De-Fanging the Snake: Kali's Secret Weapon

If you ever find yourself in a bad situation where you're facing a punk armed with a knife, you better hope you can run faster than he can. Because if you can't run, you better hope you know Kali. Because if you know Kali, then you can use the principle of "De-Fanging the Snake" to disarm your attacker and end the fight. A Kali person would end that fight in seconds. Think Jason Bourne or John Wick, both who are trained in Kali (yes, I know they're fictional, but their fight choreographers used Kali as their main fighting styles). My goal is to explain to you what De-Fanging the Snake is and why you should learn Kali if you're serious about protecting yourself against violence.

What is De-Fanging the Snake? This principle refers to the immediate destruction of your attacker's weapon hand or forearm to force him to release his weapon and render him harmless. The idea is that your attacker is a "snake" and you remove his "fangs" by destroying them. After you "defang" the snake, you can finish the snake or let him go. As your attacker launches his weapon at you, you destroy his incoming hand or limb with a weapon of your own. The best visual example of this is in the classic film "Empire Strikes Back." During the famous fight scene between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, Vader cuts off Luke's right hand with his lightsaber. The fight ends quickly after that. Now imagine that principle applied to a real-life situation. You're walking down the street late at night. You have a folding knife tucked in the waistband of your pants, just in case. Two men approach you. You sense they're up to no good. One man approaches you with a knife and tries to stab you. You step out of the way as you slice his right wrist wide open with your knife and follow up with a stab to the ribcage. He drops his knife and falls to the ground. The other thug tries to pull out his gun, but you've already closed the distance and stabbed his right hand and slashed his forearm, finishing with a thrust to the abdomen. The gun he tried to pull out drops to the ground, as he drops down as well. All this takes less than five seconds. This is what De-Fanging is. This is what Kali is. It's fast, direct, and simple. No wonder CIA spies use Kali. Jack Ryan would be proud.

To understand why De-Fanging the Snake works so well, we must first understand Kali. Kali is the only martial arts where the student starts training with weapons first. The beginner student learns how to use single sticks, double sticks, stick and knife, and single knife. The stick represents a bladed weapon, like a sword or machete, and it's trained that way. As a beginner student progresses through his training, he becomes more and more proficient with using weapons as a major part of his combat strategy. He becomes very comfortable with using knives and impact weapons. Later on in the advanced levels, he will learn empty-handed fighting, like Filipino boxing (Panantukan) and Filipino grappling (Dumog).

When a fight happens, a Kali practitioner would much rather prefer grabbing a weapon than going empty-handed. Who else thinks this way? Military, government, and special forces units prefer going armed versus unarmed. But if you consider that Kali was developed for military warfare, it makes sense. Think about it. Have you ever seen real combat where weapons were not involved? In every war in history, every soldier was armed. Violent criminals are armed. Violent felons in prison are armed. Terrorists are armed. Gangbangers and drug dealers are armed. In every situation where you're dealing with real violence and life-and-death, weapons are always involved. So Kali makes sense. When it comes to fighting, always expect the enemy to be armed, even if you don't see the weapon. Kali trains that way, all the time. From the very first class, a Kali practitioner is taught to make the destruction of the weapon hand or forearm the number one goal. You smash his hand if you have an impact weapon like a stick or baton. You slash his forearm if you have a knife or machete. In order for an attacker to attack you with his weapon, he has to extend his arm out in some fashion. When the weapon hand or arm presents itself, then you destroy it. immediately. The hand becomes the main target and we train for it with thousands and thousands of repetitions every year. You might be thinking, "How hard could that be? Hitting the hand sounds easy. Just grab a stick and hit his hand." But that's like saying, "How hard is it to hit a moving ping pong ball going 100 miles an hour while my life is in danger and that crazy man is trying to kill me?" Remember that violence is chaotic and unpredictable. De-Fanging the Snake is simple in theory, but extremely challenging in application. You have to train for it. You have to put in the flight time to get good at it.

If you want to have a solid and complete self-defense system for yourself, you need to learn Kali. Remember that it's not you who decides what kind of fight you're getting into. It's your attackers. I'll explain. If you only enjoy doing kickboxing, then you get tackled to the ground during a fight, you can't just tell your attacker to please let me stand up so I can kickbox you. You've ended up in ground survival mode and you have to adapt. If you only do jiu jitsu and your attacker pulls out a knife and tries to stab you, what fight is this? A knife attack, not grappling. You have to adapt to the knife attack. As you can see, if you're only familiar with fighting without weapons, you will be in a severe disadvantage if you come face-to-face with an armed attacker. Kali will give you the edge you need against an armed attacker because weapons are what we specialize. Kali practitioners are the best in the world when it comes to real modern day tactical weapons - using them and defending against them. No other martial arts even comes close to Kali. I highly recommend coming to the Tandez Academy and trying out our Kali classes. You'll feel and experience what it's like to use weapons and fight weapons in the first class.