I was shopping at Target a couple of years ago…
When a mentally ill man, jacked up on meth, rushed into the store with a knife and charged right past me.
A group of other guys came running in after him. Turns out he’d stabbed one of their friends a few blocks away.
The lunatic grabbed a young girl who was completely frozen in sheer terror, threatening to kill her.
It’s difficult to reason with someone when they’re in that state of mind. Especially if they are on hard drugs such as meth.
I was sure he’d stab the girl to death within seconds.
And when things like this happen right in front of you…
Even if it’s not happening directly to you…
You have one of two responses, flight or fee. Only rarely are you able to get yourself together enough to put up a fight.
I’d started intentionally training and practicing a handful of close quarter combat moves.
But…
In a real fight… when your adrenaline and emotions rage out of control… it’s impossible to perform complicated kicks, strikes and throws that you read about or watch videos on.
The more self-defense “moves” you know…
The more paralyzed you’ll be.
The reason why is because most self-defense tactics you read about focus on “fine motor” movements.
These are movements like reverse punches, front kicks, wrist locks, arm bars, hip throws and so on.
To be clear, they’re useful sometimes.
But in a life-and-death situation, like this one, you don’t have time to think through what you’re going to do.
You have to act on instinct and ingrained behaviors.
You have to rely on “gross motor” movements.
Like charging, running, raising your arm above your head – the primal stuff that your body knows, but has probably “forgotten”.
The insane meth addict was yelling and frantically swinging his knife around, while holding on to the girl.
If you were in this situation, what would you do?
You can’t charge at him, you can’t try to reason with him, and you can’t ignore them both.
In this situation, you need to determine if the hand that holds the knife is above or below the 90-degree point of his elbow.
In other words, is he wielding his knife above his elbow…
Or below it?
If it’s ABOVE his elbow…
Avoid grabbing the knife itself and instead get your hands around his wrist or elbow.
Raise it as high as you can and away from you.
Continue wrapping your arm around his tightly and immediately push him away as you scrape down his arm with your armpit.
Bring your fist to your chest to lock his arm using your armpit.
Stabbing someone comes from using your whole arm. You can’t easily or effectively stab with just your wrist, you so need to try to disable his whole arm.
If it’s BELOW his elbow…
Get your hands around his lower arm.
Keep one hand high and one low to “surround” his elbow.
Push down to prevent him from retracting the weapon.
Collapse into him as you redirect the weapon to the outside of your body.
Wrap your arm around his tightly and immediately push him away as you scrape down his arm with your armpit.
You need to get below his elbow to minimize his range of motion with the knife.
The whole key is to disable the arm, reduce the range of motion, which essentially impairs the arm. Knowing these tactics and keeping these guidelines in mind can help to reduce the harm in these situations.