Kelly Worden's "Practical Knifefighting For Personal Protection."

"Practical Knifefighting For Personal Protection" Volumes One and Two by Kelly Worden

After all of these years and so many training videos released by so many people, these two videos remain the best "Nuts and Bolts" training videos as far as I'm concerned.

There is a whole line of thought that it is impossible to learn from a video. For most people, that is all too true. I started out wanting to learn how to use two things because of a job that I had. I wanted to learn how to best use the ASP Telescoping Baton and edged weapons.

The reason was very simple, I had a very dangerous job that used to not only allow employees to carry a handgun open or concealed, but they encouraged it. One anti-gun corporate weasel who would rather shed crocodile tears at the needless death of an employee instead of giving them the tools that would give them a fighting chance put an end to that.

So, I already knew what I needed. I needed Filipino Martial Arts (FMAs) training and I sought that out. I was disappointed because what I needed, I needed in a short period of time. I didn't expect to "master" what I needed in a short period of time, but I needed to start learning it NOW, not weeks, months or years later.

I was in an Arnis Class and things were going at a snail's pace and what I learned was valuable but I had been reading for years about Dan Inosanto's thoughts on FMAs and I thought that was the way to go. The reputation of FMAs when it came to sticks and knives was solid and that's what I wanted.

Unfortunately, the guy running the school had other priorities and one of them was Tae Kwon Do. I had already been through the whole Tae Kwon Do and Tang Soo Do thing when I was a teenager and I was simply not interested in it. But that was the cash cow and if you didn't cough up the money and get into that as well, you just were not going to get what you wanted.

So, I learned what I could and I was frustrated and eventually I left that school. A few years later I started reading about James Keating and Kelly Worden and after a while and some rave reviews in Fighting Knives and Full Contact Magazines, I started pouring some money into those materials. And what I learned was amazing. Now, I already had the all-important understanding of the footwork from FMAs, I was already skilled to a degree. I just needed the knife-specific material but I couldn't obtain it. I mean, I didn't just want it, I had a legitimate need above and beyond the legitimate need of a regular Citizen wanting to learn these arts. I didn't want it for cultural reasons or as a hobby, I wanted lifesaving skills.

So, my advice to you is, as it has been a constant coming from me for years, you need to get into a Filipino Martial Arts class. You need to learn that and then, if you are not getting what you want out of it or, you want to take a look at other people's movements, then you can go and purchase material like this.

These two videos are an awesome foundation, bedrock, to lifesaving skills using edged weapons. I know that other "names" in "knifefighting" have criticized Kelly Worden for some of his materials over the years. It's really easy to do when you are putting out stuff that's demonstrably not as good, trying to knock down your competition. Or, more cowardly, you send out your students and your online fans to basically stalk and harass your competition. Now, isn't that low? I've watched it for years.

A lot of people think you need to spend years and years and years in this stuff, to learn how to tear someone to pieces in a few seconds. It's simply not true. As one Pekiti Tirsia Instructor told me years ago, Doctors, Surgeons, spend about a decade and a half learning to put people back together that have been shot, stabbed, cut, beat up, stomped or torn apart in car accidents. Why should it take that long to learn how to tear the body apart? That's wisdom. This is a science, but it's not rocket science.

Likewise, our wonderful friends on the street and some that eventually go on to serve prison time, what about them? They're pretty effective at what they do and what they do is victimize some of the most violent and paranoid people on the planet - their fellow prisoners. The only kids they put through college was their lawyer's kids, not some martial arts instructor. So, you don't have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to the guy who has the knowledge you want anymore, you don't have to stroke his ego and kiss his ass. You can pour your foundation and then go your own way and build on it if you are serious.

If you can only afford two DVDs on using an edged weapon for self-preservation, these would be the two to purchase. They are that good.