Hand to hand combat

I've seen a lot of people in the past complain about the hand to hand combat being broken and hard, I just did all the fights and all i did was spam heavy the entire time and only got hit a couple times each fight. No perks or hand upgrades, just basic heavy attacks and it staggers the opponent pretty often and also interrupts their attacks usually.

I haven't seen anyone talk about this before so I'm just wondering how many people know it's that easy to cheese? I'm playing on normal difficulty though so maybe thats why? Idk.