I recently attended, what I can only describe as one of the best practical Martial Arts weapons course I have ever been too, solely on the practical Knife work in defence and attack.
The seminar was the first in a series covering many different Martial Art styles, which are being run to help fund the Scottish National Sports Ju-Jitsu team for the forthcoming in 2010 World Championships being held in Les Vegas in the USA.
These series of seminar are being solely held at the Leeds Metropolitan University state of the art sports complex Carnegie on their Headingley Campus in Leeds every 3 months.
The first seminar was hosted by Sensei Sean McHale Chief Coach and Director to the Scottish Team, who turned out to be a born natural with a knife, teaching students and instructors from many different styles and associations.
He started the course by asking us all our opinions of what we thought were our most practical knife defences were and he carefully listening to all our ideals.
He then demonstrated what he thought was his most practical knife defences, his colleagues Peter Beaumont and Paul Hirst, than both pulled out two knifes the size of which Crocodile Dundee would be proud of and attacked him and to our surprise and amusement Sensei Sean took flight, turned heel and ran in the opposite direction, screaming like a little girl.
He than explained that, only a fool would face a knife, when there is a opportunity to escape, no matter how good he or she might think they are, the best ideal is to RUN when ever possible.
He and his colleagues then started puttering us though our paces, with hour after hour of highly simple, but highly practical knife techniques.
All these techniques were highly memorable, but the scariest and most memorable of all were ones called Bio Mechanical ,where from an attacker you move your body swiftly to the side, out of the way of the forthcoming blade never depending on just your ability to defend yourself with your hands and feet, energizing that when ever possible you move your body out of line of the blade and once out of line of attack, you strike the joints of the arm and the guild the hand holding the knife back in to the would attacker, which was done in a fraction of a second.
After many more techniques Sensei Sean pointed out to us that his attacker committed suicide.
After the seminar I was curious to know how Sensei Sean had ever managed to accumulate so many knife techniques when I ask Sensei Sean he was quite modest, however later I found out later found out as well as been in the Army, that Sensei Sean had done quite a lot of travelling in his time and had made many good friends martial artists around the world, including two world finest both Martial Artists Oren and Kubie who train the Israeli Army and special forces and travel the world teaching friendly forces including the FBI and the NIB and many more.
