Customer Reviews

Attack Proof: the Ultimate Guide to Personal Protection

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I've been training and teaching Shotokan Karate for nearly 25 years and over the years I've accumulated a sizable collection of books based on various martial disciplines. Many of them talk about "real fighting", but most of them are pretty much the same, emphasizing flashy "cool looking" moves over common sense techniques and skill development. So at first glance at the book's title I was skeptical. However, after reading Attack Proof: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Protection, I enthusiastically recommend it! While I have a lot of classical training under my belt I also know that the streets of Brooklyn are anything but "classical." The book Attack Proof offers both the martial artist and lay person a bare-bones methodology to real self-defense and street survival skills. The author's base their techniques on sound principles of fighting found in most martial arts systems, and support them with examples of real world applications and experiences. I was so impressed with Attack Proof's practical approach to not only fighting, but to street awareness as well, that I bought copies for my sons, both who are trained in Shotokan and one who is a "Rookie" cop with the NYPD. Whether you're a seasoned martial artist, martial arts instructor or just someone who wants to learn enough to protect yourself. You'll find that the techniques and principles taught are understandable and easy to grasp, but most important of all, effective!

This book is what I have been looking for. As a former Marine, SWAT team member, and a reservist I have trained, studied, and researched martial arts and fighting for over twenty-five years and have always felt that something was missing. I have studied Tae kwon do, boxing, Ninjutsu, Muay Thai, and Jujutsu, and while I learned something from each art, the number of techniques I found to actually work in a real fight was very few, even though I became very proficient at utilizing them in the dojo. The dynamic violence of an actual physical altercation can vary so widely that you cannot train or prepare through the use of repetitive action-reaction training. The missing link was filled by the drills and training in Attack Proof.

Attack Proof emphasizes close quarters combat techniques that enabled the Allied soldiers in World War II to beat the superiorly martial arts-trained Japanese in hand-to-hand fighting on islands all over the Pacific. It includes fright reaction training that is essential for anyone that wants to survive a sudden violent encounter, which is something most arts don't teach, and the ones that do don't emphasize it enough (because there are too many other techniques and forms to learn in that art) but it's a cornerstone to Attack Proof training. You won't find lots of cool techniques to impress your friends in here, but what you will learn will put your self-defense training way ahead of anything you will learn in a traditional martial arts dojo. There are many drills designed to build your balance, looseness, sensitivity and body unity to allow you to fight from any angle, position and the beauty of it is that if you do have a martial arts background you'll find that many of the things you will learn in this book will greatly enhance what you know already.

Don't be misled by those who criticize the book for lack of ground fighting; the book DOES include ground fighting but not as a useless grappling or wrestling methodology that is only suitable for competition between people of similar weight classes with rules against attacking the eyes, throat or other vulnerable areas. These sports always have one assumption that negates their use on the street; that you have only one opponent to worry about. Go ahead and wrestle me to the ground and get your arm bar on me while my two buddies stomp your head into mush.

Arts such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu flourished under the `no holds barred' promotions because the reality was that there were rules against eye gouges and groin ripping; things that are perfectly legal under street fighting. And the idea that a 110-pound woman is going to successfully take a 200-pound attacker to the ground or get into a guard position and fight him off is ludicrous. The ground fighting in Attack Proof is a devastating and deadly form of fighting that can't work in the ring without maiming and killing people, but it's based on movement and not techniques. To see it demonstrated in real life shows you the folly of wrestling, but the idea that Attack Proof drills emphasize during a violent encounter is to explode aggressively and then if possible escape; not to subdue your attacker.

Attack Proof sticks to what works and keeps the techniques to a minimum while emphasizing drills that teach you to use those techniques in an `anything goes' manner that is truly devastating.

. . . here's a review from someone with very little martial-arts experience (a couple of years of Tae Kwon Do about thirty years ago).

It's been suggested that this book isn't suitable for beginners. I disagree; I think it's terrific.

John Perkins's Ki Chuan Do ('way of the spirit fist') isn't just a 'martial art'; this is real, practical, hardassed Taoism in action, the kind that trains your body to move like a mind. Even apart from the close-combat stuff, just doing the exercises -- even for a few days -- will make a palpable difference in how you inhabit your body and navigate your environment. (Try the Ninja Walk and the Vacuum Walk for a couple of days and watch your balance improve -- even if it's already pretty good. Combat aside, this stuff is helpful to e.g. hikers who go on difficult trails. Of course this sort of balance/awareness is a kind of 'self-defense' in a hiking context too.)

The martial-arts portion is probably not for me to judge, but it makes good sense. Essentially, what Perkins is trying to do is teach self-defense to people who actually want to defend themselves. In order to do that, he's cut to the chase, omitting all the formal stuff that makes sense in a dojo (where you can count on your 'opponents' to fall courteously when you throw them) and taking you straight to the awareness/body-unity stuff (which will help keep you alive and kicking when your friendly neighborhood mugger ungenerously refuses to give you time to assume your favorite fighting stance).

If you're already training in a martial art, you don't need to _stop_ or anything; Perkins's 'guided chaos' will simply help you apply your training in a more realistic context. But if you're not already training in one, I think you can feel safe in starting here. Perkins's purpose is, after all, to help beginners develop close-combat skills as rapidly as possible.

As with other martial arts but perhaps even more so, the preferred aim in Perkins's Ki Chuan Do is not to go around beating people up but (as Sun-Tzu also recommended) to avoid violence by never letting it start. Perkins doesn't advise fighting unless you're backed into a corner, and he doesn't hesitate to advise running the heck away if it's at all possible. (All in all, Perkins's book fits well with Gavin de Becker's _The Gift of Fear_ -- a book that, incidentally, appears in Perkins's list of recommended reading.) The most devout peacenik (Perkins's apt phrase is 'pacifist warrior') should be able to get behind this approach.

But make no mistake, if you _aren't_ able to get away from an attacker, Perkins wants you to fight like a brain-damaged wolverine on PCP. And he shows you how.

He accomplishes this not so much by showing you specific blows and such (which he does, but you can learn about most of them by reading e.g. Fairbairn) but by helping you get your body in the right frame of mind, if you know what I mean. His exercises are designed to bring you to a condition in which you don't need to _stop and think_ for that crucial fraction of a second that might make the difference between life and death.

And if you don't have the stomach to deal with e.g. biting, eye-gouging, and scratching, skip this book. It's not for people who enjoy violence, but it's also not for people who refuse to use it even in self-defense.

Underneath it all (and sometimes on the surface too) is a deep layer of philosophical Taoism -- not at the level of a college-freshman late-night purple-hazed bull session, but the kind that you grok in your kishkes or not at all. You can read it all you want, but you won't 'get' the Taoist bits if you don't _do_ at least some of the exercises.

The book _is_ fun to read, though. Perkins and his collaborators are delightfully iconoclastic and generally good company all around. The well-written text is also accompanied by plenty of genuinely helpful photographs.

I'm not competent to decide whether Perkins's approach is appropriate for everyone (although I suspect it is). But if his approach sounds suitable to you, don't stay away from the book _just_ because you're a beginner. That's exactly who Perkins wrote it for.

I have done Tae Kwon Do and jujitsu, as well as judo and boxing, and read a lot of martial arts books. This one is the best. One reason is that the author has so much experience (he was a cop and taught cops and Marines, and has REALLY FOUGHT in real life situations (unlike a lot of martial arts authors who have only "fought" - i.e. sparred - in the dojo). The author says up front what the reality on the street is, and illustrates that with real life stories from the streets of New York. He tells the reality - that fights are not "correographed" like in the dojo, but are "mahem" and "chaos". Every fight is different, and you don't have time to think which defense to use, you have to intuitively know it, and then flow into the fight. That is the problem with most martials arts like Tae Kwon Do, they teach correographed fighting. Many, many black belts have been "sucker punched" or even killed in bar fights or on the streets, while smaller, untrained people survived, because their reaction, or response was better. The author gives the example of a small woman defeating a 300-pound felon in an elevator as a good example of that. For modern "street survival" in America (or anywhere), I would recommend this book and the book "The Gift of Fear", by Gavin de Becker - for a little more on the sociological and psychological side of the criminal. I hope a lot of people read this book ("Attack Proof"), because I think it could save some lives.

This book is a terrific source for learning real life self defense. It presents, explains and illustrates - in a clear, straight forward manner - how people can avoid becoming a victim, as well as how to successfully defend against virtually any kind of physical attack. It is based on the principles of Ki Chuan Do, the martial art that was created by John Perkins.

I attended a seminar by Master Perkins and his colleagues several months ago, and I was astounded by the effectiveness of Ki Chuan Do in action. The ease and speed with which Perkins - along with several of his students - made short shrift of various attackers, was simply amazing. These were not rehearsed or choreographed "plants", as I was later able to verify, but actual volunteers from the audience, some of whom were advanced black belts in different martial arts.

I have trained as a kick boxer for a couple of years in a Tai Chi school that has a reputation for turning out good kick boxers. But seeing Ki Chuan Do was a revelation. It is based to a large extent on Tai Chi prinicples, but it is COMBAT Tai Chi combined with various other combat arts, and is light years ahead of anything that I had seen or experienced before - either in Tai Chi or any other martial art.

The Attack Proof book takes the basic principles of Ki Chuan Do and explains how they can be used effectively by anyone, regardless of their physical condition or experience. A great companion to this book would be the Attack Proof video, available at attackproof.com.

There are loads of methods being taught out there for people who want to learn how to defend themselves against attacks in a dojo. But if you want to learn how to defend yourself against attacks in real life, I highly endorse this book.

The material here simply makes a whole lot of sense, especially for the average person who wants to protect his life "just in case," and won't spend hours studying and practicing. The main principle of using "guided chaos" makes sense to me, as well as the little tidbits such as: if you punch someone in the head you're apt to break your hand. I've always suspected this (a human head is somewhat akin to a bowling bowl, no?), yet this is the only place I've ever seen it stated. Guided chaos rather than pre-planned responses sounds extremely sensible, because, unlike the Hollywood versions, fights always involve lots of shoving, pushing, grappling, random factors, etc. -- and as the authors state are usually resolved in four seconds. Attack like a wild animal and run, say the authors. Sounds like good advice.

I have read many martial arts books in my life and most of them had nothing to do with the blood and guts of actual mayhem as it visits you on a personal basis. After some time in my youth of getting beat up just going to school nearly every day my father realised that I needed to learn how to defend myself. After many years of classes in classical martial arts I found that I still couldn't handle the really tough street fighters that I came up against. I later found that there was a thing called Close Quarters Combat. I Learned some of the basics from an ex marine and found it to be more viscious than anything else. I then read many books and have seen many videos on CQC and stumbled across Attack Proof by Master Perkins and Major Ridenhour USMC and a whole new world of fighting ability became available to me. I can't stress enough how serious and on the mark the information in this book is for the person who is serious about protecting their life in a life and death altercation. Check out this book and their website. Good Luck

The “O.J. Defense” notwithstanding, violent confrontations, with or without weapons, are over in seconds. If you are the intended victim, your response must be immediate -- pre-emptive – to have any chance of succeeding. The popular forms of martial arts, while often good sport and exercise, require many years of training to have any effect. Even then, in the split-seconds available to counter an attack, you are at risk of not engaging the precise choreography required to counter a specific choreographed move by the attacker. More to the point, your attacker probably doesn’t know the particular ballet you learned. Under the influence of psychosis, too much (or not enough) drugs, or the adrenaline rush of committing an armed robbery, the bad guy will be coming at you in a chaotic, unpredictable way.

I was first told of John Perkins' methods by two retired, high-ranking Yonkers, New York cops who had worked with him. His legendary prowess in violent confrontations was matched by his skill as a forensics homicide investigator. This, combined with a lifetime of traditional oriental martial arts and Native-American ground fighting studies, led to the evolution of a system that is stunning in its simplicity. Perkins may not be the first proponent of “attack the attacker,” but he sure does have a knack for teaching it. Starting with basic awareness, this book brings home the concepts of balance, looseness, and a system that he refers to as “guided chaos.”

It is liberally illustrated with sequential photographs of the basic moves (not orchestrated dance-steps) and practice drills that prepare you to act instantly in dangerous situations. There are helpful pointers throughout. Sidebar accounts of actual violent confrontations make this much more enjoyable than just an excellent textbook, although it certainly is that also.

Disclosure: After reading, enjoying, and gaining confidence from “Attack Proof, the Ultimate Guide to Personal Protection,” this reviewer, a fifties-something, financial services executive, found that Master Perkins teaches classes in the next county and signed up. Can a “disciple” be an honest reviewer? You bet! Perkins’ methods simplify what you must know to deal with violent confrontations. (...) This stuff works.

With little background in martial art, I believe I am not the right person to judge whether or not the concept described here is really work in real combat situation. But I can tell you how this book impacted me as reader.

While talking about the simple no-nonse way of surviving a fight, this book is difficult. I need to re-read most of the chapters (even pages) many times, and still get confused. And it does not have enough pictures to illustrate the concepts explained there. I need to consult some friends, black belts in their own respective martial arts, to gain some understanding.

From what they explained to me, this is a great martial art book (they borrowed it for few weeks and I understand that they practice it in their schools). It contained many sophisticated concepts from various martial arts like Wing Chun, Tai Chi, Aikido and those I never heard about... It is a great book to learn about real martial art or to uncover some "hidden" concept behind traditional practices.

However, in my opinion, newbie like me will need advice from experts since this book is far too difficult. So, I would recommend this book only if you have good background in martial art, or have a "master" to supervise your training. Also, you will need some equipment and equally committed partner(s) to practice some important drills.

Overall, great book, but it requires commitment. Not an easy how-to book.

ATTACK PROOF IS REAL SELF-DEFENSE FOR REAL PEOPLE. Not Kung fu movie dreamers or belt hungry wannabes. I train with cops, soldiers, bouncers and other professional security personnel. I am in touch with both Marine and Air Force officers who prefer Attack Proof methods to all other training and who regularly blow their conventional hand to hand instructor's minds when they finally FEEL Ki Chuan Do.

I like the on guard position in Attack Proof because it doesn't look like you're "ready to fight" -a bad idea. You want to be sneaky, which is why the text tells you to appear "non-challenging" so you can attack the attacker off-guard. This principle has been used successfully in more documented kills than any other system by none other than Fairbairn and Sykes (Close Quarters Combat--Ki Chuan Do's foundation).

I like that the book concentrates on unique methods of delivering and eluding strikes. This is what makes it unique. The strikes themselves are very simple basic close combat strikes from World War II, (see Applegate and Fairbairn and Sykes above) which are covered in many excellent books already out there. A whole book of basic strikes would be redundant.

This stuff is not theoretical. It's taught by a former forensic homicide investigator and international bodyguard, who's been in over 100 certified bloodbaths where people were sent to the hospital or morgue, not for handing out traffic tickets or arresting drunks, like many former cops who teach self-defense. His professional specialty was reconstructing homicides from the pattern of blood spattters at a homicide. Some of Perkin's students who are Yonkers, NY police officers (one of the toughest areas in the New York Metro area) have been involved in hundreds more seriously violent arrests and use his training continuously. The fact that Perkins has taken Native American fighting and combat tai chi and combined it into something really different has got to be great for hundreds of U.S. Marines being trained in Homeland Security at Camp Lejeune by co-author Major Al Ridenhour.

I am a former student of Jeet Kune Do, as well as Wing Chun. I love Jeet Kune Do and Wing Chun. But Jeet Kune Do does not take free-flowing, spontaneous self-defense principles to the level that Perkins does. True it always comes down to the individual, but everything else being equal, this is the superior method of training with often superior results.