Washable marker karate

[HanshiClayton]

I attended a seminar over the weekend put on by Family Martial Arts of America in Martinez, CA. It is an annual affair called the "British Invasion." This year it featured Brit instructors Steve Leek and Jim McLelland.

There was a session on knife defenses that was elegantly effective. Your opponent gets a washable marker to use as a knife. You get to defend against his relentless slashes and stabs. Then you get to wear the results on your uniform for the rest of the day.

You learn two things from this. One is that an alert karate fighter can dance out of reach of the knife pretty successfully, and that downblock keeps the knife away from your stomach pretty well. Also, the attacker is so fixated on the knife that he leaves his face open. It is extremely difficult to catch his knife hand but the technique where you clap the knife out of his hand works better than most. And lastly, you learn that all of the above translates into this: several seconds. You can mount a successful defense against the knife for several seconds. Then he gets you. It would be best to use the time wisely.

I did this exercise with my class last night. I have never seen them have so much fun. The only worry is that the markers have to be kept below the level of the face. This isn't realistic, but you could put a person's eye out otherwise. This created an issue for me, because I have a one-room schoolhouse with students from six to sixty. I took the youngest and put them on the sidelines because I simply didn't trust them to do this safely.

The rest of the group went at it with high energy, and in short order 90% of them looked like tic-tac-toe games. The other 10%, however, were unmarked. I'm going to have to watch them and see how they do that.

Note: This is a knife-avoidance drill, not a knife-fighting drill. In a knife-fighting drill both fighters have a marker. That is a lot of fun but I don't think it is a healthy thing to share with kids. The community might not understand.