Yojimbo 2 Trainer

[Liquid Cobra]

Sal recently confirmed its existence and now we have a photo! CTS-BD1 steel btw.

[glutofknives]

That red g10 nearly looks translucent like the blurple g10. I wonder...

[Liquid Cobra]

That red g10 nearly looks translucent like the blurple g10. I wonder...

I suspect it's just the photo. It will probably be the same g10 that's used on the pkal trainer.

[ZrowsN1s]

That looks awesome. Definitely on my list.

[Liquid Cobra]

That looks awesome. Definitely on my list.

I knew it would be

[sal]

Nice pic.

sal

[SG89]

I wonder who will post the first photo of the black blade s90v blade in the red trainer handle? epic

[sal]

Mike developed his own style of MBC that is well thought out and very intuitive. He teaches and he's trained instructors. He does a camp in the Rockies that I understand, is worth the effort. The trainer was brought into production because of his teaching.

sal

[timlara]

I am so uncoordinated that my best bet for self defense is to run away as fast as possible and hope that I don't trip over anything....But this looks so cool I kind of want one anyway. :D

[El Gato]

I am so uncoordinated that my best bet for self defense is to run away as fast as possible and hope that I don't trip over anything....But this looks so cool I kind of want one anyway. :D

You are way ahead of me! I am not only uncoordinated, but also too old to run. My only chance might be to get one of these, and a Yojimbo, and hope for some luck. :D

Seriously though, I would like to know more about Mike's classes and instruction.
How about it Mike?
I'm sure I'm not the only one interested. :)

[Liquid Cobra]

I just found out that there is a local teacher near me that teaches MBC. I've reached out to him, I hope to hear back as I'd love to get some training.

Regarding the knife, I'm curious as to why there seems to be some extra blade stock near the tip. Maybe it's so that the blade doesn't come to such a hard point?

[ZrowsN1s]

I just found out that there is a local teacher near me that teaches MBC. I've reached out to him, I hope to hear back as I'd love to get some training.

Regarding the knife, I'm curious as to why there seems to be some extra blade stock near the tip. Maybe it's so that the blade doesn't come to such a hard point?

I'll bet getting hit with the yojimbo trainer is going to feel a lot different than the Delica trainer. Things got some meat to it :D

[VashHash]

I wonder what the price point will be. It looks good.

[Donut]

I have a trainer blade that will fit into a live Yojimbo 2 handle that one of MJ's students produced, but the factory second that I got my hands on... I ended up stripping out a couple of the screws. I got a pair of Red, Anso patterned Boomer scales to put on it.

I'll be getting at least one of these and I hope I can get those Boomer scales on it.

LC, yeah, there has to be X amount of radius to everything so if you get "poked" with it, it doesn't harm you too badly.

[The Snowman]

I guess dulling my Yojimbo and rounding the tip was a waste. Oh well.

[Michael Janich]

Seriously though, I would like to know more about Mike's classes and instruction.
How about it Mike?
I'm sure I'm not the only one interested. :)

My approach to knife-based self-defense goes back to my early martial arts training about 40 years ago. We were learning unarmed defenses against knife attacks and whenever we tried to "turn up the heat" to make them more realistic, they fell apart. As a teenager, I was naturally indignant, so I asked our senior instructor why all out counter-knife techniques sucked. He responded with a bit of wisdom I'll never forget: "If you want to learn to defend against a weapon, first learn how to use that weapon." That made sense, so I started working on knife training with a few of my like-minded training partners.

We first researched all the military manuals we could find (that's how I became a Paladin Press customer at age 13) and worked our way through the methods of Biddle, Fairbairn, Applegate, Styers, etc. In the mid 70's David Steele wrote "Secrets of Modern Knife Fighting" and did a column for Soldier of Fortune magazine and William Cassidy wrote "The Complete Book of Knife Fighting." A few years later, Michael Echanis' infamous "black book" on Hwa Rang Do-inspired knife combat came out. We worked through all of those and did hours and hours of sparring with wooden knives.

After I joined the Army at 17, I heard about the Filipino martial arts and read Dan Inosanto's book on the topic. I was convinced that the FMA were the Holy Grail of practical knife technique, and set about looking for FMA training. While stationed in Hawaii, which has a large Filipino community, I thought I'd hit pay dirt. Unfortunately, most of the Filipino instructors there would not teach non-Filipinos. After lots of dead ends, Raymond Tobosa finally took me on as a student, but would only teach me stick work--no knife. I trained with him for as long as I could (and as long as his declining health allowed) and learned some solid FMA basics. I then took Dan Inosanto's concepts of "adapting to the attributes of the weapon" and my training as an intelligence analyst and began to piece together what I thought knife self-defense ought to be. After I got out of the military and went to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency, I found myself working alone all over Asia--often in "unsavory" areas. As a foreigner, I couldn't own or carry a gun, so my motivation to make the knife a primary defensive tool was intensified and I worked even harder on refining my approach to knife tactics.

While working as a POW/MIA investigation team leader in Vietnam and Laos, I had the honor of working with Special Forces medics (we couldn't trust the in-country medical resources) and picked their brains in combatives and knife work. During a second tour in Hawaii, I also learned Serrada Eskrima and further solidified my base in FMA and refined my approach to knife skills.

In 1994, I left government service and went to work for Paladin Press. As their Video Production Manager, I had the opportunity to work and train with some true pioneers of modern knife skills--folks like James Keating, Kelly Worden, Kelly McCann, Bob Kasper, and he legendary Col. Rex Applegate. They liked what I had done with my analytical approach to knife and helped me greatly in rounding out my skills.

In 1998, Gunsite invited me to teach (as one of five instructors) at their Edged Weapon Symposium. That was the first time I actually sat down and wrote out the curriculum I was following and had started to teach to a few private students. A year later, Sal asked me if I'd be interested in teaching "Martial Blade Craft" under Spyderco's auspices. I eagerly accepted and started teaching a four-level curriculum (later five, when I added Counter-Blade skills) at Spyderco's headquarters in Golden. I taught under Spyderco's sponsorship until 2004, when I got a job offer from Masters of Defense/BlackHawk. With Sal's blessing, I moved on and changed "Martial Blade Craft" (Sal's and Spyderco's terminology) to "Martial Blade Concepts" to avoid any conflict of interest.

Around this same time, I was approached by Chris Grosz--a law enforcement officer from Littleton, CO and a master trainer of law enforcement defensive tactics. Chris was questioning the validity of W.E. Fairbairn's "Timetable of Death" as a reference for modern knife tactics. He worked with the Denver Medical Examiner and a number of vascular surgeons to disprove Fairbairn's table and asked me to help him document his findings for the LE training community. Tragically, Chris passed away during the process, but I finished the book "Contemporary Knife Targeting" in his honor. In the process of writing that book, I consulted with (and taught for) instructors at the International School of Tactical Medicine--trauma surgeons who teach SWAT medics. Based on their expert medical insights, I put the finishing touches on the targeting aspects of MBC and actually got them to endorse MBC's targeting system as a medically valid approach to knife tactics.

The current MBC system is based on the following logic:

You will fight with the knife you actually carry
You must quantify and understand the actual destructive capacity of your carry knife
Real self-defense is all about stopping power, not killing power
You must understand human anatomy and how knives REALLY stop people
You must accept and build upon the instinctive human reactions to life-threatening stress
You must use training methods that emphasize the repetition of critical skills under conditions that simulate life-threatening stress as closely as possible
You must take into account the legal, moral, and ethical aspects of self-defense, not just the combative aspects

In simple terms, I took the time-tested skills and training methods of the FMA, adapted them to the legal restrictions of modern self-defense, and added an objective understanding of human anatomy to create a system that focuses on using modern carry knives to disable violent attackers quickly and efficiently.

This year marks the 20th year since my first public seminar. During that time, MBC has continued to evolve and I have taught it to literally thousands of students all over the world. Aspects of MBC and Counter-Blade Concepts (CBC--unarmed defenses against knives) have also been incorporated into the training curricula of law enforcement agencies and elite units in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Switzerland and have been used successfully to save the lives of both officers and civilians.

If you're interested in learning more about MBC and my other systems, please visit www.martialbladeconcepts.com. If you'd like to attend a seminar where I'm teaching, check out the seminar schedule on that site. If you're looking for an authorized MBC trainer near you, please take a look at the Instructor Locator here: http://www.martialbladeconcepts.com/con ... or-locator. If there are no trainers near you and a seminar isn't in the cards, I also have a complete set of instructional videos on MBC and an online Distance Learning Program that's the next-best thing to firsthand instruction.

Thanks for your interest.

Stay safe,

Mike

[Michael Janich]

Regarding the knife, I'm curious as to why there seems to be some extra blade stock near the tip. Maybe it's so that the blade doesn't come to such a hard point?

The goal was to keep the blade length comparable to the live blade, yet make sure the radius at the tip was large enough not to be to "stabby." The challenge with Wharnie trainers is that it's too easy to radius the tip from the live-blade profile and lose a quarter of the blade length.

I hope this helps.

Stay safe,

Mike

[El Gato]

Mike;
Thank you very much for responding to my invitation for more information on your MBC courses and seminars.
Your outline of your personal background and development of MBC is most helpful in determining qualification as an instructor, something too often lacking in others who profess qualifications. As an interested follower of the late Bob Kasper, and an acquaintance with the late and most interesting Col. Rex Applegte, I am very interested in the work you have put into MBC and the seminars you currently offer.

Thank you again for taking the time to post and share. You will be hearing from me. :)

[ThePeacent]

Mr. Janich, as an admitted follower of yours I thank you for explaining in such detail your career, and the history behind your publications, actions and teachings.
I was very interesting in hearing about MBC and your personal life history and hadn't had a chance to do so until today. The story behind your designs -Yojimbo, Kahr Arms delica, etc.- is always fascinating to read and interesting to understand and learn.
Much appreciated. Your work is one of the few serious and straight to the point essays on the actual effects and dynamics of blades and knives on the human body, and their role in defense/offense. I encourage you to keep up with the good work,
a fan of yours.

Have a very nice day, Sir.

[Michael Janich]

Thank you very much for the kind words. Have a very nice day as well.

Stay safe,

Mike