PTI Blog

I often gets asked for recommendations of knives for self-defense use.This is usually easy to do, once I get the answers to these two questions:

1. What is legal for you in your area?

2. What will you be using the knife for when it is not put to self defense uses? (Which we can usually assume is the vast majority of the time.)

The one parameter that would often make this choice difficult was when I was asked to recommend a fixed blade for self defense with a blade of less than 4 inches. The problem here is that most fixed blade knives with sub 4” blades have correspondingly small handles. When you have large hands, this can be a problem.

Speed vs Timing vs Tactics / How vs When vs Where:  Speed is how fast you move, while timing is knowing when to move. Good speed helps take advantage of good timing, while good timing spots the openings to effectively use that speed. Tactics is understanding what tool is best for a task and where you need to be, in order to use that tool properly. In a group military context, this movement is known as a maneuver, while in an individual martial arts context, this is known as footwork. Both the maneuver and footwork are used to control distance to your advantage.

While watching the videos in this essay, please look for examples of how Pekiti-Tirsia drills are used to develop good speed and timing and how the emphasis on footwork in the drills helps tie it all together. 

Several people have asked for my thoughts on the PTK Tri-V Formula that Grand Tuhon Gaje has been teaching since the mid 90s. When I first saw the Tri-V material, I saw many things that were familiar and some things that were a bit surprising.

Grand Tuhon Leo Gaje used to tell us some interesting stories about his training under his grandfather, Conrado Tortal. Several of these were about Conrado’s teaching methods.

One of these stories that I found the most interesting was about the “Thought Provoking Process.” This was a somewhat Socratic method of teaching, in that a student was asked a question about a subject, rather than being given the answer from the start. It began like this: