ABG 2008 - Session 9

• Rokukata knife-using set, including iriminage, release 7, kotemawashi, and the long-far iriminage.  We also played wakigatame from an over-hand forearm grab.  The main point was that grabbing a guy who has a knife to try to control him is stupid and gets you killed.  Better options that we explored included brush-off to outside ma-ai, kuzushi to slow him down, and crazyman.
• stab-twice knife randori
• grab&go knife randori
• So, the lesson of the night, is don't engage with the knife guy if you can at all help it.  We worked on a couple of tactics that help with this.  Tomorrow we'll get into how these ideas fit with Sankata and Rokukata knife defenses.
• The real lesson of the night is that you can never tell who has a knife and even if you could you wouldn't want to under-estimate the potential of the unarmed guy, so you need to work to make your aiki robust so that it doesn't matter if they have a knife or not.