Knife Grappling: Science and Strategy of Knife Defense
I am an instructor of Filipino martial arts. I come from a striking background, from the kickboxing of the 1980s. Then, in the mid-1990s, I encountered the martial arts of Southeast Asia, and it was love at first sight. My world today is that of Filipino Kali and Indonesian Silat. My practice largely involves blades, sticks, and knives, specialties in which the management of distance, timing, and the selection of priorities proves vital.
I have never believed in the idea of absolute safety, neither standing nor on the ground, and even less so with a weapon in hand.
Against a blade, it is not a matter of if you will be cut, but of when, how, how much, and where.
From there, this work was born. It is an attempt to bring order to chaos, to establish priorities, to accept that the true competence lies in managing damage.
This text exists because, while observing the world of modern combat arts, I have seen errors repeated that, when working with weapons, are paid for immediately and at a very high price. Positions considered correct with empty hands, or even dominant, that become traps once weapons enter the equation.
Well-executed strikes, solid controls that ignore what is happening beneath the surface-that veins, arteries, and nerves are merely entry points for a blade.
The grappling component you will find in these pages is not the result of an external or theoretical interpretation. It was born from direct collaboration with Luca and Marco Alfarano, my sons, grapplers who grew up on the tatami and are accustomed to thinking in terms of positions, transitions, and control. Our work was to bring into dialogue two worlds that too often ignore each other.
I brought the blade and its tricks; they brought the body and its levers. This book is the result of a dialogue and of several fundamental questions: what truly holds up when a weapon comes into play? What remains valid? What must be reconsidered? What, quite simply, must be abandoned?
It is a continuous study, a map of common mistakes and of better choices to make under pressure. A subject as complex as knife fighting, with such a high number of variables and dangers, required multidisciplinary theoretical preparation before physical preparation. The techniques, movements, sequences, and drills had to be supported by a logical background; they had to be accompanied by a study of human anatomy and its vulnerable points. The techniques had to be subordinate to it. But research of this kind also had to involve a deeper understanding of how the mind analyzes what is happening, how it learns, how it reacts in training, how it memorizes, and, finally, how it functions and changes under extreme stress.
Considerable space has also been devoted to the strategic aspect of combat. For years, in my seminars, I have dedicated part of the time to the application of the OODA Loop decision cycle developed by John Boyd. Boyd's Cycle therefore runs through this work from beginning to end, analyzing every single phase and relating it to training, practical applications, and stress-management work.
A program and a method based on knife fighting, in the selection and development of techniques and positions, cannot ignore the reality of what happens to our minds while fighting for survival. All the applications and physical transitions that will be covered in Volume 2 will therefore be developed while taking into account the various subjects discussed here.
This book is intended for practitioners, instructors, and above all for those who have the courage to question what has always worked in contexts where a blade is not involved.
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