Originally Posted by
Cecil Burch
I would also suggest EWO, but I would also add Chris Fry's Small Knife class. Now that he is a training director for a large group, he is not doing nearly as many open enrollment courses, but it is something to keep an eye on. He does a brilliant job of getting over concepts that actually can be put into immediate use. I have stolen a ton of things from Chris.
No personal experience, but Chris is a big fan of Tom Sotis' AMOK knife program, so based on his thoughts, I would look into that as well.
One bit of info I would strongly urge is to NOT spend much time in the beginning trying to learn the integration of weapons when you don't know the H2H side to start with. For some reason, everyone seems to want this in a hurry, but there needs to be minimal components that are functional before you can truly get anything by putting them together. Get some experience at grappling, and get a bit of understanding on how to use a blade (which fortunately is simple and straight forward for practical needs and does not take a long time) and then worry about putting them together. No one would tell someone who has never fired a pistol before to take a CQB/room clearing class for his "learning" of pistol work. We all know having a basic skill set of gun handling is a better use of time before you start trying to clear a house. The same goes for combatives integration. And honesty, I could argue that the combatives side (especially in regards to grappling) is far more complex than room clearing.