Moniteur Commando - TIOR

TIOR stands for Techniques d'Intervention Opérationelles Rapprochés , an elaborate term for what can be simply considered as bare-hand fighting. It consists of learning a set of grabs and holds to subdue an individual, and, if necessary, bring him to ground and search him safely. Aside from this, most of the training revolves around being able to hold your own in a one-on-one combat using classic hand and foot blows and dodging and evading the blows from the opponent. As any soldier, all of us had already had some experience in TIOR, either from actual instruction or from being involved in various “bar brawls”, and so whilst there were some of us that had a much higher skill level than others, our overall “aggressivity” was quite good. Towards the end of our stage, we were challenged to a one-on-one fight by another brigade of students from St. Maixent , the French regular NCO academy. I must give respect to these guys as many of them were surprisingly good, but in the end we held the upper hand. All of the photos from the boxing ring are of us fighting the regular French sergents: each one of us would be teamed up with one of them of equal weight category, and then two rounds in the ring to “dry-up” one another.