by Lee Morrison
Without doubt, the most difficult knife attack to deal with is the dreaded “grab and stab.” This is also the most common knife assault during an ambush, as well as a means to follow up once the knifer has closed on his target and achieved some kind of indexed (holding) position. The reality from here is grim — if you’ve missed all the prethreat indicators that led here, then you’ve fucked up big time. Chances are that you’re getting stabbed at least once. Now it’s a matter of limiting the damage: keeping your head, destroying the threat, and seeking immediate medical attention.
Before we start looking at options here, let me emphasize an important point: all good self-protection skills start with good personal-security skills — i.e., “street smarts,” or soft skills. This starts with your level of observation and situational awareness, followed by an immediate ability to orientate what is happening as it unfolds — threat recognition.
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It’s all well and good being aware, but aware for what? It obviously helps if you know what you’re looking for. Bottom line: it doesn’t matter how skilled you are in a physical sense, nor does it matter what weapon you are carrying (where applicable). If you don’t see the threat coming, you can’t do anything about it! So initial threat management is critical.
The combative toolbox is the physical side of the self-protection equation, or the fight-management part. The tools in the toolbox are the hard skills capable of dealing with the conflict in a physical sense. These are driven by the attitude and mentality to win, along with the tactical application of pro-action where possible. But make no mistake, what happens before and during the prelude to the event (pre-conflict) is essential information for increasing your odds of success. All human behavior is preceded by certain behavioral cues, and predatory behavior is no different. The key is to see what’s happening as early as possible so you can be proactive at the first opportunity. In the case of the dreaded grab and stab, if your first recognition of what’s happening is the guy grabbing you in preparation to stab you, then guess what? Chances are you are going to eat one. What happens next in an immediate responsive sense depends on where you’ve been stabbed, how bad you’re hurt, and how you deal with that psychologically.
If that first stab hits you in the heart, lung-chest area, or neck, then chances are the fight is already over. The immediate shock will most likely freeze your ability to respond, giving your attacker the opportunity for follow-up stabs with vicious forward drive. If your startle response to getting grabbed unexpectedly leads to an efficient default or startle guard position, then chances are your attacker might not have an immediate path to attack the above target areas right off the bat, in which case at least the first stab might only be a sustainable belly stab, As long as you keep your head, you can then employ an immediate, explosive counter-response, ending the threat and seeking immediate medical attention.
In the best case, you see the threat unfold and extract yourself from the situation, but we all know that shit happens . . . in which case you need an option. OK, the best worst-case scenario: you employ an immediate counterattack to the initial grab (as shown) and interrupt his movement without getting cut. From here, terminate the problem with the intent of wiping his fucking bloodline clean! He’s just offered you lethal force, so respond in kind and overwhelmingly!
But you must get real here — all methods of counterassault where you have momentarily lost initiative must be trained under startle duress via spontaneity training. Once competence is gained in training, you must test what you’ve learned under stress. The bottom line is, if you want to know whether your counter-response will stand up under the duress of a fight before such an event happens in real time, then you must simulate under stress conditions. That’s why our Urban Combatives curriculum is based on principle response, not technical response. Examples include the default position or startle guard reflex, which is designed to provide a nondiagnostic approach to covering your head.
Scenario: Something is coming at your head really fast. You catch a slight inclination of this and simply cover your noggin. From here, the cover principle is to crash in, stifling the subject’s further movement, and counterassault until it’s over — hence the principle cover, crash, and counter.
Similar principle-based responses apply to counter knife options. The key to progression here is to grasp the concepts, practice to understand them, and then pressure-test them with spontaneity drills and scenario training until they are absolutely reliable. If what you do works for you, you have a highly probable and workable option when and if spontaneity takes the reins. If you are forced to go midbrain, as you will in such situations, your subconscious will remember similar events and “autopilot” your response, which is very fucking useful when you can’t think. But to get here, you must train in an emotional state.
OK back to the counter-response. The absolute nanosecond the subject indexes your body with a grab, you must explode into a response. That is easier said than done when your startle reflex is triggered, but the correct training can and will bring it out. Remember speed of action is twofold: first via visual recognition and then followed immediately by cognitive response. In others words, see the stimuli and then signal the brain to respond. Again the correct training can help reduce this time lag, as can keeping your response options minimal in number (Hick’s law).
In my opinion, your only option here is to flank away from the limb bearing the weapon. The main hurdle with that is you must first negotiate the holding arm obstruction to your body. In the accompanying example, the subject grabs and yokes up my clothing as he attempts to immediately stab me. My response is to grab his elbow and explosively rip it inward as I step deeply and urgently to the flank of his weapon side, traumatizing his elbow and shoulder structure.
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Next, I smash both hands simultaneously into the front of his face and back of his skull with as much impact and bad intent as I can muster, snapping his head back for a fast takedown. The force-to-threat ratio here is extreme, but with that said, I still want the presence of mind to control his descent to the ground, if possible impacting his body hard but preventing the back of his head from hitting the pavement at all, because of the obvious consequences to me should I need to justify my actions from a legal perspective. Be sure to guard your head once you release to follow up.
From here, if necessary I follow up until the threat completely subsides either with a knee drop or a stomp to the ankle to destroy his mobility or a stomp onto the weapon-bearing hand if he hasn’t already dropped it yet.
In the worst scenario — for example, if an assailant grabs me somehow and attempts to keep pumping the blade into my body — I escalate force accordingly. In this example, I kick his head to shut down his computer.
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Needless to say, in such a situation the objective is to escape at the earliest opportunity.
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Lee Morrison is the founder of Urban Combatives and is featured in the three Paladin DVDs: Mass Attacks, Urban Combatives, Volume 1 and Urban Combatives, Volume 2.