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December 22, 2011
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Better prepare for any attack with Shocknife

Training knife induces the stress necessary to give realistic edged weapon training

By Erin Hicks

If you still use rubber or plastic shanks in your training classes, you are missing a very important element that's never absent in a real-life tactical situation: stress.

When you're being attacked by an inmate inside a facility or on the prison yard, your body undergoes physiological and psychological changes. Your palms get sweaty, your heart beats faster and your sight sharpens.

This "fight or flight" response is designed to have your body react in ways it needs to in order to survive. So how can you prepare yourself to react in that mindset if you're not actually in it?

Enter Shocknife by Shocknife Inc, based out of Winnipeg, Canada is the first training knife that induces the stress necessary to give realistic edged weapon training.

The knife has electrical impulse in it that stimulate nerves the same way a cut would, but without actually causing any bodily damaged.

The knife has four different shock levels: the lowest setting will feel like a paper cut, but the highest setting will make you feel like you've been cut with a butcher knife, said Jeff Quail, inventor of Shocknife and Director of Training. At the "extreme" setting the knife sparks and makes crackling noises, which is where the stress part might come in.

"This is important in training because in a real knife encounter the officer is going to experience acute stress and as a result there's going to be a massive release of hormones that causes psychological and psychological changes," Quail said. "If you don't replicate that in training, you're not adequately preparing your officers."

The SK-2 was debuted in 2009, an upgrade from the first model released in 2005. The newest knife has enhanced electronics that are durable enough to outlast most situations, and tough enough to withstand being dropped or taking a beating.

"It's been on the market for two years and we've had less than 1 percent come back with any problems so we feel like we have the recipe right as far as the quality goes," said Rory Bochinski, President of Shocknife Inc.

What's new for Shocknife is an instructor training course teaching officers how to survive a deadly force encounter with an edged weapon, said Bochinski. The course uses two year worth of research and is run all over the world.

"Spontaneous events are often the most deadly," he said. "This course can really be plugged into the existing training to enhance it for corrections."

So say you get hit. How bad does it hurt? Will it leave a mark?

"It has a good bite—it doesn't incapacitate you but you'll know you've been hit and you won't want to be hit again," Bochinski said. "The voltage is so low that the worse you're going to get is a little sun burnt that's gone the next day."

You can order your knife here for $499.

Shocknife Inc. is a privately owned North American company whose goal is to revolutionize the edged weapon training industry with the only training knife that induces the necessary stress required for realistic edged weapon training. Shocknife is designed to improve tactical knife defense training in law enforcement, military, and corrections markets around the world.

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