Would you ever take a course on how to defend yourself from knife attacks? What about a course on how to stab people?
I finally checked off one of my bucket list items training with Craig Douglas and doing his Edged Weapons Overview course. It’s a course on how to manage criminal interactions and survive knife attacks, and how to defend yourself with knives.
I’ve been interested in martial arts since I was a kid. I was enamored with the cool moves of Bruce Lee or the Shaolin monks.
I’ve always been a skeptic. Anyone who knows me knows I hate bullshit. That’s a big problem with martial arts: it’s full of bullshit — things that are ridiculous and don’t work in real life. There’s an important concept known as “pressure testing” in martial arts, where you see if it works with full resistance. The UFC and combat sports were great at providing a testing ground to see what works and what doesn’t. While you may not be able to repeat test eye gouges and groin kicks, it’s still the best we have. Even the “real self defense” stuff often has a massive amount of BS.
When I was either in 8th grade or a freshman in high school, I started researching martial arts on the internet. I first heard about Craig on “selfdefenseforums.com” where he would post as “SouthNarc”. That was his nickname because he was a “dope cop” (an undercover narcotics officer) in the South.
That forum was one of the places where people really tried to focus on what works. It was like Bullshido where there was a lot of criticism of traditional martial arts being ineffective.
So I’ve known about Craig for 20 years. He is the best in the world at what he does.
So the course was finally going to happen in San Francisco! It was rare to have it here because most people aren’t exactly the target demographic. So I signed up!
I immediately regretted it. The closer it got the more I wanted to cancel! Were Craig and Brian going to be assholes in real life? Were the other trainees going to be weirdos? Who signs up for a class to learn how to stab people??
I was going to be around a bunch of strangers in a very stressful environment. Shivworks famously has these “evolutions” where they do intense scenario-based sparring. For example: you have a knife and you’re being attacked by someone. Or you’re being attacked by a guy and you both have knives and his friend comes in to punch the shit out of you. The edits of these evolutions look very intense, and a lot of the attendees mentioned being intimidated by them.
It can feel embarrassing if you get beat up in front of the crowd of people encircling you. Many of these people have “years and years” of martial arts experience. More on that later.
I wanted to get them over with in the beginning, but that would of course have been pointless because the whole idea is to put together what we’ve learned and test it.
I also don’t enjoy being very out of breath or not being able to breath.
I was most worried about injury. If you’re reading this and haven’t sparred, you may think the common injuries are ones from being punched or kicked or whatever. They do happen, but the most common injuries are when someone moved wrong and your toe got bent or crushed. Or someone fell wrong and your knee is messed up. Not to mention the bruises that cover your body.
(The truth is, most people get way more injured from training than they do in violent encounters, unless you live in a very bad neighborhood.)
Anyways, I was anxious.
Different martial arts have different cultures. For example, judo is very academic, MMA has a lot of meatheads.
Getting there, I quickly saw the Shivworks people were overall very chill. (At least the ones coming to San Francisco.) They had a variety of backgrounds, but many people who trained off and on and had spent time in a lot of different martial arts.
The course was structured where Craig and his co-trainer Brian, provide an algorithm for dealing with sketchy approaches by people, which will honestly be the thing we all use the most in real life. Then you learn how to control people through wrestling, try to survive a knife attack, and learn how to use your own knife to stop adversaries.
I asked Craig a million questions — many about different martial arts and gun experts — to see what he thought. I’ll often ask people I trust about their peers in the field that I haven’t met and don’t know if they’re legit or not.
It was nice getting his insider view on the personalities I’ve heard about. Some good, many bad.
He talked about incidents where he was almost beaten or shot to death, and times where he had to shoot people. And he told me about times he used his service weapons.
I think stress inoculation — going through stressful experiences and building up resilience and knowing you got through that — can help you keep calm in other experiences. Training with my friend and MMA coach, Daron, helped me with knowing how to better move and strike, yes. But I also learned I could get through these intense and very uncomfortable training moments.
It also helped having the equipment ready to go like a cup and custom mouthguard.
There were a variety of skill levels in the class.
One problem trained grapplers have is that their BJJ gets them in trouble. They get attached to the person and may even get in a traditionally dominant position, but they get stabbed by their opponent, or stabbed or knocked out by their opponent’s friend. So you cannot get stuck to one person.
You learn how to deal with sketchy approaches and how to avoid getting knocked out by sucker punches.
They frequently emphasize that if you’re using this training, it’s going to be the worst day of your life.
To get really good at this or anything physical, you need to drill it a lot, and this was only a weekend. But sometimes having even a little knowledge and practice, along with an algorithm of what to do, can be a cheat code to win.
You can feel your adrenaline build up watching these primal fights in front of you.
I got to the evolutions and wasn’t feeling too nervous.
I’d rather play the defender first because being the attacker is much more fun. Especially when it’s two on one.
You get anxious not knowing who Craig or Brian are going to pick for you to fight. I don’t mind fighting people way more skilled than me but I didn’t want to fight some of the spazzes who had trouble following the rules in the moment. To avoid injury, you weren’t supposed to try hard to take people down or to really swing on them. Many people did these things anyways. “Shit happens,” as Craig said. But I like my face and joints and didn’t want shit to happen to me. But I was really lucky in that I had good sparring partners who weren’t spazzes.
Also, it’s sort of unspoken to go easier on less skilled people. Some people still go hardcore but I try to adapt when there’s a big skill disparity. Luckily the worst injury I got was messing up my thumb against this pro kickboxer’s iron abs.
Craig talked about how it takes courage to come to the seminars. I don’t like false empowerment but it’s true. You’re being vulnerable in front of a crowd of people.
I made some friends and have a new strong algorithm for sketchy approaches and weapons defense.
Overall, it was an honor to train with the legend. If you can, this is probably the shortest time you could spend and gain the most knowledge you would actually apply in a self-defense scenario. It lived up to all the hype and it’s cool to do something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Like finally seeing the Eiffel Tower and knowing what it’s actually like.
If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out:
The Apocalypse is Coming or Why I’ve Been Existentially Depressed
Are you someone who likes thought-provoking content and making other people feel good? Of course you are!
Subscribe here for both:
Thoughts, questions, or suggestions for how I can improve? Email me.
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and X and for the goodies I don’t post here!