Street violence which can be directly related to the unlawful exercise of physical force is a reality we all live with on a daily basis. Training to protect oneself for street confrontations is very intense and quite different from training for competitions, even the No Holds Barred competitions that are very popular today. The pavement arena has no rules, anything goes and you can expect the unexpected.

Thumb through any martial arts magazine and you’ll see advertisements and the mention of the Filipino martial arts (kali, escrima, and arnis). In today’s martial arts community it’s hard to imagine a time prior to these arts’ influence. However, back in the not too distant past (the late 70’s) the Filipino martial arts were virtually unknown outside the small Filipino communities of Hawaii and Northern California.

Once the combative mind frees itself of the obstructions from necessity (primarily caused by the fixation with technique), it will evolve to its highest state of absorption and enhance its moment to moment capabilities with refined accuracy. The "fight," from its earliest point to its state of incompleteness, is so vast that any attempts at locking onto specifics deludes our chances of survival from the minimal... to the extreme.
Richard Dimitri

Not all knife attacks are the same. Unfortunately, you would never reach that conclusion by observing the way most martial arts instructors teach their students knife defense. For most systems the standard method for defeating an incoming knife is for a cooperative training partner to leave an extended arm out for a ridiculous amount of time as the defender performs a series of fine motor skills dependant techniques to deflect or disarm the weapon. Such training is anything but realistic.

My uncle once told me, “It is easier to be a doctor than a car mechanic. Doctors only have two different models to repair, but a mechanic has to know how to repair hundreds of models. This observation is humorous if you are a mechanic, but we all know that a human being is infinitely more complex than the most sophisticated vehicle.

What is the most common martial arts weapon in the united States? While weapons such as the PR-24 and extension baton have found growing acceptance in law enforcement circles, what about the general population? Undoubtedly, the most popular, and quite possible the most versatile personal defense weapon is the Kubotan.