Coming to Grips with a Dangerous Situation

Few subjectsget the knife fighting crowd more stirred up than the "correct wa(s)" to hold a knife. Crazy methids of gripping leap out of the woodwork.

Look, without getting wildly technical, there are basically two ways to hold a knife:
"Forward." The knife is held so the blade extends up from the thumb.
"Reverse." The knife blade extends below the heel of the hand.

All the main variations entail the angle of the blade to the arm, and the super important (yeah, right) placement of the fingers -- especially the thumb. What gets all the so-called experts in a dither is that digit placement... Again, you want some good, basic advice? Hold the knife so you can really hold it. Any finger placement that risks losing the knife is probably not good.

Anyway, my martial arts class got involved in a discussion of the reverse grip. It seems the question arose about whether the sharp edge of the blade belongs to the outside (i.e. away from the forearm and towards your attacker) or inside (i.e. facing the forearm and away from your attacker). The class, for whatever reason, split about 75% in favor of an outside reverse grip.

Our Teacher and Fearless Leader (FL) had contacted his own instructor, a rather well-known and respected martial artist ("He Who Shall Remain Nameless," or HWSRN) on the question. HWSRN also believes in an outside reverse grip. His standard answer was apparently provided: "Keep the dangerous part of the weapon between you and the bad guy."

I emailed my FL the following story, and now post it here for whatever it is worth...

I had a drinking buddy for many years named Bush (uh, no... not the famous one). Bush was a great storyteller and a former Marine. We talked about life, the universe and everything while drinking. The subject of knife fighting came up exactly once.

The Marines gave Bush a single block of instruction on how to use a Ka-Bar knife in combat. He learned the proper way to slit a throat and how to hold his knife in a last-ditch struggle.

The Marines told Bush to always grip the knife in the outside reverse grip. All he then had to do was punch and fight like his life depended on it. The idea was that punching was a pretty natural fighting reaction and the sharp part of the Ka-Bar would generally end up where it needed to be to do damage.

This was back in the days just after Vietnam. Formal martial arts-type training in the services wasn't widespread. On the other hand, plenty of combat vets were still in the service and knew how to get the job done. While this style of knife fighting lacks elegance, subtlety, or technique to recommend it, there is a definite sense of simplicty to the instruction. It gave the young Marines something useful to walk away with and not get lost amid their other, more specialized training.