GUEST COLUMNIST:
EVAN PERPERIS — A U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES MAJOR (RETIRED) & A CHAMPION OBSTACLE COURSE RACER
“LIVE” KNIFE DEFENSE APPLICATION
It should surprise no one that, as a certified Tiga Tactics instructor, I like and believe in the techniques and content that Tiga Tactics has created. However, I don’t put them all on equal levels.
The one I had the least confidence with, Knife Defense, I actually had the opportunity to pressure test. Here’s that story and why I have greater confidence in this program than ever before.
Methodology in Training:
As part of the military, we like to increase the stress on soldiers through training. This is done in an incremental fashion, much in the way Tiga Tactics teaches by starting off “slow,” then going to “smooth,” than gradually speeding things up to “fast.”
This is a common practice you will see in all of Tiga Tactic’s online courses; the military calls this approach “crawl, walk, run”.
Situation:
As part of training, we did a “live” (AKA competitive) drill where one person was armed with a Shocknife and the other person had no weapons at all.
The Shocknife delivers a jolt of electricity — up to 7,500 volts — like a stun gun if you touch the “blade edge.” Clearly, this is the “run” or “fast” phase of training.
The goal of the unarmed person was to disarm the person with the Shocknife. The soldiers were taught several self-defense techniques. One of the options partially overlapped with what Tiga Tactics teaches in their Knife Defense course but with some (what I would call significant) differences.
Each soldier was then required to disarm his opponent in a round robin fashion by grappling over the Shocknife. For the drill you ended up doing three disarms against three different attackers.
Plan of Execution:
Rather than use the military-taught technique, I decided to use this as an opportunity to pressure test Tiga’s techniques, since I would get to watch other people use the different military techniques around a couple of dozen times. I was excited to test it out because unlike a martial arts class where everyone is learning the same technique, the other soldiers wouldn’t know my plans and thus would respond more instinctively and naturally.
Furthermore, the group was legitimately trying to shock each other, as is the case when you take competitive soldiers and put them in an environment where people are watching and judging.
Results:
So how did the techniques taught by Tiga Tactics in Knife Defense play out?
Well out of the three disarm drills, I only got shocked once during disarm attempt number two to my forearm/hand area.
That was three successful disarms using Tiga Tactics techniques against stakes that are about as high as you can get while still operating in a safe training environment.
Possible Critique:
I know what you are thinking, were the soldiers actually going hard in this training environment or just going through the motions?
If you have worked with Type A personalities like soldiers you probably already know the answer. The more one person gets shocked often the harder they’ll go the next round, creating an increasing level of resistance that just occurs naturally. If you still have doubts as to how hard we were training, as further evidence I’ll cite that one of the 12 soldiers broke his hand in the scuffle that was part of the disarm.
Yes…we were going hard.
Conclusion:
Not surprisingly, Tiga Tactic’s techniques work when pressure tested. This is what you get when you take real world video, come up with solutions, pressure test it and refine it to the best product. If you aren’t training at home, now is the time and with how easy it is to conceal a knife, you may want to start with Knife Defense.
