Edged weapon defence seminar Loughborough 2006

Edged weapon defence seminar

EDGED WEAPON DEFENCE COURSE, Loughborough, 4th June 2006.



This is the Scottish contingent who attended the recent CQB edged weapon defence seminar at Loughborough.


Denis McGee, Robin Gibson, Al Beckett, Dave McCutcheon and in the centre Den Martin

The other lads picked me up at 6am for the journey south, travelling down together and discussing all aspects of combatives, reliving past experiences and sharing stories was actually a great part of the day for me, Den refers to this as the halls of training, the time past very quickly and we soon arrived at Loughborough.
The seminar was held in John Skillen’s martial arts and fitness academy, http://www.johnskillenmaf.com/ , John has an excellent set up with all the latest weight training equipment, fully matted training area and various types of punch bag hanging all round the walls, John is one of the best and I would recommend anyone in the area to get along for some top class training.
The seminar began with one of Dennis’s first class power point presentations, we looked at the knife threat and Den really made us think about what is an edged weapon, many of the example that he gave a lot of people would never even think of.
We also went over the history looking at mans evolution in the use of raw materials as tools and weapons, using tools to make tools and better weapons and then training in the use of these weapons at various schools each being indigenous to certain areas.
Next we went into the attributes of the knife, blade profile, edge sharpness, momentum etc.
Fighter attributes, killing desensitisation, commitment, deception, lethality and psychological edge.
We looked at cues and indicators of someone carrying a knife and intending to use it, we looked at the knife threat from various high risk groups and the mechanism of wounding, all of these aspects were supported by some very graphic photographs and video clips.
We then went on to some of the myths of a knife fight/attack which all brought us back to the vital pyramid that prevails throughout Den’s CQB seminars.


This led us into the physical part of the day first learning some ways of using a knife in order to better understand how to defend against it, when it comes to the defences Den always advocates the crawl, walk, run approach as it is always best to take things one step at a time, so we began with single mild attacks then escalating thus getting used to the type of defence before seriously applying it, we moved progressively through the defensive drill, first stopping the attack then neutralising the attack and finally controlling the attacker.
Changing partners frequently allowed us to hone the skill as we were attacked by different sizes of opponent each having a very different body language from the previous attacker.
The effectiveness of the system was then reinforced as we formed two circles with Den in the middle of one and Si Squires in the other, they then worked their way round each person in the circle attacking with stabs, thrusts, lunges, slashes, over hand, under hand, changing hands, using deception and random target selection.
The final drill were three power lines with padded up attackers allowing everyone to practice the drills with full blooded strikes.
Thanks go to Dennis Martin for a wonderful days training, John Skillen for his warm hospitality and organising the event, much credit has to go to James Farthing who was used for all the demo’s and also to Si Squires and Gavin Lewis who joined James as assailants for the final drill, they took a lot of punishment for everyone else’s benefit.