Edged Weapons: The Truth, The Differences, How to Win the Fight!

By Nathan Lundstrom, Self Protection Specialist

You have heard the old line. Everyone who trains has: get in a knife fight and you will be cut. Instructors repeat it like it is wisdom. It is not wisdom. It is an absolute, and absolutes have no place in a real fight. Here is the truth instead, the one sentence this whole article stands on: you may be cut, because you are in a fight with a knife. May. Not will. The difference between those two words is the difference between walking in already wounded in your mind and walking in ready to work.

First, the recap. RCAT is the fixed sequence behind every weapon defense we train: Redirect, Control, Attack, Take Away, in that order, every time. The full doctrine lives in the pillar, Weapon Defense Isn’t a Technique. It’s an Algorithm, and this article carries it into the fight where the dangerous part is an edge.

What It Shares, and What It Owns

By now you know the pattern of this series: the weapons share more problems than they own. Here the overlap is the biggest in the series. Edged weapons and blunt objects share about 90 percent of the same skills. The control is close family. The attack is close family. When you read Blunt Objects: What’s the Real Danger, How Do We Approach the Fight?, you will recognize most of what you learn here.

So what does the edge own? This: it needs little to no acceleration to do its damage.

A blunt object has to earn its damage. It needs speed, mass, and a swing behind it. An edge needs none of that. It does not need a wind-up you can see or an arc you can stay outside of. It only needs to touch you. Contact is the damage. That is the problem this article exists to solve, and it is why everything you are about to read pushes you toward one idea: take the blade’s motion away, and you have taken away the weapon.

Know the family you are dealing with, too, because it is bigger than the word knife suggests. Single edge. Double edge. Most of them stab as well as cut. Some of them only stab. A shank. A screwdriver. Those still count as edged weapons, because they penetrate. He can hold it blade forward, or point down coming out of the pinkie side, or it can be a punching style of knife. Here is the good news buried in all that variety: we address every one of them the same way.

One more truth about what the edge can do. Anywhere his shoulder, his elbow, or his body can move, that blade can cut or stab. It works in every direction. It works fast, and it can cover a lot of real estate on a body in a short amount of time. That is exactly why the answer you will read below is not a fancier grip or a faster hand. It is taking the limb that runs the blade out of the fight.

Two Ways a Blade Shows Up

Edged weapon encounters come in two types, and you train for both.

An active attack is the blade already working. Slashing, stabbing, moving.

A threat is the knife as intimidation. Brandished out in the open, or pressed against you, using fear to make you comply.

The pillar already told you when the defense starts: at recognition. A knife in his hand is the attack. You do not wait to find out which type he has in mind.

Both types get the same distance rule, and it is the rule for every weapon in this family: be very out, or very in. Out means gone. A blade cannot reach across a room, so if the exit exists, the exit wins. In means attached, controlling the limb, doing the work this article describes. The one place you never stay is the space in between, where the edge can reach you and your hands control nothing.

You May Be Cut. Here Is What That Actually Means.

Now stand in front of the sentence this article promised, because reading it once in a hook is not the same as owning it.

You may be cut. Not because you failed. Because you are in a fight with a knife.

Do not overthink this. It is no different than any other fight. If you are in a fight, you are probably going to get punched. You are probably going to get kicked. You may catch an elbow. Nobody treats those as the end of the fight. You push past them, because the fight is still happening and you are still in it. A cut belongs on that same list. It is damage, not a decision. The fight ends when the threat is done, not when the blade finds skin.

Your body already knows this, even if your mind does not yet. Many people who get cut in a real fight do not know it happened until the fight is over and the adrenaline wears off. Read that again. The wound your mind wants to treat as a stop sign is one your body often does not even register while the fight is on. Your body is built to keep you in the fight. Train your mind to match it.

We have a saying on the mat about gunfire: if you’re shot, you’re not dead. If you’re dead, you don’t know it. The same goes for the blade. If you are cut, you are not done. You keep working, and your focus stays on the only sentence that matters: I will go home.

One more thing, and it only needs one line. If you are injured, always call for medical assistance after.

Give the Blade the Cheapest Target

You cannot promise yourself zero contact. You can decide what the blade gets to touch. That is target-area awareness, and it is trained into every rep.

Palms face your body. That turns the inside of your arms, where the major blood supply and nerve supply run, toward you and away from the edge. Only the outside of your arms gets exposed, and the outside can take contact and keep working.

Your hands cover your neck. The neck is the most vital area you own: air supply, blood supply, nervous system. It gets protected first and it stays protected.

Feel what this doctrine does. It does not pretend you cannot be touched. It stacks the fight so that what may be touched is what you can afford. That is not hoping. That is positioning.

Redirect Is Almost a Stop

For edged weapons, redirection and stopping are nearly the same action. You are not swatting a blade away and resetting. You are stopping the immediate danger and staying attached to it.

The initial contact goes to the hand, wrist, or forearm that controls the weapon. The limb, never the blade. Your hands do not touch the edge, not for a grip, not for anything. And very much like long gun defense in Long Guns: What Is the Difference, How Do I Win?, you want as many points of contact on that limb as early as possible. One hand slows it. Two hands, your body, and your head start owning it.

The Card gave you both outcomes for this letter, and both are valid here: redirect the threat, or stop the threat. Either way, you finish the redirect connected to the limb, and control has already started.

Control the Limb, Not the Blade

Control: What Is It Really and How to Get It Quickly taught the principle: take the weapon, or the limb that runs it, to a surface and pull the air out. With an edge, the modification lives in the first half of that sentence. You control the limb. The whole limb, wrist to shoulder. The blade is never the handle.

The position is two-on-one, and the math of it should give you confidence: your two arms, your body, and your head, all working against his one limb. His arm gets pinned to your frame, and everything the control article taught you about your body as a surface stays in play.

The wrap has rules. The arm closest to his shoulder wraps under. The arm closest to his wrist wraps over. The defense may start as two scoops, both of your arms under his limb, and then the wrist-side arm converts over the top as the fight demands. Your head adds pressure and position while staying out of harm’s way, the same two jobs it always has. And your knees go to work, because knee strikes create damage and damage creates control. Every attack’s job is more control. That rule did not change when the weapon did.

If these positions feel familiar, they should. This is the same two-on-one positioning that law enforcement and private security control tactics are built on, and it draws heavily on the clinch and positional control you build in Level 2 and Level 3. Those skills get built on the mat, with an instructor correcting your angles. What this article carries is what they all serve: one limb, completely owned, and a blade that no longer moves.

Take Away Is Usually No. Here Is the Yes.

Take Away: Do You Even Have to Take the Weapon Away? gave you the judgment: a knife is not a distance weapon. If the fight is yours and the exit exists, take the exit, not the weapon. That judgment stands. This section is for the fight where the exit does not exist and the blade has to come out of the fight.

Start with what we do not teach. The common knife disarm in Krav Maga circles is called a cavalier, a wrist manipulation that drags the weapon out of the hand. Does it work? At times. Is it an option? It is. But can a smaller defender perform a technical wrist manipulation on a larger attacker, under the stress of a fight for their life? We doubt it. So we have essentially set it aside.

Our approach is simpler, and it is honest about what it asks of you. Two paths, and a third when the fight offers it.

One: make him go unconscious, or keep creating damage until the knife drops.

Two: break the arm. Anywhere from shoulder to wrist.

Three: his own knife, turned into him.

We do these things in a technical fashion, but brutally. Brutally does not mean wild and it does not mean emotional. It means your whole body is involved and committed to the action. That might be sprawling on the arm you own with outside two-on-one control, taking him to the ground, and driving your whole body through his elbow. It might be lifting his elbow and driving his own blade into his chest, repeatedly, until the threat is done. When a blade is in the fight, your life is in danger, and the fight demands full commitment.

But hear the whole rule, because commitment has a boundary. You commit fully to the break or the blade without giving anything back. Not your position. Not your control. Not your awareness or your mobility. Everything that put you in charge of this fight stays in place while you finish it. If taking the action costs you the position, you are not ready to take the action. That is the same patience the take away article taught you, wearing edged weapon clothes.

Machete and Broken Bottle

The family is bigger than the pocket knife, and the rule you already have holds across all of it: very out, or very in.

A machete is a longer tool with more power and weight behind each swing. It does more damage in a single pass, and it is less nimble. Understand what that means in tight quarters: in a close, confined space, a pocket knife does more damage than a machete. Do not let the size of the tool set the size of your fear.

A broken bottle brings its own dangers. Glass can break off inside a wound. The wounds are dirtier. And in a disarm attempt, it may break in your hands and add injury to you. One more reason the take away is usually no.

Different packages. Same doctrine. Name the edge, control the limb that runs it, and the differences get small fast.

Action and Commitment

Here is what carries out of this article, and it is the same thing that simplifies everything else: action and commitment are the key.

The blade is fast. It needs no wind-up. It may touch you. None of that changes your job, and none of it changes the order. You recognize, and the defense has started. You stop the limb and attach to it. You own it, wrist to shoulder, with everything you have. You create damage until the fight is yours, and you only take the blade if the exit will not do.

You may be cut. You will keep fighting. And you will go home.

Redirect. Control. ATTACK. Take Away. The order never changes.

Train More…Fear Less.