Customer Reviews

Sharpening the Warriors Edge: The Psychology & Science of Training

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm glad this book is back in print. I thought I'd lost my copy of it about a year ago, and when trying to replace it through some of the used book websites, discovered the used price had climbed well into the three figures. Buy this book if you have any interest in this subject whatsoever. It's that good.

I would also recommend that anybody in the mental health profession--as I am--buy this book, as it deals with traumatic stress and how to effectively deal with it. As someone who has treated combat veterans, rape victims, suriviors of serious auto accidents, family members who lost a loved one to homicide, etc. and who are now dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, this book is a most valuable resource. I would also recommend purchasing "Waking the Tiger" by Levine and "Deep Survival" by Gonzales, as well as "On Killing" and "On Combat" by Grossman. For those of you involved in the defensive use of handguns, I recommend Aimed Point Shooting, available at pointshooting.com It's basic premises are the same as "Sharpening the Warrior's Edge's".

Siddle's book has by now become a classic in the field.

This was a groundbreaking book ten years ago and it's still relevent and highly recommended today. Siddle's work examines survival and combat performance from a scientific perspective. It explains why performance and reaction time deteriorates under survival stress conditions and, more importantly, explains how to tailor your training to minimize these adverse effects in a real-life confrontation. Further, it helps you develop a mindset that can give you an edge in most any dangerous situation. Good stuff!

Lawrence Kane
Author of Blinded by the Night, among other titles

I have owned the book for years and review the text constantly as a Police Academy Training Coordinator. It is a wonderful guide and reference regarding police use of force training and practical self defense mindset, the "warrior spirit".

I have had the privilge to attend and receive training from Mr. Siddle and his PPCT organization since 1984. I suugest the book to all police use of force instructors, police officers and all serious martial artists and citizens concerned with self reliance and self defense.

This is the first book to provide a solid understanding of the Survival Stress Reaction. Aside from the new book "On Combat" by Dave Grossman, there are few books that compare. I would recommend this title to anyone who may be forced to face violent or life-threatening situations in his/her lifetime. The information is necessary for law enforcement, military, security officers, bouncers, and others who may work in similar fields. Get this title along with the Grossman title just mentioned above and you will have a physical and mental edge on most situations. That is assuming that you apply the knowledge that these great books offer.

Great book with clear, precise, easy to understand explanations of the relationships between mental states, training, combat stress, and physiological reactions. A great text for trainers, leaders, soliders, law enforcement, and physical training instructors.

As a firearms trainer, I regularly evaluate how I conduct my training. The book was thought provoking and provided some good information. It's not technique driven as most books are but rather tunes in on the underlying philosophies that influence how training is conducted.

You may not agree with all his ideas, but I think anyone in the force continuum training field will find themselves having to critically evaluate what they do after reading it.

As a tactical physician on a SWAT team, I originally purchased this book to get some training ideas for the men on my team. The medical aspects of the book are fascinating, and although I am a doctor, the average reader should have no problem grasping the concepts. This book clearly outlines the physiology behind stressful situations, and why some techniques work, while others don't. We will be integrating some of the ideas into our training, such as increasing the pulse rate, and then performing various tasks. I would highly recommend this book as a learning, and potential training tool.

This book is aimed at trainers of military, law enforcement, security. It gives criteria on how to plan training to prepare someone to function in a survival situation. It explains how your mind is going to react when you are threatened and how you can use this to become more effective, instead of just shooting at paper targets or punching a bag. It will not give you scenarios or drills, that's your job.
If you are a student or someone in the market for self defense training, this book will give you the tools to sort through all the bogus training out there. This will save you developing bad habits or even dying.

I bought this book thinking that it would provide useful tips to improve a martial arts training regimen. I was sorely disappointed. Most of the book deals with theory and background, with very little useful info for a martial artist. The only really good piece of info I found in this book is that your fine and complex motor skills degrade as your heart rate increases (such as when you are scared and fighting for your life). There was one chapter on firearms training for urban combat, but that would be more useful to a police tactical team or a military unit rather than a martial artist. A psychology major might find this book interesting reading, but for help on martial arts training, better books would be "Fighter's Fact Book" by Christensen, "Get Tough" by Fairbairn, or "Complete Krav Maga" by Levine and Whitman.

I'm not sure what book the "two-star" reviewer read or the scope and depth of those "15 years" of experience. I was a trainer for 21 of my 31 years in law enforcement and for that past 10 years since retirement as a consultant and I find this book very useful. I only wish I'd had something like this 35 years ago.

This is as succinct, understandable and straightforward an explanation as I have seen of survival stress, motor skill and response. Anyone with a background or interest in police firearms training, incident analysis or situation-response training should find this book relevant and will recognize much of this, as I like to say about myself, but "never knew what to call it before."

This is not a book for cowboys or wannabes. There are no quickie "isms" here, but I recommend it to serious police trainers.