Rules? No Rules in a Knife Fight!

So a quick review of the knife seminar:

Mushtaq showed some basic moves from his training, Sonnon showed a few moves from his Russian background, and we all danced back and forth for a little while waving our training blades and a fun time was had by all. (Well, except maybe for one guy who had stayed after the main Path seminar who, at the end, voiced a question/opinion that this was nasty stuff, all this cutting and stabbing business, and why would he want to know it?)

Both Mushtaq and Sonnon are well-spoken and effective teachers, and what they showed us mostly didn't violate any principles of the art I study. You can't learn this kind of thing in two hours, it takes a lot of practice, but the idea was to open a door and show a glimmer of the material on the other side.

I'd offer that people who are serious about self-defense in today's society take a class like this, just to understand how dangerous a knife is. There's a silat guy who says that a knife takes away your first five years of training. By this he means, that even a fairly-untrained person with a blade is not somebody you want to face barehanded. Steel beats flesh most of the time.

I have spent some time training with knives, and what last night did was re-enforce the belief that going up against somebody with a blade who knows how to use it, even if you have one of your own, both of you are going to get cut. The only questions are, where and how bad ...

Afterward, a bunch of use decamped to Todd and Tiel's house, where they had prepared a sumptious feast. We sat around, ate, drank, and talked, and it was an intellectually stimulating and interesting evening. I left around midnight and they were still going.

(And in truth, Bobbe's euro-trash beer wasn't too bad. A little stale, being in the bottle so long, but better than Brew 102. Terry Trahan and I spent maybe a little too much time picking on the Kid, but he was a good sport about it.)