3 Rules To Save Your Life!

Reprinted with permission of Inside Kung-Fu Magazine

Three fundamental rules are universal truths to surviving a violent attack. They apply to all forms of combat, including extreme fighting and all martial arts competitions, street violence, law enforcement confrontations with violence, and military combat and strategy.

They are:

Violate one of these principles and you may survive. Violate more than one of these rules and you lose every time.

How do these strategies apply to surviving an attack against an edged weapon? We will discuss each principle and with the use of analogy and photos hope to illustrate the reason behind the importance of each rule.

Control of Distance
Aside from running away, which still remains the first option, you must control the distance – period. For example, your wife and children are with you or you are cornered. Let me add that during the course of any violent confrontation you are always looking for an escape route. The longer the fight lasts, even if you are winning, the better the chances are for serious, life-threatening injuries.

The only way to control distance is to take it away. Given no other choice, you must close the gap immediately. Think of a boxer with a lightening-fast, stinging jab. He peppers his opponent at will as long as the opponent stays in the range where the jab can be effective.

How do you truly negate the jab? Should you bob, weave, circle left, right or throw your own jab, all common defenses in the ring? None of these. The reason? Because in less than two seconds the opponent’s jab is back in your face once again. Now relate each jab to a knife strike cutting two-to-three inches into arteries, muscles, tendons and vital organs. What is the only truly effective counter to the jab? The clinch. In fact, it is so effective that there are rules in boxing that do not allow the clinch to happen. It effectively stops the fight.

The Opponent Must React To You
We do an illustrative drill in my classes on the first morning. I take the biggest, most athletic, and best-trained individual out of the class and give him my stationary hand as a target. I tell him to jab my hand as hard and fast as he can. Ten hits out of ten jabs every time. Next all I do is move my hand slowly left to right. Now there are only eight hits out of ten jabs. Next I move my hand (slowly) up, down, left, right, in a random motion. Immediately, we go down to four-to-six hits for every ten jabs. The only thing I have done is add movement to the scenario; not fast movement, just movement.

The opponent has to react to me and he can never react fast enough to be accurate and effective. Taking it further, how accurate do you think the ten jabs would be if you were kicking, punching, screaming and generally trying to tear off the guy’s head. All you did was add a little movement. As long as you can keep him reacting to you, you have taken away about 70-to-80 percent of the attacker’s offensive capabilities.

You will always have to first react to the attack. When something hits you out of nowhere, the only thing you can do is react. Your mind and body won’t let you do anything else. But, from that moment forward you must cause the attacker to react to you, especially when the attacker has a knife.

How do you do this? You must move, you must attack and must close the distance – immediately. Remember, the longer you stay in the jabbing zone the more chances he has to hit you. Don’t forget that this jab has a razor sharp piece of steel on the end of it. Any one hit could kill you.

Destruction Of The Opponent
When do you do once you have closed the gap and clinched with a knife-wielding opponent? You must destroy him. What do I mean by that? I’m not advocating deadly force. You must judge and act accordingly to those circumstances yourself. Destroying the opponent means removing him as a threat so he may no longer harm you in any way. Knocked out, choked out, broken bones, whatever the case may be.

Notice I did not say removing or disarming the weapon. Why? To quote an associate of mine, "You have far more to fear from a deadly man than a deadly weapon." Take away the weapon and you still have to deal with the man. If he is truly bent on your destruction then there is still a strong chance he may accomplish his task.

Concentrating on the weapon – in this case the knife – is the surest way of allowing the weapon to do the most damage. You must focus on the individual. Take away the weapon and you will still have a threat. Take away the man and you have no threat.

There are four things you, being unarmed, can use to effect the disabling of the attacker or any opponent for that matter. These are always effective and there is nothing the opponent can do to negate them. They are results of the way God and nature has designed us. Each one is singularly effective, but when used in combination they are absolutely effective and are the foundation on which my entire system is based – no secrets, no hocus-pocus, no special nerve centers.

Here’s what they are and how they work:

                    A. Destruction of Balance
Take away the balance and the body will always try to break its fall. Instincts are at work here. You can’t be offensive when you’re being thrown violently to the ground.

                    B. Obstruction of Airways of Blood Flow
Take away air to the lungs or blood flow to the brain and the mind and body start to panic. Again, an instinct that cannot be fought.

                    C. Obstruction of Vision
Have you ever played basketball or any other sport and been poked in the eye? Everything short circuits as you drop to your knees with your hand over your eye. No fight left.

                    D. Structural Damage
Pain tolerance under extreme duress is amazing. Individuals have been beaten, sucker punched, shot and even hit by cars and have still continued their course of action. However, they would not have been able to continue if their knee was broken, shoulder dislocated, or elbow popped out of joint or broken. Again, think of any time you have seen a basketball game where a player has just sprained an ankle. He usually rolls around the floor grabbing his leg. In no way can he hop right up and keep playing. If you do structural damage to a joint, tendon, ligament or bone, no matter how much someone can tolerate the pain, the joint won’t function physically and is pretty much in capacitated. I’ve never seen an effective one-legged knife fighter.

These principles and rules have been collected and distilled through thousands of actual violent attacks and the compilation of years of experience from literally hundreds of law enforcement and military sources. These principles will help you deploy whatever martial discipline you use to a more effective end, and will greatly enhance your ability to survive an actual violent physical encounter. The bottom line is not your technique, but rather what you do with your technique.

Ernest Emerson is owner/president of Emerson Knives, Inc. The knives which he has designed and produced are used by elite military and law enforcement agencies throughout the world. Emerson is a lifetime devote to martial arts and has trained and taught with the world’s finest tactical and "real world" instructors, including the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, Marine Force Recon, British SAS, FBI, DEA and various other government agencies. For information regarding Emerson Knives or Edged Weapons seminars contact Emerson Knives, Inc., P.O. Box 4325 Redondo Beach, CA 90278-8525; (310) 542-3050.