Saps and blackjacks are seen by some as archaic weapons. Weapons that come ‘by order of the Peaky Blinders’ or perhaps briefly glimpsed in 1930s crime films. In many places they remain outright illegal and where once Police departments issued them as standard kit today they no longer show up in the inventory. All that is starting to change, local laws always apply but recent legislative changes have made them legal in one of the larger states of the nation and so it was to Texas I traveled to learn about the use of these bludgeoning tools and where they fit into the matrix of self defense options available to citizens around the nation.

Guy Schnitzler is one of the few instructors now beginning to offer classes and lessons on how to use these tools and to have a frank discussion of where they fit in. For those unaware Guy is a highly accomplished pistol shooter, boxer, jiujijtero, combatives, and all around capable man with over 30 years in both local and federal law enforcement. He’s also the first approved instructor by Cecil Burch to teach Cecil’s material (Immediate Action) and is well respected by his other peers in the larger Craig Douglas led ‘Shivworks family’. I was fortunate enough to first meet and train with Guy a number of years ago when he helped host Jerry Wetzel and I was looking forward to getting back to Texas and learning from him again.

Like all the best instructors Guy works from a crawl,walk, run philosophy and this class was no different. However because these old tools are new to so many of us there was also plenty of ‘discovery time’ allowed and encouraged as we went throughout the day. The class was attended by a very high proportion of ECQC or IAJJ alumni and the base level of skill and understanding of underlying concepts was high. For the two students completely new to this fighting curriculum they certainly had the firehose experience we’ve all had when it came to the fighting entanglement portion but Guy had trimmed this section as much as possible to keep the focus on sap use.

Saps and blackjacks are basically slung loaded objects designed to impart blunt force. At the most basic level anyone who has one of these in hand will know what you do – wailing on a bad guy will be pretty instinctive, our grug brain understands that. Where a class like this comes in is providing a more sensible framework of how to wail. We started by going over basic strikes – a shorter rebound strike (a bit like boxers jab) from the forehand, then a more powerful follow through strike from the forehand. These pair perfectly with backhand movements and indeed one of those smaller lightbulb moments was the power and ability to deploy a sap in this whipping backhand motion. Nearly all saps and most stiffer blackjacks can also be used as thrusting ‘point driven’ weapons – again this might sound ‘duh’ to some but to me it was again a minor revelation. A solid thrust we might employ from existing point driven knife attacks translates excellently to saps and through the sparring pads I feel confident it’s going to mess up someones ribs and day.

Basic striking covered we moved on to discussing deployment and Guy’s thoughts about where the sap/blackjack sits in the force continuum. This was a major reason I was interested in this course – what else exists between spicy treat deployment and going to your gun? Guy argues that the sap does a good job of filling this role in a way that is critically different to a knife. As such the next section of course focused on getting the sap out and striking perhaps from ‘BoT’ Behind of Thigh. This also was where that slappy side of the sap came into effect – perhaps of mild surprised to some but most strikes with a sap can end up edge orientated, still as a effective but perhaps not how we as uneducated laymen imagine when first picking one up. The other element here was incorporating the sap into an existing fence, tucked under the elbow. Lots of experimentation occurred here and it alongside this and throughout the day Guy stressed thinking about targeting. One of the benefits of the sap he argues is that it allows a bit of scalability, maybe cracking the guys forearm or a sharp jab to the solar plexus is enough to end the fight. Maybe you are going to escalate towards targeting more dangerous areas like the head. As civilians we need to be thinking about this kind of thing and so I appreciated the time Guy gave to this.

As these are new tools for a lot of people a good chunk of the class was show and tell – but this was super valuable. These tools are not common and being able to see different lengths and styles of sap was really good part of this. There was also discussion of the principles of what makes a sap/blackjack like implement in an expedient fashion which again was really interesting. Sometimes you end up in places where conventional tools aren’t available to you and being able to create this kind of striking tool would be highly beneficial. The whole group was at one point sharing ideas on expedient tools or NPE ideas which was cool to see and I certainly had my eyes opened. For those wondering about why a sap or blackjack might be preferable, we have to keep in mind how the weapon works versus others. A small knife is understood as being great to create space but they are rarely fight enders in the short term. They put lots of holes in people and if you hit something critical it still takes time for it to have an effect. A well placed strike from a sap or blackjack on the jaw and it is lights out. Food for thought.

The afternoon part of the course consisted of first thinking how a sap can be incorporated into the default cover/helmet concept and then the standing grappling in fight weapons access game. For this class with a high proportion of alumni this was good but certainly for the new students this was challenging. It’s challenging for us all when we first encounter it and I think Guy did a great job stripping out what he could and giving those newer students more of his time during the drilling to help them come out with a good understanding of the challenge and solutions that exist. You can’t do everything in a day and that is also something to consider, these courses are excellent but you still need to go home and do the reps, join your own gym and put range time in.

We rounded out the day with two completely voluntary evos, I volunteered to be bad guy for my training partner. Nursing a slight knee tweak I felt more confident in my ability to be a 60% badguy in an evo with a fellow alumni than being the ‘good guy’. I haven’t yet seen the footage but I know I took plenty of strikes with the flip-flop training saps Guy had provided for us. I think for alumni doing this evo was good but it would have been a bit much for the new guys so was a nice way to balance out finishing and also allow them to see more experienced people do a more live version of the whole integrated coursework. Also flip flop strikes don’t leave as pretty patterns as sim rounds!

Following class we had a dinner and one of the best things about any instructor associated with Shivworks family is they always ask for feedback. This was brand new course that Guy was still working on refining and some of the feedback and discussion we had afterwards was really interesting, even just for a regular guy like me. The course was already great but I think it will only improve after that discussion and the learnings Guy took away as we all took away. If you have the opportunity to take this one day class I would recommend it, very few instructors are dealing with this material as directly right now.