Self-defence Manual.  In this manual, two of Britain’s leading self-defence experts show you exactly how to protect yourself and your loved ones at home and on the street. This comprehensive guide includes: how to defuse potentially dangerous situations; how to defend yourself if attacked; driver safety; the legal implications of self-defence; and how to pick a self-defence course.

Self-defence Manual

This is not a book about fighting. Indeed, most of it is about finding ways
of not fighting, not having to fight, and (best of all) not being in a situation
where there is any threat of violence at all. True, later sections do deal
with the mechanics of violent self-defence, and many readers will have
already skipped there to see what’s on offer. This book, however, is for
those whose primary interest is in staying or getting out of trouble without
violence.
This book is intended for the use of anyone and everyone who goes in
harm’s way (or who feels that harm may come to visit uninvited). In
particular it will be of interest to children, students, women, older people,
and people with occupations that place them at increased risk. Increased

risk occupations include healthcare providers, members of the emergency
services, taxi drivers, bar and shop staff, council employees, teachers and
anyone else whose occupation takes them out alone or places them in
situations where confrontations may occur.
The measures in this book will work for anyone, and everyone can
benefit from increased personal security. Even people sure that they can
‘handle themselves’ are wise to avoid trouble if they can. The unfortunate
reality is that violence of any sort can have unexpected and very unpleasant
consequences, even if you ‘win’ the fight. It is truly better not to get
involved in violence at all. Most people believe that they have no choice
in the matter; either they will be attacked or they won’t. Some are certain
that it will never happen to them. Both of these views are wrong, as we
will show. For now, two facts:
• It can happen to you.
• It doesn’t have to.

Self-defence Manual

This book asks one thing of you: that you embrace a measure of reality.
Nobody is suggesting that you should become suspicious or live in constant
fear, but in order to reduce the risk of attack (and you can!), you must
first accept that an attack can happen, and that it will be very nasty indeed
if it does. In return, this book will show you a series of simple measures
that will greatly increase your personal safety.
You will learn not only how to avoid trouble altogether, but how to get
out of a confrontation without coming to blows, how to escape from

someone who means you harm, and what you are legally allowed to do to
prevent someone from hurting you. Later sections do detail some violent
defensive measures you can take, but they are a last resort; part of a package
of measures that should prevent it from ever coming to that.
Think of these measures as a series of ever-finer filters. One filter will
let some dirt through, but stop most of it. Another catches most of what
is left. Our system has five ‘layers’ of filters. The first layer prevents most
situations from becoming a threat. The second nullifies most of what
slips through the first, and the third deals with most of what remains.
Only a tiny proportion of threats actually reach the fourth and fifth layers
of our defences.
By layering defences in this way, you can weed out a huge proportion
of potentially dangerous situations. But what are these ‘filters’? How do
you create them? How do they work?
That is what the rest of the book is about.

It would be fair to say that I have spent the last thirty-odd years of my life
studying different methods of self-protection, right from school where
the bullies made my days very long and very sad to the present day. I
thought that the bullying might end with the last bell of my schooling
years; I was wrong. It continued into the work place, the pub bar, the
football match, in fact, every aspect of life – hell, even life itself – seemed
laced with intimidation. I blamed everyone and everything (even God,
who I abandoned on more than one occasion) for my dilemma. Then
one day I put my honest head on and admitted that, actually, it was
nobody’s fault but my own. People bullied me because I let them.
Situations intimidated me because I quaked helplessly in my boots and
thus encouraged my fears. Life walked over me because I lay down on
the floor and let it.
Once I took responsibility for myself and for my place on this spinning
planet – and listen in, unless you do take responsibility for your own
safety you will always be somebody’s whipping boy – things started to
turn around, and my habitat and my cohorts suddenly started to take on
a healthier hue. I started to get respect from people, because I demanded
no less. I developed the art of invisibility; because of my confidence
(developed over many years in the forging grounds of hard martial arts),
people no longer saw me as a victim.
The big problem for me as a younger man was choosing the right kind
of training to prepare me for an unsolicited attack, one that would likely
eclipse the formulaic norms of dojo fighting. In my life-long search, I
studied many arts – I would go as far as to say most. I even spent ten years
working as a nightclub doorman to fine-tune what I had learned. I had
hundreds of fights, I damaged a multitude of people who got in my way
and at the end of it all, after the murder and mayhem, the punching and
stamping, the harm and the hate I came to the same conclusion as the
authors of this excellent tome: self defence at its very best does not involve
a physical response, rather it is about understanding the (so-called) enemy
so that we can avoid him, escape him, verbally dissuade him, loop-hole,
posture – anything to avoid a physical response because violence is, and
has to be, a very last resort.

Self-defence Manual

An analogy: preparing people to defend themselves is a little like
teaching children road safety. We don’t instruct our kids in the fine art offirst

aid just in case a car hits them, we teach them awareness and the
Green Cross Code so that they can avoid it in the first place. Because we
all know that once they’ve been knocked over, it is too late. For most
people (even many of the so-called ‘trained martial artists’) being attacked
in the street is like being knocked over by a car: many of the victims are
debilitatingly injured and mentally traumatised, most never completely
recover. Some of the less fortunate die because of their injuries.
That’s what I love about this book. It is not the usual gung-ho, thumb

lock and shoulder throw technique boutique of old; it is a mature,
intelligent, comprehensive and life-saving manual on how to avoid
becoming the next victim of an unsolicited assault.
As well as covering pre-fight strategies, everything from violent body
language to attack precursors, the book also covers what to do if a physical
response is called for, with the added and sensible advice that the
techniques are unlikely to work unless you spend a long time practising
them.

Self-defence Manual

So we have the pre-fight (how to avoid an assailant), the in-fight (the
stuff that will work in the street as opposed to in a James Bond movie)
and a very comprehensive look at post-fight – how you stand with regard
to the law if you should injure your attacker in the course of defending
yourself.
There is so much in this book that I could probably write another
book just telling you about it. I won’t do that. It’s enough to say that this
is a fabulous book, very well written and researched. I highly recommend
both the book and its authors.
You know what they say (whoever ‘they’ are): ‘If you want to stay safe,
be informed.’ I can think of no better way of being informed that this
excellent book.
Geoff Thompson
Coventry England, 2002

Biography

Stephen Bryant
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Five Stars
10 August 2019
Format: eBook Verified Purchase
COMPREHENSIVE, PRACTICAL ADVICE

Craig Broadbent
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very useful
02 August 2019
Format: eBook
The title of this book is quite misleading, as the content covers self protection more than self defence (which suggests out and out physical confrontation).
So what is self protection? In a nutshell, it is preventative action in avoiding situations where actual harm may come of you. This book tackles the subject in depth, beginning with steps of avoiding bad situations in the first place, through to diffusing situations which may escalate and finally covering what to do should the worst come to the worst. The legal position is also covered very well, detailing where you stand should you need to defend yourself physically, as well as a series of do’s and don’t.
The actual physical techniques in the book take a back seat to the common sense approach of avoiding trouble in the first place, which is even acknowledged by the authors: a technique read in a book is useless unless actual training and practise of the technique under a qualified instructor is undertaken! So don’t expect this book to teach you movie style fighting techniques which can automatically be used if you’ve read them and looked at pictures. It won’t happen! If anything, this book should be the first step towards improving your self protection, but should by no means be the last!
Very well researched, and a worthy read for anyone.
6 people found this helpful

Self-defence Manual

Kevin Bell
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very good
17 July 2019
Format: eBook
I found this book to be very well researched and an interesting read.  I would recommend this book to anyone interested in taking the tentative steps to understanding self preservation.Whats good is that it looks at recognising how not to put yourself in a violent environment in the first place rather than just physical responses.
7 people found this helpful

Keith Browning
⭐⭐⭐ Not Enough ACTUAL Self-Defence Techniques
3 March 2019
Format: Paperback
I thought this book was good in the sense that it showed some very basic ways to defuse a situation, which are quite easy to perform. In fact it tells you how you can try to defuse almost any situation. However, if the situation does develop, and it very well could, we are in trouble it would seem. The author doesn’t seem to deal with this section particularly well. He basically tells us that we should flee, which is all well and good but what if we can’t!! He also goes in to some detail about the law, which again is well written and very informative. However, when I bought this book I was under the impression that it showed me HOW to defend myself if things got out of hand and I certainly would be more interested in learning that first before I worry about hurting my attacker TOO much!!
2 people found this helpful