Street Stoppers: The Martial Arts' Most Devastating Trips, Sweeps, and Throws for Real Fighting [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This book shows step by step illustrated depictions of martial arts techniques for use in defending against violent confrontations against violent, agressive people.

I've been a martial artist for over 35 years, including karate, judo, wrestling and jui jitsu. One glaring problem with many martial arts, and many martial arts books, is that the techniques are either geared for sport, or they heavily rely on a system which emphasizes the "art" aspect of the martial art. This may be fine if your goal is spiritual oneness with the universe. But, when you are attacked by a violent thug, who is drunk, high, mean and a bully, spiritual purity won't help you. You need to be able to fight back and impose your will on that person who is trying to hurt you.

This book is an American martial arts book which gives highly practical, workable techniques. That is not to say that the proverbial 98 pound weakling will be able to read this book and overnight become a beast and a terror. Not at all. But for the serious student of the martial arts, or anyone who is interested in the subject, this book shows devastating techniques which will allow you not only to survive an attack, but to disable the attacker which may prevent a similar attack on some other person.

Overall, this is an excellent book that fills a void in the martial arts literature. Highly recommend.

Joe Scully, Los Angeles, CA

A case of false advertising? I believe that the contents of the book do not match the title. Being a martial artist who is noted for his use of trips and sweeps I found this book disappointing. The book consists of 40 to 50 throw/sweep/trip techniques. Of these, maybe a dozen would be of use for the average martial artist. I doubt that the authors have used even half of them in real life situations. There are also 21 combinations provided, again most of little use to the average reader. Most would be quite useful in a cage fight.

Even the authors divides the moves into low risk moves and high risk moves. They doesn't seem to identify which ones are high risk though. One of the reasons given for doing a high risk move is because you mastered the move (p.35). What the f...? In a street fight you do not want high risk moves. You want moves that are simple to do under stress and will let you escape the fight. Most of the throws start from a wrestling hold or from a wrestling grip of some sort, they would have been much more useful if they started from a clinch, or some entries were shown.

One can see that most of the moves come froma sport like MMA. The sports basis shows through philosphically in most of these moves. A lot of the moves are sacrafice moves or you follow the person to ground to apply a lock. This is nice in a ring or when there are more defenders than attackers (such as police situations), but for a situation at night with an unknown amount of attackers and an unknown amount of glass on the ground, they are of less utility.

The production values of this book are good, but a little more information on key points in each technique would be useful. The authors would have been better off choosing the best 12 techniques and covering them in a lot more detail. To quote the book "Don't fear the man that knows a thousand techniques; fear the man who has mastered one". If only they would have followed their own advice.

While there is good material in here (including my two favourite sweep/trips), I can't really recommend it. Rather, try finding some 1950s or earlier judo books. If you are a grappler, then maybe this could be useful. I will keep reading and see if there is some nugget in there that I have missed, but I doubt I will be buying anything else from these authors.

"Street Stoppers: The Martial Arts' Most Devastating Trips Sweeps and Throws for Real Fighting by Mark Mireles and Loren W. Christensen is a good book. I applaud the two for writing about a subject that has not been addressed like this, even though it is such a very important subject when it comes to fighting and self-defense.

Both authors are accomplished martial artists with impressive backgrounds in real-life violent encounters. In other words, they have been there and done that, and I recommend anyone wanting to learn more about the real-life application of martial art moves listen to them.

That brings me to my complaint about this book, and why I feel it is good, but maybe not great. I wanted more information from these two extremely knowledgeable men. The book is just over 280 pages, but the majority of the book is filled with pictures. As far as pictures go for illustrating throwing techniques, they are done well. They are black and white and clear enough to easily see what the author's intend for you to view in them. However, the accompanying text is fairly basic and minimal. And that is not just a complaint about this book, but any book explaining martial art techniques through pictures and text. Knowing a bit about publishing of books and videos, I understand the fine balancing act that goes on to ensure you put just enough and stay within the parameters of page length and so on. There are a lot of little things and finer points that make these techniques most effective that the authors did not have the space to include, or were not as detailed as I'd have wished they would have put in the written portions.

With that out of the way, let's look at the good things about this book, and there are many. It is definitely a book I recommend for your self-defense library, and one that I think you will learn some valuable information and techniques from. (That is if you actually get out and practice what the authors show, and feel how to do the trips, sweeps, and throws they illustrate.)

Chapter One: Mechanics of Trips, Sweeps and Throws discusses topics such as sport vs. self-preservation, 6 areas of attack on the human body, and some basic positions along with some other practical advice.

Chapter Two: Trips covers what the authors call the Navy Seals of martial art techniques, trips. They are powerful, masked in stealth and deception. After a brief description of physical and psychological aspects about 14 trips are illustrated through pictures and short descriptions.

Chapter Three: Sweeps covers a few standing sweeps, a few hand sweeps, and some ground fighting sweeps. Again, all of these are illustrated with photographs and brief explanations of written text.

Chapter Four: Throws features about fifteen variations of throws and how to execute them. All are shown with the same type of photographs with accompanying text.

Chapter Five: Spins is a short chapter illustrating a couple of spinning type moves that put your opponent on the ground.

Chapter Six: High Amplitude Throws: The Greco Roman Model focuses on a couple popular moves from Greco Roman wrestling. After showing how to train to do the back arch, instruction on the salto and suplex are shown.

Chapter Seven: Combinations is my favorite chapter of the book. Many times when you go for a trip, sweep, or throw, something goes wrong. Regardless if it is your fault or if your opponent is countering, being able to flow into a different technique is extremely important. Practicing the combinations in this chapter might just save your butt one day.

Chapter Eight: Falling had some good general information on falling for those that do not train in an art that throws and how to take some of those falls on the street. (I say for arts that don't practice throws, because if your art practices throws, you have most likely learned to fall.)

Chapter Nine: Law & Ethics contained a few pages on legal considerations and fighting ethics. With both authors having backgrounds in law enforcement, I expected this chapter to be a bit longer, but it still contained some practical advice.

There is a short conclusion and that is the end of the book. As I stated, I think this is a good book and deserves a place in your martial art/self-defense library. However, I do wish the authors would have included more text and explanations in some areas. I have a Judo and Hapkido background, so I've done my share of throwing and being thrown, and this includes real situations on the street. I do like that the authors covered the topic from the street and not competition, and even with my experience I definitely learned a couple new things from these two tremendously experienced instructors. I'm going to practice some from this book with training partners to make my throwing even better, and I encourage you to do the same.

Reviewed by Alain Burrese, author of the DVD set Streetfighting Essentials.