This page is part of the official ARCHIVE COPY of the pioneering but abandoned Thrower website on knife throwing. Copyright and details

CREATIVE TRAINING

By: Ryan Osborne


The following text first appeared on the Eskrima Martial Arts list, on Mon, May 6, 1996. I enclose this contribution from Mr. Osborne because it so well illustrates one of the principles ennunciated by Mr. Sotis; namely to train so as to "...adapt to environmental weapons." My thanks to Ryan Osborne for permission to link it here.
matthew rapaport, 5/8/96

From: Ryan Osborne <josborne@CyberGate.COM>
Date: Mon, 06 May 1996 09:10:14 +0000
Subject: eskrima: Re: Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest V3 #167

When I first started training I was heavily influenced by my knife fighting instructor. He is a trainer for the CHP and has been a CHP for a long time. One of the things he used to advise us to do, was to train with and against any weapon you think you might have to face. This meant knives, sticks, chains, bottles, tire irons, machetes and razors. The list ended up including almost everything you can think of, and a few things we couldn't. Who would think of someone carrying a bag of crystal draino mixed with ground glass to throw in your eyes?

My advice to anyone wanting to learn how to neutralize and use a certain weapon is just to mess around with it. The way that we do it is that everyone picks a type of weapon that they will become proficient in. Mine was the bottle and I put a lot of time into practicing with it and understanding it's strengths and weaknesses.

When it came time to practice against a certain type of weapon you would face someone who knew how to use it(and could control it to provide added safety to his/her partner). Right away we learned what would work and what wouldn't work.

With my bottle, I had already hit it against a pole to see what it would do. It broke. I was worried that I had been given kind of a useless weapon to model. Then I looked at the ground. The bottle had broken, but the glass shards had continued to travel in the same direction as my original strike. I thought about this for a while and came up with some good techniques for its use.

When my time came to be the attacker I made my partner wear his goggles. Everybody thought this was funny, but he did it anyway. I knew there was no way I could control my bottle so I decided to simulate it another way. As we prepared to play I turned my back and filled my hand with flour. My partner was getting some last minute instruction from my teacher and didn't see me. Turning to face each other I screamed and launched my hand towards his face. He blocked my hand with an inner block that stopped my hand. As my hand was stopped the flour flew out of my hand from the residual momentum and sprayed my partners goggles. While he was reacting to the shock, I gutted him with the end of my now jaggedly broken bottle. I looked around and everyone was silent. I thought I was in trouble, but my instructor was smiling at me and nodding his head.

On that day we learned that the best way to prepare for a weapon is to train with someone who knows how to use it. If you can neutralize that person, then an attack on the street will generally be no problem.


Mail to mjr, goto Sotis interview, Thrower, Knives, or Survival.

This page is part of the official ARCHIVE COPY of the pioneering but abandoned Thrower website on knife throwing. Copyright and details