Teaching the knife.

“How do you deal with a knife attack?” Teacher asked the class.  He then broke us up into groups and directed me to three of the up and coming guys, Robot and the Wonder Twins. 

I inwardly gulped because this is definitely not one of my strong points.  I keep running the moves realistically in my head and became very anxious about confronting a knife-wielder.   This comes from practical practice.  I usually get poked in the belly or sliced somewhere sensitive when we practice with our wood knives.  Tuesday was no exception for a few of our students.  Pin point bruises and a scalp laceration were the definite highlights. 

So there I am trying to run through all the techniques and the guys I’m with are pointing out everything wrong with what I’m doing.  Thankfully Teacher came up and cleared up some basic things for me.  I was teaching them out right wrist captures – which I think we can all agree on is pretty close to impossible in most instances.  Teacher showed us the bigger block on the forearm that lead to a capture a second later.  Obviously something that needs pictures to explain, but as soon as we did it everybody in my group went, “ahhhh.”  The universal sign of understanding concept and action all at once. 

Even though my teaching was sub par I did feel a moment of pride in being able to remember 90% of the basic techniques –even Teacher did a small ahhh over things he’d forgotten.