Knife Defense Session 6: The Draw

Now that we figure out where is more comfortable, where it's more convenient and where it's more efficient for you to carry your knife or your knives, let's look at the draw. The draw is actually one of the most underrated aspect of knife training. You can look at most YouTube video about knife training, and you see two guys with knives going at each other, right? Getting your knife into play is one of the most important things that you can do and that you can practice. Nobody trains defensive firearm shooting, never starting from the draw, right?

So every time you train, every time you get into a drill and so on, and this is a drill in isolation, of course, try to start from the draw, try to integrate it at all times, right? And again, drawing your knife should really become second nature. I don't subscribe to the theory, you know, people say, "Well, I carry two knives. You know, one is for work and the other is for defending myself. So that the one that I use to defend myself is always gonna be sharp and so on and so forth." Now that is kind of silly if you think about it, right?

Because if I always draw my work knife, when I'm under stress, when I'm actually trying to fight to get to my knife to defend myself, I'm not gonna remember to go from my pristine knife that I never use, I'm gonna go to the movement that my brain is trained to do, right? So instead of carrying two knives and keeping one like pristine, carry two knives and keep them both sharp and use them both, right? So that you're developing those neurological pathways that will allow you to get to your knife a little bit quicker, a little bit more efficiently. If I carry on my pocket, right, when I decide to get my knife, I wanna look at a couple of things. First, I want to look at getting into the pocket with my thumb as deep as possible, so that when I start to pull the knife out, I am as far up on the knife as possible.

I come out, I open it, and now I'm ready to use it. If I'm using a reverse grip, if that is my favorite grip to use, I strongly advise to carry a knife with a wave mechanism in it, or at least a flipper. But, when I carry reverse with a wave, again, I go as deep as possible in the pocket with my thumb, I pull up the knife and I'm going forward a little bit so that it opens up, I get a good grip on it, and I'm ready to defend myself without having to really utilize too many finer motor skills. Now, center line. If I carry my knife center line, I can orient it either way in my belt, right?

So let's say I orient it this way. So I'm fighting, so I'm fighting, you know, I'm trying to get to my knife, I'm concerned, the bad guy, I grab it, pull out and it's ready in the forward grip. If I have to access it with my strong hand, cause I'm not carrying my firearm, right, so I'm fighting with my weak hand, I can grab it, and now it comes out in the reverse grip. So the grip changes, but I can still access it very efficiently. Consistency.

Once you decide where to carry your knives, carry them there all the time so that you don't add any variables, so that you know where your knife is at all time, right? This is one of the reason why we didn't really talk about off-body carry for a knife in the carry methods because I don't really believe that's the most smart decision you can make. A knife is really easy to add on your body, right, to conceal on your body. So having it on a bag, having it on a backpack, having it on on something that is not in the same place at all time, you know, if you have a bag and you're fighting with somebody, that bag is going all over the place. If you fall down, people's try to grab your bag, right?

By the same token, I don't like neck carry. You know, a knife that you carry under your shirts and so on. For one thing, it's gonna be a lot harder to get to, the same that you carry on your belt line. Secondarily, is not fixed, it's on a lanyard, so you're fighting, you're moving, is not gonna be in the same position all the time. Again, consistency really helps in develop skills effectively.

We wanna focus on two kinds of draws, if you will, and context will dictate which one is gonna be more favorable for you to use. The first one that we're gonna talk about is the stealth straw. Basically, when we are in a situation where we are recognizing through pre-incident indicator, through intuition, bad feelings, you know, the bad guy's behavior, that the situation may escalate to violence rather quickly, but we are not in it yet, right? So I wanna give myself the advantage, if I can recognize pre-incident indicator and I can articulate those, right? I can also prepare myself so that I don't have to go for my draw when a situation escalates, but that I'm ready if the bad guy chooses to attack me.

So, it's basically a little bit of slight of hand. The bad guys encroaching on me, is asking for money, is asking for a ride, you know, whatever that might be, right? So I'm gonna engage with him, right? Both verbally, looking at him, 'cause his focus is then gonna be on me as well, on my face and my eyes, right? And as I'm engaging, I'm also bringing up hand so that I'm giving him something to really focus on even more.

And as I'm doing that, you know, I may be moving around a little bit, I may give him a reason why they other hand is not there, right? "Oh, you want some money, man? I got some money here, man. Oh, that's okay, you don't have to come any closer, man, it's all right." So I'm engaging and kind of distracting, and at the same time, I'm getting my knife ready if the situation escalate, I'm ready to defend myself more quickly. A couple of things we need to consider, you know, again, the context is gonna dictate your tactics specifically, this is more of a principle, right?

But just like illusion is, we want to keep the focus of the bad guy somewhere other than their center line. Verbally engaging, giving them a reason, "Oh, I got, yeah, do you want to ride? I'll give you a ride, man, let me get my car keys, right?" So that it doesn't get suspicious, but you know, bad guy are not really, you know, all dumb, right? So we don't want to raise his aggressiveness, we don't want him to like recognize what we are doing and closing that distance, right? So engage verbally, visually, give them something to look at as you angle off so that you can cover your draw and you can be ready if things escalate.

In this case, have an unknown person approaching me in a manner that makes me suspicious about his intention. So I don't wanna wait until the very last moment in case I need to defend myself. As he's encroaching me, I'm gonna put up my hands and actually engage in him, you know, engaging his focus, engaging him verbally as an angle away from him so that they can get my knife and get it ready in case I need to use it. So when I get here, the knife is clearly still hidden behind me because I gave him something to look at and something to think about and respond to, is really not gonna see or focus on my action, especially because I also can give him a reason why my hand goes behind. The knife is clearly behind me, he still doesn't know that I'm actually ready to defend myself.

So if he decide to press his attack, I'm ready to defend myself, I don't need to waste any more time. So now we're gonna make it a little bit more dynamic to show you a little bit more of a realistic way to do it. Hey dude, what's up, man? Yeah, no, some change? I got some change for you.

No, I got some change, don't worry, man, hey, stay there though. I'm gonna give you money, but you know, I don't want you to come any closer. Dude, what the? So clearly with the stealth draw, I gain an advantage with the bad guy because I am quicker than he's gonna be in defending myself. Depending on how you carry your knife or where you carry your knife, you know, you may have to modify some of these things.

So if I carry center line, obviously this is gonna be a bigger movement to get to my knife, right? So I may need to engage him more and manage to angle a little bit more, right? If I only carry, you know, if I'm left-handed, obviously I'm gonna turn on the other side. One of the methodology of knife carry that we haven't talked about is horizontal carry. So I can carry my knife horizontally on my belt.

This actually, depending on the knife and so on, it may be a little bit harder to hide, but there are plenty of knives out there that you can hide, that you can conceal efficiently. What happens on these ones, let's say, you know, I'm just showing without the cover garment, but I can actually to do a much smaller movement in order to be able to get my knife in a stealthy manner and be ready to fight back. So this is a pretty good methodology. Again, we need to be careful, if we deploy the knife in fight and so on, that as we deploy the knife, we don't damage ourselves. When we talk about the stealth draw and its application, you know, we are live, a lot of the students actually ask, "Well if I had the knife in my hand, why don't I show the guy that I have the knife so he may change his mind about actually pursuing his attack." Now that's a idea that if we don't look at it a little bit too much in that, may make sense, but it really depends on the context.

Because, you know, if I have my knife out and it's hidden here, right, and you're are the bad guy and I'm showing you my knife, now I'm informing you that I have a weapon. If you have a knife, if you don't have any weapons, maybe that's gonna be enough to dissuade you, but let's say that the bad guy has something like this, right? Now with this reach, is gonna have a tremendous advantage over you. So why do you want to raise his aggressiveness level? Why do you want to give him, you know all the knowledge he needs to actually start to attack you?

And having a longer reach is gonna put you at a disadvantage. So I'd rather lure the bad guy in without showing him that I am ready for him. And if I have like a little bit of a submissive posture, if I'm engaging with him, you know, I may actually have him come close enough for me to strike him with a jab and mitigate or negate his reach advantage. Cause remember, this is not just knife on knife, you know, this is like bad guys with tools. They got hammer, they got lug nut, they got pry bar, whatever the case might be.

You know, showing the knife, it's a little bit like playing poker with the cards facing outside, right? Nobody does that. So in my opinion, using a knife to deter people is not as effective as using a knife with the element of surprise, so that we take the aggressor by surprise, and we also elicit a predator prey reversal. Now he thought he was in charge, he was the only one with the weapon, and now we are showing him differently. And this is a very important aspect of self-defense.

Try to bring the ambush to the bad guy instead of having him getting all the advantage. Unfortunately we need to be realistic. We can not always count on seeing the pre-contact cues that is gonna inform us of a bad situation developing, right? We are going around our day-to-day life and we may be distracted, we may be on the phone because our loved one were in a car crash, we may be on the phone with our doctor, we may just look at something happening over there that keeps our focus while the bad guys encroaches from a different direction. So awareness is good, it's not a guarantee unfortunately, that's why all of our defensive programs start from the worst case scenario, from where we don't see the attack coming, from where we are actually taken by surprise.

So when that happens, there are a few things that are gonna take place instinctively, right? So we are gonna try to mimic those when we practice our combat draw. The combat draw is basically when we recognize the threat, but we don't have time to stall and go for our stealth draw. We need to move out of the way, maintain enough distance so that we can actually access our weapon before we come into contact with the bad guy. Now, because of that reason, we're gonna start to integrate some of the body's natural reaction to danger and use them to get ourselves better prepared.

So we're gonna mimic the startle flinch. We are gonna mimic the startle flinch in the way that the hands are gonna come up toward the line of , and as I lower my center of gravity, the hands come up in a protecting manner towards the line of as we orient toward that threat. Now this is a protective motion, but it's not gonna be enough to keep us safe if the bad guys is closing that distance, right? So I can not just flinch and go for my draw because I'm still in the line of attack. So we're gonna add lateral movement.

Right after I recognize that threat, I wanna start to move perpendicular to that threat, long enough for me to be able to access my knife and open it and be ready to fight. So here I can either get into the fight, if the bad guys close the distance, or if I have an opportunity, I can keep running away, but now I'm better preparing in case the guy tried to chase me. So the first thing that we need to focus is that we are not integrating the flinch to practice the flinch, right? The flinch is gonna happen when we're taken by surprise instinctively, it's an automatic response. If you're not taken by surprise, like in the stealth draw, we are not gonna integrate that flinch, right?

But this combat draw wants to prepare us for when we are taken by surprise, but there is still a little bit of distance, the bad guy's not already hands-on, right? Lateral movement is perpendicular to the threat so that now the threat needs to address that and try to change its course of action. The distance of the lateral movement is at least one body width, 'cause I wanna move at least one body away from the line of attack. So if the bad guy is swinging something at me, he's got lesser chance to hit me. The duration of it is actually from the time that I recognize the need to go for my weapon and the time that my weapon is out and ready.

So now I'm getting the most benefit out of using the startle flinch response and converting it into a learned response of going for my draw as I'm moving away from that line of attack. And again, the context will dictate most likely which direction you're gonna go, right? A couple of pointers. When I'm moving laterally, I wanna move laterally in a natural way. If I'm moving away from you, right, I'm not gonna be hopping, right?

My hips are gonna turn, I'm gonna move so that I can actually go do that kind of fast enough so I can be ready, right? So let's not make things more complex than they need to be, right? We want to move naturally as much as possible. The hips turn in the direction of travel, my focus is obviously still gonna be on that threat. In this little scenario, we're gonna recreate the use of the combat draw.

So we're gonna use the combat draw when we recognize the attack, once the attack is in motion already, but we still have enough space and time to go for our knife instead of having to defend the attack first before he reaches us. So there is a pretty specific context for the combat draw as well. So here I'm gonna be minding my business, I'm waiting for the bus or what have you, and there is this crazy person that comes into the frame. I recognize he wants to do me harm, right, and now I'm gonna recognize there. And from there, I'm going to convert it, going to my knife, moving laterally, diagonally to the threat, until I'm ready with my knife in my hand and ready to defend myself.

So at this point, I maintain the distance from the bad guy, so I didn't give up any time or space, and now I'm ready to defend myself with my knife deployed, because I was able to maintain that distance from the bad guy. Now, let's look at the real value of training with a partner so that we can practice these skills in a more dynamic manner. Stay there! So here we're able to deploy our knives without giving up any space, any time, any distance. So we looked at stealth draw, when we recognize the bad intention of the bad guy and we have enough time to prepare ourselves.

We looked at combat draw, when we are taken by surprise but there is still enough distance, the bad guy is not hands-on yet. So we can move laterally and get a knife into play. The third contest that we are gonna look at is when the bad guy really take us by surprise and is close enough that his hands are on us or he's attack starts before we can do anything else, right? So obviously action beats reaction. If I'm up close and personal, you know, the guy takes the initiative and attacks me, I cannot go for my weapon, right?

Because I'm gonna get pummel hit or whatever. So I need to defend myself and establish enough control on the bad guy to allow myself to draw my weapon without having the bad guy interfering with that draw. We look at that a little bit more when we do the partner drills, but basically you want to keep in mind that if you're in a fight already, you cannot just go for your weapon and expect that that's going to take care of it, right, 'cause you're leaving yourself open. You need to develop some hand-to-hand skill. You need to develop some grappling maybe so that you're comfortable defending yourself until the time that you can go for your weapon if you need to.