Art of Disarming by Steve Tarani
Of the four Steve Tarani training DVDs I have reviewed,
this is by far the best. Things start off a little
slow, but once the instruction moves to
the disarming techniques, things get real interesting. The
opening of the DVD includes a lot of discussion of blade
weapon philosophy.
Some of the introductory material is pretty good. Tarani
gives a description of how range and potential injury
interact. He describes them as minor, recoverable,
irrecoverable and fatal injuries. It describes how your
injury liability increases as the opponent closes the
distance.
The real good material starts when Tarani starts
exploring the actual disarms. He breaks them into three
categories – the return, the disarm and the retain. The
return redirects the knife back into the attacker’s body,
the disarm strips away the blade so both parties are
unarmed, and the retain disarms the opponent and keeps
possession of the knife. According to Tarani, these are
listed in order of increasing difficulty.
Once the specific instruction starts, Tarani presents a
series of disarms against a variety of attacks. They are
presented well, with clear instruction and full speed
demonstrations. This section includes some discussion and
defense against various forms of thrusts – palm down, palm
up and palm vertical. I’d never heard those differences
illustrated before, so I found it educational.
The information presented in this latter section is good
stuff.
Still, overall, the DVD is not very good. The disc has no
menu. The video and audio come through good. The content of
the title is disorganized and sometimes poorly-delivered.
There are a couple of times where Tarani seems to move on to
a new topic, then he backtracks to old material. On-screen
titles aren’t coordinated with the material, appearing out
of sequence and often nonsensical. It just has the general
appearance of a title slapped together without the benefit
of things like practice, an outline, multiple takes and
editing.
The quality of the disarming material is good enough that
it warrants some consideration on your wish list.
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