A fight can have many dimensions to it e.g. a standup fist fight can go to ground, or in the middle of a clinch or grappling phase a knife can get pulled etc. Whilst there is a purpose to teaching ground fighting/survival as being something that starts and remains on the ground, just as there are good reasons to teach standup fighting without grappling and groundwork, at some point the transitions between these dimensions need to be taught. One of the most important transitions to train in reality based self-defense is when a weapon is introduced to the fight; as this demonstrates a development/evolution in an assailant’s harmful intent towards you, as well as increasing the risk of serious injuries/death.

Unless you are involved in a gang-fight, where all participants start with their weapons drawn, or are subjected to some form of ambush where an assailant has identified you as a target, and approached you with their weapon in hand, an aggressor will have to draw and deploy their weapon e.g. if you are involved in an aggressive altercation in a bar, your aggressor will have to pull their knife/gun from wherever they are carrying it. If you are involved in a seemingly “unarmed” fight – and you should never assume that this is the case – where your assailant hasn’t had time to pull their weapon, you must understand that if they are carrying one, they will probably attempt to draw it during the unarmed phase of the conflict. One question you need to ask yourself about your training is, do you train to deal with weapons being pulled at the start of the conflict or during it? Or, do you train all your weapon disarms and controls from the perspective that the weapon has already been drawn and positioned?   

If you are teaching self-defense from a reality based perspective, you need to train, according to the various “story lines” that violence follows e.g. if you train a knife control/disarm to the threat of having a knife at your throat, you must look at the preceding steps, which needed to take place before the knife was placed there; the person needed to synchronize their movement to yours, draw their weapon, and then place it against your throat etc. Could any of these preceding steps been prevented? Could you have prevented the person moving to a position where they were able to make the threat? Could you have spoilt the “draw” and controlled/disarmed the weapon before it was placed at your throat? It is not realistic to simply train a disarm/control at the very last part of the process, instead we should be looking to interrupt the process at the earliest opportunity and if possible put preventative measures in place that would stop the process from starting in the first place.

The gap between what schools teach as reality based self-defense, and what security companies teach to those entering the security field professionally is often a night and day difference. The amount of time dedicated, in close protection training, to spoiling the draw and preventing a potential assailant from deploying their weapon is far more than almost any reality based self-defense school will spend teaching this skill. Rather most schools, will teach their students how to deal with the worst case scenario – of the weapon being “live” – rather than looking at how such a situation could be prevented.

Teaching self-defense in clinically divided dimensions doesn’t reflect reality. In real life situations dimensions merge; arguments become fights, unarmed fights become armed fights, armed and unarmed fights go to the ground etc. One of Imi Lichtenfeld’s core concepts of Krav Maga was be prepared for anything, and yet often Krav Maga training doesn’t reflect this, instead it neatly packages each dimension (knife, gun, ground, grappling etc.) into its individual training session/part and doesn’t look at the transitions between them. In this way the student is given a false idea as to what a real-life violent altercation looks like, and doesn’t get to train in the dynamic fashion that is necessary if they are to be prepared to survive in reality.

Next time you train a defense against a knife or gun threat, consider what could have been done to prevent yourself from finding yourself in such a situation. Is it realistic to assume the person simply walked up to you and placed the weapon where they did? Would they have had to engage you in conversation first in order to get close to you, and then pulled the weapon etc? This is understanding your training from the perspective of reality, rather than just simply learning a technique to deal with the worst case scenario.