Martial Arts Village

sorry I disagree, try it with your students get them to do a technique against a hook punch then against a knife. their attitude changes..
 
Dave wilson teaches a parry drill, un-armed against a Bo (staff) before moving onto open hand drills. Don't fear the weapon, be weary of the opponent...

Rob if the opponent is good with a blade you wouldn't know they had one til it was in you. If they show you it then there is a good chance it is a bluff to make you comply....

:lol  You are preaching to the converted - we do this all the time

Alright fine, have it your own way, I don't know shit about anything :wallbash

Weapons in a pub:-

Door handles, the amount of damage you get banging someone ito one when asking them to leave is massive lol
 
Hoodies, pull them over their heads to blind them. Also works with backpacks (no jokes about bombs please) pulled down or back makes the straps trap arms.

Thats not what I meant, to often people don't get good training against weapons. This can be far worse than not training at all. It gives false confidence in their own ability. I teach that every punch should be treated as there is a blade you haven't seen.
 
The thing about forums is that people don't know other peoples backgrounds, I have respect for what you are saying rob, and i think we have come away from the thread a little. maybe start another thread??

Yes, martial arts are, and so are weapons.  Both are tools designed for the same purpose.  Note in your example how you combined "excellent" and "mediocre" - the juxtaposition is necessary because the weapon makes the armed person more dangerous, and a significant skill disparity is necessary to overcome that advantage.  We invented invented weapons to make ourselves more lethal.  We invented systematic ways of fighting (with and without weapons) to make ourselves more lethal.  Either can overcome the other, but one is a whole lot easier to acquire.
Having a weapon certainly makes someone more lethal.  A bad empty hand fighter can only do so much damage with poor form.  Maybe he'll get lucky and catch your cornea with his fingernail, but the odds are slim.  A weak strike may hurt him more than it'll hurt you.  A bad fighter with a knife only needs to make physical contact to do serious damage.  No matter how weak his techniques or poor his alignment, any contact is potentially lethal.  The same is true to a much lesser extent with a bludgeoning weapon - more than mere contact is required to cause harm, but building up momentum with a stick is pretty easy, and hitting with somewhat poor alignment is much less likely to damage the attacker than if he were hitting empty-handed (granted, if he's doing something incredibly, terribly, stupidly wrong, he could hurt himself by hitting you with a stick, but let's assume that the attacker has the basic coordination skills necessary to carry him through the day).  Range is one way to make a person more lethal (by making him safer from counter attack if nothing else), but range isn't the common factor for all weapons - the increased danger is.  Brass knuckles give me a fraction of an inch of additional range, but they're still cause to make an opponent more careful when fighting me because of the additional risk.

Absolutely .. couldn't agree more .. over confidence is a very good way to get yourself killed

You remind me of an old Eastender I used to drink with Fair points, Erik

for the record, I've never owned (or even held) a pair of brass knuckles.

However, some of the smaller Southeast Asian knives add no more range than brass knuckles do (some aren't even terribly effective at a punch's full range, like some of the smaller kerambits that have recently become so popular among MAists).

The same would be true of a Stanley knife or a razor blade!  You don't need to travel far to find one of those!  (In Britain's murky past razor blades sewn into the brim of a cap were I believe a favourite weapon of thugs in the early 20th century).
 
 
My brother moved to Asturias in Northern Spain a few years ago, where he and his wife bought a big old house and have been restoring it. The previous owners were three brothers who all died of old age in the house - they were a lawyer, a priest, and a vet (this sounds like the start of a joke but trust me, it's true).
 
In clearing out the house he found amongst their possessions a set of brass knuckledusters. It's been a point of interested debate amongst the family ever since - which brother did they belong to?
 
G

Quite right, but that really depends on your skills and training. I mean you'll need lot of practice and courage to fight back completely ignoring the  knife or other weapon. but if you are able to think (mentally) that there isn't any weapon and both are equal, that will give a great advantage combined with great courage to fightback.

Usually within a few months. Stick at first rank, knife and double stick at second, staff at third, machetes at fourth, titjiu (sai), broadsword, and intro to three-section staff at fifth, and straight sword at sixth.

You wouldn't know it from looking at that last paragraph, but weapons training is a relatively minor part of our system as I teach it. I think it's important to understand them, so they're interwoven throughout the ranks. I also think that the breadth is important, because once you learn weapons that have a variety of properties, improvising weapons becomes relatively straightforward. Is it long or short? Is it blunt or sharp? Is it rigid or flexible?

No its not, Weapons training is extremely important.

Its CAT 5 for crying out loud. The slowest possible category in the planet... All this negativity... you channel toward a little training.

Ill call you Monday for your help on the 705 :

Lloyd