Bruce Tegner Method of Self-Defense: The Best of Judo, Jiu jitsu, Karate, Savate, Yawara, Aikido, and Ate-Waza [Paperback]

Bruce Tegner (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 127 pages
• Publisher: Thor Pub. Co; Revised edition (1969)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874070031
• ISBN-13: 978-0874070033
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,695,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great place to start a study of martial arts, or to add to your toolbox, November 2, 2008

By 

Joseph C. McDaniel (Phoenix, Arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bruce Tegner Method of Self-Defense: The Best of Judo, Jiu jitsu, Karate, Savate, Yawara, Aikido, and Ate-Waza (Paperback)

This guy is a seminal martial arts teacher. And an early exponent of mixed martial arts!

I have purist martial arts expert buddies who sneer at him because his technique isn't the same as the technique taught in their styles. Or because he doesn't teach obviously vicious and death-dealing techniques.

Well, too bad!

What they don't understand is that Tegner was writing to a civilian population in a relatively safe, law abiding world, where most guys were going to deal, at worst, with some bullying and a challenge to "take it outside". He was not, in this book, preparing guys to be commandos or inner-city cops.

Tegner knew that most of the people who read his books were not going to spend ten or twenty years in a dojo learning techniques that had only some application to the real world.

Tegner was a serious judo guy. He'd studied all his life. And judo guys aren't sissies; they call it the gentle way, but when a judo guy hits you with the biggest weapon around (the planet Earth) it doesn't feel very gentle. And you can get seriously hurt in judo if you aren't lucky.

He'd also studied broadly, and had a good knowledge of what techniques were available for hand to hand combat of all sorts, including military hand to hand.

He made intelligent choices of techniques that laymen without a lot of time to spend on training could practice to improve their chances of surviving a fight.

If you are a beginner to martial arts and want to read an author who has balanced ease of use, length of practice to proficiency, and likelihood that the techniques will send you to Sing Sing after the fistfight, this is a perfectly good place to start.

Bear in mind that no book can teach you to fight, and that you'll need to practice with a partner (very carefully and under competent supervision) and on a bag. Also bear in mind that the laws of self defense differs between jurisdictions.

In any case, buying all the Tegner books there are and reviewing the sorts of tricks he teaches is a perfectly good way to begin a study of self defense.

And I give this guy five stars partly because of the cost to technique ratio!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Self defense, November 21, 2006

By 

1JoeKathy (Claremore, OK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bruce Tegner Method of Self-Defense: The Best of Judo, Jiu jitsu, Karate, Savate, Yawara, Aikido, and Ate-Waza (Paperback)

Very easy to use techniques for self defense. Bruce Tegner combines best of all self defense styles and demos them for the average person.

4.0 out of 5 stars TEGNER'S MMA FOR DEFENSE, December 27, 2011

By 

Troy A. Lettieri "Professional Warrior" (NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bruce Tegner Method of Self-Defense: The Best of Judo, Jiu jitsu, Karate, Savate, Yawara, Aikido, and Ate-Waza (Paperback)

This is one interesting old book that pre-dates the current Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fade with the publishing of possibly the first multi-disciplined fighting form (which included Judo, Jiu jitsu, Karate, Savate, Yawara, Aikido, and Ate-Waza). This fighting system for practical self-defense in this book was published at a time when martial arts instruction in the United States was hard to come by for the average citizen. The easy to comprehend format of this fighting system, was one of Tegner's main contributions to self-defense; he dispelled a lot of the myths about the martial arts and brought realism to the forefront again with a combative focus. One of these myths was the myth of the "Black Belt as a superman". In this book Tegner's wrote, "Contrary to popular belief, the first black belts were not deadly killers; they were skilled sportsman." The book covers a detailed 21-Day program of instruction that requires the practitioner to learn the fundamental lessons of this self-defense system in a structured format. But without extensive training and many hours dedicated to learning it, I find it, not to be a realistic combative form for the average Joe to learn with limited time to dedicate to the training. This book is highly illustrated and formatted well. I highly recommend this book for academic study to understand the evolution of self-defense systems.