There's often a big difference between traditional martial arts and practical self-defense tactics (sometimes called combatives) — these two fields have a lot of crossover, but there are critical differences. For starters, when was the last time you saw someone bow to their opponent or wait for a referee to arrive before a street fight? It doesn't happen, because the goal of a street fight is not to honor tradition or earn points in a competition, it's to end the threat and survive unscathed. However, that's not to say that martial arts can't help us improve our self-defense skills through physical and mental conditioning. OFFGRID contributor Jared Wihongi is well aware of this dichotomy, having studied a wide variety of martial arts and dealt with down-and-dirty hand-to-hand combat in a law enforcement role.

Former OFFGRID editor Patrick Vuong recently interviewed Wihongi as part of a new Tiga Tactics YouTube series called The Way I See Things. This series will feature Q&As with various combatives instructors, picking their brains on helpful tactics, valuable lessons, and common mistakes they see students making. In this inaugural episode, Wihongi talks about how he first took an interest in self-defense, martial arts he has studied, what works, and what doesn't.

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There are some great quotes to remember in this video — here are a few of our favorites:

• “You cannot win a lethal confrontation through defense. At some point there has to be an offensive undertaking, and the sooner the better.”
• “The fight you'll always survive is the one you avoided altogether.”

For more content from Tiga Tactics, give them a follow on Facebook or YouTube. You can also learn more about Jared's Pekiti Tirsia Kali courses, go to Pekiti.university.

Written by Patrick McCarthy