Edged Weapon Training
Intelligent Approach for How to Survive a Knife or Edged Weapon Scenario
Non-police staff should not be expected to deal with any incident involving a weapon.
The logic is simple in that if the police were called and told that you there is a person with a weapon who is trying to hurt themselves or others, then the police despatch will send the appropriately trained and equipped officers to the scene. The argument has always been that if you and your team do not have an arsenal of weapons and equipment to approach someone with a knife or edged weapon, then staff should not be expected to confront the person. However, where we have teams of contact professionals working with people in Mental Health, Anti-Social Behaviour, Security or Enforcement roles, there is a risk that they may be engaging with people who could, unexpectedly and unforseen by even a competent risk assessment, produce blades or edged weapons into a scenario. It is just possible that a knife or other edged weapon might be introduced into a situation even though it was never expected by the people who went into the interaction.
TRAINING PROCESS for SURVIVAL versus a Knife or Edged Weapon
Our training is designed to help staff to carefully and safely approach and address the risks of a bladed weapon assault. The training process passes through several phases, starting with simple skills about how to reduce the effectiveness (lethality) of an assailant’s slashing, stabbing and thrusting movements with the blade which anyone can learn in a few hours of dedicated and focussed practice with a qualified and professional trainer. Next, our learners begin to explore both instinctive protective behaviours which are integral to their body’s survival system and also the assailant’s predictable behaviours as we attempt to reduce the lethal effectiveness of their use of the edged weapon. We progress through stages of training which help the learners to get a feeling of control and ‘relative comfort’ with what is happening, gradually allowing them to explore their options for bringing the situation into relative safety. This training course is quite intense and requires hours of work, however we achieve excellent results – in safety – by carefully replicating the process and the pressure of real knife assaults so that we achieve the best training fidelity possible and send our trainees back to their workplace with a greater degree of confidence that they can positively influence the outcome of a situation where an edged weapon appears.
EDGED WEAPON SURVIVAL COURSE
LEARNING STAGES:
- Issues in Dealing with an Edged Weapon (the 5 paradoxes)
- Risk Management and Understanding Duty Of Care
- Understanding Reasonable Force in a Knife Assault
- The mechanics of blade usage and mitigating damage
- Physical Skills: The blade as a Weapon of Intimidation
- Physical Skills: The blade in Motion
- Physical Skills: The concealed blade
- Physical Skills: The compound assault with blade
- After-action issues
For a full and thorough treatment of our approach to training for Edged-Weapon Survival, please read the article here: https://www.dynamis.training/community-safety-and-the-threat-of-knife-crime-part-2/
- The training course from Dynamis fulfilled or exceeded expectations 99.6%
- Our Dynamis instructor had a very good or excellent level of knowledge and competence 98.2%
- The theory and knowledge components helped me professionally 98.9%
- The techniques and tactics were appropriate to real scenarios in our work 98.6%
- Our Dynamis trainer observed good Health and Safety practices 100%
- The Dynamis training course was of the right duration to gain the skills and knowledge I needed 91.2%




