the ability to run very fast. In the other direction. if your character was trained by a former soldier father, I’d center the research on what he was taught it the service. That’s likely what he’d be passing down. This might help… https://www.amazon.com/Ranger-Handbook-3-21-76-Army-Doctrine-ebook/dp/B08JWSFBFX/ref=mp_s_a_1_2_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=knife+fighting+for+writers&qid=1632854536&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzTDczNENRV0E0Vko0JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwOTk5Mjg4MU02UDVYQTZMSzgwVyZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwOTIxMTM4MjA3MEtGSkMwRkpCTSZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX3Bob25lX3NlYXJjaF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl
As mentioned above most of the ' unarmed against a knife fighting' techniques on youtube will get you killed... I saw a thing in a Barry Eisler novel (and he got it from Maz Sayoob on no nonsense self defence i think) which pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter, para phrasing because it was a while ago 1) if you possibly can, run... there's no shame in running away from a fight, macho pride will get you killed 2) if you really can't run do something quick to stop the fight from getting started (like a boot through the side of the knee or a handful of grit in the eyes) 3) assuming its too late for that, do something to create space so you can deploy a longer range weapon.. like over turning furniture or running across a busy street... if you're not carrying a long range weapon like a gun or mace, look for something you can throw, or anything you can use to keep him further away from you than his reach plus the knife 4) as a matter of last resort go beserk and go for his throat and eyes, and hope you don't get fatally cut going over or through your opponent... as soon as hes down run like fuck assuming you're not bleeding out... this is not a good option, but its better than nothing. He also noted that even if you have a knife yourself the options remain the same because if you're close enough to cut him, he's close enough to cut you
As a former (U.S. Army) soldier, I can reliably report that in 1966, when I went through training, we were not taught anything at all about knife fighting. We also were not issued knives. In the field in combat we had bayonets, but they were used as bayonets, not as hand-held knives. I believe the U.S. Marines are still issued the Ka-Bar fighting knife, but I don't know what training they receive in hand-to-hand combat with knives.
Its just not needed for most soldiers... if you've got a platoon of 40 guys with battle rifles (or swords if you're in a medievalesque environment) something has to go pretty radically wrong for you to be fighting with a knife. mostly for a soldier a knife is a tool for sharpening stakes, cutting cord, opening food and like that (potentially dressing out deer, sheep, rabbits etc if you're living off the land) far more than it is a weapon. ETA I remember my grandad telling me that the real reason RAF pilots were issued combat knives in WW2 wasn't to kill germans.. one option was to use them to batter your way out of a crashed plane, but the main reason was that if you were trapped in a burning aircraft you could kill yourself far more reliably by opening the femoral artery than by trying to shoot yourself
Couple points from knife fighting; it's super close combat so risk of injury is high for both combatants so neither trained individual would do it if being realistic. So the most realistic is that it's used during assassination (still not quite but a lot better). Also nearly every self defense knife fight always advises for the smarter individual to run away. But if we had to force the fight and there was no way out, I'd ignore techniques including knives because it really wouldn't matter so much, someone is getting stabbed regardless. So could make it intricate by focusing on the targets in the body, so neck, femoral artery that kinda things. Or anti knife strategies like wrapping your arm in thick jacket allowing yourself to get stabbed in the arm to disable the knife hand. That kind of thing.
In reality, when someone attacks with a knife, it's over very quickly. The defender either gets away real quick, or controls the threat effectively immediately, or he dies. Just look at some CCTV tape .
