The Academy of Viking Martial Arts does not glamorize weapon use, but we do teach techniques to defend against, disarm and use weapons in life threatening situations.

If you ever find yourself in being attacked by someone with a weapon, the best thing to do is to get away from such a situation as fast as possible. If you can't run away, or believe that you must defend yourself and others, what then? In this situation, self-defense techniques are needed.

Hopefully, you will never be attacked or end up in such a dangerous situation, but there is violent crime in the world and attacks with weapons happen. If you are serious about learning self defense skills, join a reputable martial arts school and start training.

August 17, 2019

WEAPON TRAINING by Tyr Neilsen

August 17, 2019/ AVK

Because weapons are constantly developing, the only way for a martial art to continually stay relevant is to use and train with modern tactical and utility equipment used for hand-to-hand combat and survival. For this reason, in addition to the Academy of Viking Martial Arts having training with historical Viking weapons, we also train with modern weapons.

When it comes to training or fighting with weapons, there are no combat manuals from Viking Age Scandinavia to use as source material. What we have are weapon techniques and principles from combat glima that have been passed down from generation to generation. These tried and tested batlefield combat techniques enable us to go from weapon to weapon easily, regardless of whether that weapon is a knife, a machete, an axe or a stick.

Even though weapon design and quality has changed over the centuries, basic weapons such as the stick, knife and axe are still in principle no different to Viking age sticks, knives and one-handed axes. This means that Viking combat techniques can easily be used with modern hand weapons.

We have specific drills for all weapons, but we also have principles that can be applied to all hand weapons. When we train with sticks, we don’t work with one standard size and weight of stick, but rather short sticks the size of knives, and larger sticks that range from knife size to walking stick length. By training this way, we can easily adapt to any stick we happen to find to defend ourselves with.

The same principle applies to working with knives. We drill and fight with training knives the size of folding knives, through to tanto, dagger, Ka-Bar size, and even Bowie knife size. By doing this, we learn to defend against all kinds of knives, and can quickly adjust to defending or using a very small knife or a large heavy knife.

There is a massive difference between defending against or weilding a folding knife and a large utility knife. The speed and weight difference of such knives is significant, and unless you are familiar with these differences, standard drills done with only one specific training knife, can be difficult and even put you in dangerous situations.

Weapons training and especially knifework classes really improves footwork and co-ordination. A regular weapon training class starts with a warm up, then advances to basic movements and strikes, then over to dissarming techniques.

Towards the end of a class, we have weapon combat matches where we try to utilize techniques learned in that class, and finish with a chaotic knife fight grappling match. In this way we check what we have learned and understand what is feasable and what is fantasy.

All of this is done with rubber training knives and safety equipment. We always recommend using good protective gloves and forearm/lower arm protection to minimizes damage from long term clashing of arms and weapons against hands and forearms. Gumshield and protective glasses are also recommended.