Greg Thompson: The Origins of SOCP®

Good design is a subjective pursuit. Relevant design is objective, measurable, and tangible. Does something operate as intended? Does it meet the needs and expectations of the user? Is it structured for efficient scalability and enhanced accessibility? Will it remain useful in the future? Beyond the tools we use to accomplish a task, relevant design can also apply to how we live our lives—how we solve problems, how we instruct others, and who we help with what we create. For Greg Thompson, professional designer and founder of the Special Operations Combatives Program (SOCP®), relevant design has motivated every decision, every achievement, and every success throughout his life.

Greg gravitated towards contact sports—football, wrestling, boxing—from a young age, leading him to martial arts. Maturing as a competitive athlete through his high school years and into college, he also pursued his passion for design. He earned a master’s degree from the College of Design at North Carolina State University and landed a job as a product designer, all while keeping up his physical and athletic prowess in the ring. But it was Greg's introduction to the hard-hitting sport of MMA that spurred his decision to step away from his nine-to-five design job to focus his energy on jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts. Soon, he was fighting professionally, and he opened an MMA gym in Durham, North Carolina to support his new passion.

After a brief MMA career, Greg was hired by an elite special-forces unit in Fort Bragg, North Carolina to train soldiers in mixed martial arts combative fighting techniques, striking and grappling skills used in close hand-to-hand combat. For Greg, developing the program was an exercise in problem-solving, where he could apply relevant design thinking to develop lethal self-defense techniques.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, Greg was invited to revamp the Federal Air Marshal Service’s combative program at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico. His training focused on retrieving a folding knife with the support hand while pinning down a handgun with the dominant hand, all while grappling with either a single or multiple assailants. The experience shaped his perceptions of fighting with knives and pistols in a confined space. While the trainees excelled in knife-work techniques, deploying the knife under stress in such close quarters remained challenging.

After a year working for the Federal Air Marshal Service, Greg returned to Fort Bragg to lead the special forces unit’s combative program, his self-professed dream job. “The Air Marshals got me thinking about the knife issue, but I didn’t come up with the answer until I went back to work for the military,” he says. “I was trying to solve the problem by developing grappling techniques to get the knife out in a fight, as opposed to redesigning the actual tool itself.”

Greg started by training the soldiers with their own knives, teaching a blend of jiu-jitsu, hand-to-hand combat, and edged-weapon techniques. After being tackled to the ground, soldiers learned to pin down their handgun, go to their support knife to create space, push off the adversary, draw the firearm, and shoot. One day a soldier asked him what he should do with his knife. Leave it in the adversary? Throw it down? Re-sheath it? This was the "ah-ha!" moment Greg had been waiting for. He realized there was a disconnect between the knife and the handgun and that he could employ relevant design to develop a new tool that could be easily concealed, effortlessly retrieved with the support hand, and retained in hand while operating a handgun.

Working backward from a finger ring through a skeletonized handle to the dagger blade, he had finally resolved the issues he'd encountered over the years with a design for an effective tactical tool that could be integrated with his mixed martial arts training program. In 2007, the Special Operations Combatives Program, and the SOCP® dagger, fully materialized.

“SOCP® is the only program of record designed for all special forces,” Greg says. “I enjoy training federal, state, and military [personnel] because their life is on the line. I get the gratification of working with the best in the world. I have to give them the tools, the tactics, and the procedures they need to survive because I want them to go home to their families. There's no do-overs. It’s not a game.”

Seeing a gap in task-specific combative training across all branches of the armed forces, along with a growing demand for his program, Greg turned his focus to training instructors, a force multiplier to quickly scale up the program’s impact. He expanded SOCP® into law enforcement courses across the country and to special operations units in the Army, Air Force, and the Marines, where SOCP® is now part of the standard primary fighting kit and multiple-assailant training.

“Creative problem solving is fulfilling for me. I love creative thinking and I love jiu-jitsu and fighting. And the people I get to train... I make a difference.” Greg says. Today, SOCP® is even taught to elite military units in Canada, Sweden, and across the European Union. “My job now is to constantly evolve as an instructor and be the best person that I can with articulating the information to get them to do what I need them to do so they can be safer doing their job. It is very serious. Guys have done the things I’ve trained them to do and have saved people’s lives.”

At 57 years of age, Greg’s life is a product of relevant design. Through analysis, problem-solving, and action, Greg has left a lasting and meaningful contribution to self-defense as an educator and product designer, building a program and tools that will carry on and survive beyond him. But instead of throwing in the towel and looking forward to retirement, he maintains a fit lifestyle that keeps him on the job and in the gym.

Currently, Greg employs and trains six full-time instructors at Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), who operate satellite gyms inside each special forces unit to maintain the elite combative training methodology. In addition to SOCP®, he also owns an MMA gym and continues to train and roll with top MMA fighters. “I still find time to get on the mat and roll with people. I need to stay in good shape to demonstrate techniques, but I don’t push too hard,” Greg says. “Instead of rolling for six-minute rounds, I just set the timer for four-minute rounds. If you can take me down in four minutes, good luck to you.”

 

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In addition to creating SOCP®, Greg Thompson is also the author of the book "H2H Combatives." He attends numerous speaking engagements and training courses around the US and owns Team R.O.C martial arts gym in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Learn more about Greg and SOCP® at ussocp.com.

Benchmade is proud to produce the full line of SOCP® tools designed by Greg Thompson. Whether employed on the battlefield, on duty, or in civilian life, these compact and durable tools, combined with effective training and practice, provide peace of mind and confidence in hand. Stay ready with SOCP®.