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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clear, comprehensive, and highly recommended, October 10, 2005
This review is from: Becoming a Complete Martial Artist: Error Detection in Self-Defense and the Martial Arts (Hardcover)
The description of this outstanding book states that it is a graduate level course in the strategic principles of self defense but don't look for fancy applications or whiz-bang techniques. It is really about the basic fundamentals that make any martial art work properly when you take your dojo skills on the street. This is good solid stuff, not particularly exciting, but absolutely essential, cerebral, and right on. The authors are highly skilled and their experience really resonates within these pages.
As most long-term martial artists know, earning a black belt is really just the beginning of a practitioner's martial journey. Since obtaining mine I discovered that the more I know, the more I realize that the fundamentals are paramount. That's the focus of this book. The SWOT analysis is an important tool described herein. It stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat, an invaluable tool for error detection as you place your techniques under a microscope. Essential nuances of structure, posture, body mechanics, and positioning are critical for success and well described herein. The writing is clear, articulate, and easy to follow. The highlighted practice hints are a nice addition too.
My only complaint, which frankly is pretty minor, is that the pictures do not have very good contrast and there are harsh vertical lines on the wall in the background of many of them that make them a little challenging to view. Furthermore, there really are not enough photos to illuminate everything properly unless you've been practicing martial arts for a while and understand what the authors are talking about.
There is a very short section on the purpose of weapons and weapons training and a brief overview of what happens when you utilize this knowledge in the real world but the vast majority of the materials are focused on getting the basics right. Topics covered include range, weight transfer, positioning, posture, placement, blocking, punching, stances, kicking, elbows, takedowns, and throws.
Overall this is an excellent and highly recommended book.
Lawrence Kane
Author of Surviving Armed Assaults, The Way of Kata, and Martial Arts Instruction
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Achieves its very focused goal excellently, making it great for certain audiences, not so helpful for others., December 14, 2005
This review is from: Becoming a Complete Martial Artist: Error Detection in Self-Defense and the Martial Arts (Hardcover)
This book essentially lives up to its title, and does nothing more or less. It does a very good job of defining martial arts in analytical terms, breaking everything down into a few categories (range, weight transfer, positioning, posture, and placement), offering general rules for proper movement within each category. Despite the fact that there are countless different systems that move in countless different ways, many of which disagree with each other in seemingly fundamental ways, proper movement is determined largely by human physiology. Different systems provide different, systematic ways of using human physiology to the practitioner's advantage. Becoming A Better Martial Artist wisely sticks to these physiological properties, successfully pointing out "alternate" ways of moving that do not constitute stylistic difference, but instead constitute improper movement. The authors provide guidance to the reader in examining his (or her) own system and training to look for things that may have been lost in transmission from teacher to student. These issues may be the result of the reader not fully understanding his teacher's instruction, or it may be the result of someone in the reader's lineage not fully understanding their training and propagating their mistakes to successive generations.
The other thing that this book does is provide an excellent explanation of the differences between self-defense and combat, and why combative techniques sometimes have no place in self-defense training (and, by extension, why many martial arts systems are not self-defense systems).
I have only one minor complaint about this book. In an effort to "appeal to the masses," the examples given are clearly based on Shotokan Karate. Mr. Sutrisno teaches Shotokan, though it's arguably not his primary system. Mr. MacYoung is kind of "nomadic" in his training and probably would not (and could not) claim any one art as his primary art. Given that Karate systems and styles that are based on / similar to it are generally the most widely practiced, this makes sense. Unfortunately, there are a few times where the explanations of the principles being demonstrated by the examples begin to enter into the realm of style-specific, and are not universally true. This is not often the case, though, and the majority of principles described within these pages are more or less universally true.
I also feel that the book has one "fatal flaw" in terms of the audience. This is not a complaint about the book; it's more an observation about human nature. This book is excellent for two groups of people - beginners who want a greater intellectual understanding of the martial arts (thus helping them learn their art more efficiently), and practitioners who have been taught improperly. The beginners, assuming they have a good teacher, will understand all of these principles within their first five years or so of training, so for them, this book will help them along on a path they're already walking down, as opposed to providing something they can't get from their teachers. In the case of the "improperly-experienced" practitioner, gaining anything from this book requires a great deal of critical, objective self-evaluation. People who have dedicated years to something are often reluctant to look at it critically (perhaps due to a subconscious fear that their years may have been "wasted" - it's easier not to know than to come to such a realization), and are reluctant to look outside their schools to better themselves. In short, the people who need this book most are the least likely to read it.
Finally, this book is not without its benefits for advanced practitioners, who are almost invariably teaching others (even if under the roof of their teachers). While I can say that I found the principles in this book to be obvious, it reinforced what I already knew, and helped give me some ideas to focus my teaching in a manner that will help illustrate the concepts more effectively, helping me recall ways my teacher teaches that I haven't thought about (and therefore used) in many years.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Open Your Mind, Read This Book, And Then Judge For Yourself, June 17, 2008
This review is from: Becoming a Complete Martial Artist: Error Detection in Self-Defense and the Martial Arts (Hardcover)
I have to admit that I really enjoy not only reading and learning from books written by the author, but also they way he expresses himself in order to get his point across. Do I always agree with the things he says? Of course not, but even those things that I don't agree with are worth listening to and then deciding why the author reached the conclusion that he did concerning that particular subject. In this book, the author devotes the entire book to looking at a lot of the basic techniques universal to most martial arts and a lot of the more common misconceptions that seem to exist concerning the effectiveness of a particular martial art or martial arts technique in a real life self-defense situation. Now I must give the author's kudos here for a statement made early on in this book that basically goes as follows, "Any martial art can be effective." Anything, and I do mean anything, can be effective if done correctly and applied properly under the right set of circumstances. It this book worth the money to buy it and the time to read it? Well, if you want to improve your martial arts skill in whatever your chosen art is and if you want to be able to enhance your ability to defend yourself, then I would say yes, this book is worth your time and money. However, if you think that your art is the one and only and that you know everything there is to know about the martial arts then you are obviously wasting your time and money buying this book. As a matter of fact, you are even wasting your time reading this review. Often times I feel that Marc has a jaded view of the martial arts and I guess a lot of this perception stems from the writings in his earlier books and the bad experiences he obviously has had concerning certain aspects of the martial arts, most notably, the act of kicking. Or perhaps I just seem to take his lack of concern for kicking more personally than I should because I am a strong advocate for it. Who knows, but it does open the door to a lot of potential philosophical discussions on the pros and cons of it. This book and the writing style does seem out of the norm for one of Marc's books and I suppose that should be chalked up to the co-author of this book Mr. Tristan Sutrisno. I really enjoyed reading this book and am proud to put it on the shelf alongside Marc's other books. As I end this particular review, I am reminded of the old Oriental saying that goes something like this, "How can you taste my tea if you don't first empty your cup." How can you experience that which others have to teach if you don't first open your mind? Shawn Kovacich
Martial Artist/Creator of numerous books and DVD's.
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