IS CARRY A BLADE RIGHT FOR YOU?

Picture this: It’s my first Tiga Tactics in-person seminar after taking most of their online courses. I’m sitting in a room full of martial artists from a variety of disciplines.

Dr. Conrad asks the group, “Who carries a knife for self-defense?” Much to my surprise only about half the hands go up. I’m honestly shocked — I assum it would be 100%. After all, the event is called the EDC Knife Seminar — as in Everyday-Carry Knife Seminar.

Of course, there is no wrong answer. But we went around the room discussing why each person chose to carry or not carry. Looking back now, I found the answers to be very interesting. Here were some of the things people said. They raised some key questions you should ask yourself if you are planning on carrying a blade as tool that can be used for self-protection:

• Willingness to Use It: The most common reason not to carry an edged tool had to do with mindset. Several people cited that if they were in a self-protection situation (even life or death) they don’t think they would be able to use it.
  
  If this shocks you, perhaps you haven’t dug into what real life knife attacks look like. When someone uses a knife against another person, it is messy, violent and chaotic. If you aren’t mentally prepared for that, it may be very traumatic.
  
  It is not like the movies with one stab and the bad guy collapses. Rather, it is often repeated plunges into the flesh resembling a sewing machine or a psycho stab (check out the Knife Defense course if you want to learn the defense against the two most common types of knife attacks).  
  
  There are knife self-defense situations in which there are 10 or 20 stabs to get the attacker off the victim. Why so many?
  
  Often the person being stabbed doesn’t realize they are getting stabbed; they assumed they were being punched. However, when they look down do they realize they are being stabbed as they see or feel blood on their body. If the bad guy is truly committed to hurting you, they are going to keep attacking until they are physically unable to continue. This requires more than a single puncture wound. The victim continues to defend with the knife simply because the attacker continues to attack.
  
  
  
• Fear of Using It: Bouncing off the first reason, some of the attendees cited that they don’t carry one because they have a short temper. I thought this was a very mature decision by martial artists who were OK exposing their own flaws.
  
  Essentially, they were worried that if they always carried one, they might use it in a situation where it was not 100% necessary.
  
  
  
• Consequences of Using It: Piggybacking on the first two reasons is the consequences of using it. If you use a blade in self-defense, there is a good chance that you may take the life of your attacker. Can you deal with the psychological trauma of having to go through that?
  
  (Side note: As an Army Special Forces veteran who deployed to combat zones frequently over my career, I had not even considered this. My coworkers and I crossed that hurdle so far in the past I had forgotten that for most people that is still a big step. Not wrong one way or the other, just something I hadn’t considered in a long time.)
  
  On the flip side, could you deal with psychological trauma of what might happen if you don’t defend yourself?
  
  
  
• Lack of Knowledge on Implementation: For those martial artists who didn’t study a bladed art or rookies who never trained in anything, they didn’t have the skillset to effectively employ the tool. Luckily for them they were at a knife seminar and luckily for you, that same information is now available online via the EDC Knife program.
  
  
  
• Worried About Getting Disarmed: The fifth reason has to do with the requirement to use the tool in close range. Most muggings or street attacks are street ambushes, as evidenced by Dr. Conrad Bui and Patrick Vuong’s research studying security footage.
  
  This means that the fight starts in the punching, trapping, or standing grappling ranges. When you are that close, there is a saying that “your weapons become our weapons”. This means that you are so close that if you lack the knowledge on implementation along with retention, your own tool can be taken away from you and used against you. Both of these also receive solutions by taking the EDC Knife course.

Carrying a blade for self-defense is not for everyone. There are plenty of reasons to carry one and plenty of reasons not to.

However, if you are going to carry something you better know how to use it. This is true for carrying a pistol, a knife, pepper spray, or one of those self-defense keychains (if you choose to go that route).

If you don’t take the time to improve your mindset and skillset via Tiga Tactics online courses, you won’t be able to perform them under pressure. Take the time now and start training today.