Tactical Knife Fighting & Defence: The Complete Manual (Martial Arts & Survival) Paperback – January 23, 2026

“Under edged-weapon threat, this is how reality behaves — therefore this is how humans must behave.”When a blade enters a confrontation, the rules change. Strength, speed, and bravado give way to fear, chaos, and consequence. Survival is no longer about winning — it is about recognition, restraint, and making the right decision under pressure.Tactical Knife Fighting & Defence — The Complete Manual is not a collection of flashy techniques or fantasy disarms. It is a reality-based survival text built from decades of training, research, and analysis of how knife violence actually unfolds. Drawing on history, neuroscience, forensic studies, military and law-enforcement observations, and ninjutsu principles, this book strips knife defence down to what survives stress — and what does not.Most knife books teach techniques. This one teaches survival.This book presents a doctrine: a framework that explains how to think, not just what to do. It defines priorities under stress, accepts legal and physical limits, and remains usable across different people and environments.Written by Rob Baard — a lifelong martial artist with over thirty-five years of experience and direct study under ninja grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi in Japan — this manual focuses on awareness, distance, angles, gross-motor movement, balance disruption, escape, and the medical reality that follows violence. It explains how trained professionals retain fine-motor skill under stress, and why survival still depends on gross-motor priorities first. Read more