Combat Baguazhang Nine Dragon System, Volume Two [Paperback]

John P Painter (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Unique Publications; 1st edition (December 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865682690
• ISBN-13: 978-0865682696
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #560,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John P. Painter Ph.D. ND.

John P. Painter is head instructor of The Gompa center of Chinese and Tibetan Health and Martial arts located in Arlington Texas. The Gompa center www.thegompa.com specializes in training students in the Li family internal martial and health arts including Taijiquan, Baguazhang, Xingyiquan, Tibetan Snake Boxing, Tibetan Blue Heron Boxing, traditional Chinese martial weapons, Acupressure, Meditation, Qigong and Daoist yoga.

Dr. Painter began his training as a young boy in Chinese and internal martial and healing arts with master Li of Sichuan province. He studied with the master from 1957 to 1969. From there he went on to study Chinese medicine, massage and acupressure with Dr. Pao, Sun-Lung of Hong Kong and Tibetan yoga and meditation with Lama Trangu Rinpoche. He attended Texas Tech University majoring in psychology and theater arts.

Dr. Painter holds a Ph.D. in Naturopathic medicine is listed in Who's Who in the Chinese Martial Arts. Master, Founders and Leaders of the Chinese Martial Arts and was elected to the Texas Martial Arts Hall of Fame and was twice elected to the Inside Kung Fu Magazine Hall of Fame.

ENTERTAINER, ESCAPE ARTIST AND ACTOR
John Painter worked his way through college in the 1960's as a professional magician and escape artist performing in night clubs and trade shows. After college he worked as an entertainer in nightclubs and live theatre in the Dallas area. During the 1970's he traveled the club circuit around the United States and also appeared at the famous Magic Castle in Hollywood. In 1971 he was hired, as a personal bodyguard by a well know Dallas designer who operated factories along the Mexican border.

As an actor in college and later in Dallas Texas John appeared in a number of feature films, with small parts in Midnight Cowboy, Benji, For the love of Benji, Take down and Learning Curve. He also served as a technical advisor and martial stunt coordinator for motion pictures, television and stage productions.

FIRST CHINESE KUNG FU SCHOOL IN TEXAS
In 1972 Dr. Painter opened the first Chinese Martial arts instructional center in Texas. Today it is the oldest continuously operating Chinese martial arts school in the state. Shortly after that he began writing for Inside Kung Fu magazine and other martial arts publications. Over the years he has appeared on numerous Inside Kung Fu covers. He has authored hundreds of articles on Chinese medicine, healing principles and the internal martial arts and produced a series of instructional video (DVD) on Chinese internal martial arts. John was also an advisor to the US Chinese Martial Arts Council, North American Chinese Martial Arts Association, also served for five years as an international trainer and judge for internal martial arts competitions.

MEDICAL RESEARCH
As a Naturopathic PhD he has also been heavily involved in medical and scientific research involving the study of Qi, (Ch'i) life force energy, through work with the Life Sciences Qi Research Institute and has received recognition from NASA and other science organizations for his work. Dr. Painter is presently working with well know researchers on methods to enhance healing as well as physical strength and speed through visualization techniques. His new program called Yi Xin Gong or mind intention attitude skills will be published soon.

LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINER
In 1990 Dr. Painter with a group of law enforcement officers founded the American Rangers Martial Law Enforcement Institute and in 1992 after the Rodney King incident in California he appeared on the popular television program, the Phil Donahue show to discuss the deplorable level of police training in the United States. Today the American Ranges is dedicated to training police trainers in high level defensive tactics.

Dr. Painter now a Captain in the American Rangers is considered to be one of the world's foremost experts in practical hand to hand combat training for police, corrections and security personnel. He currently trains professional police tactical trainers and consultants throughout the United States in all methods of defensive tactics from hand to hand to firearms and edged weapons combat. His personal private client list includes members who are themselves instructors of the Israeli military, FBI, DEA, US Army Rangers, US Army Special Forces, and US Marine Military Police officers.

Contact John P. Painter at [e-mail] or visit him on the web

www.thegompa.com
www.ninedragonbaguazhang.com
www.american-rangers.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, May 16, 2009

By 

Andrew Breton (Hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Combat Baguazhang Nine Dragon System, Volume Two (Paperback)

I have a love/hate relationship with writing reviews. What's good for one person may not be good for another. Nevertheless, there's no "see inside" from Amazon yet, so a review will help the potential buyer. Most of the comments below are to give a slightly different opinion from the other reviewers.

One of the reviewers said this book was like the Tao of JKD. My reply would be "sort of". Dr. Painter elucidates the principles of his art. The wedge is a primary principle. For the wedge, he gives quite a few examples. Other things, he provides a few examples, but ends with something like 'the interested reader can uncover more'. Actually, the interested reader wants to, well, read about them. Admittedly, there is no way that one could show *everything*, but I would have preferred more. The section is longer than other Unique publications, but nowhere near the length and depth of Tao of JKD.

There are 40 pages in the application section, but one page is given to pictures, one to commentary (picture 1 shows this, picture 2 that, etc.) and pages here and there on combat principles. The author does say the applications are meant to be examples of principles, and they are that.

The flip side of the comments that this is Ba Gua for a modern self defense is that there is little here of traditional Ba Gua. Dr. Painter's system, IIRC, has a focus on palm formations (heaven palm, thunder palm, etc.) each with a yin yang version. When I see 'palm formations' I mean hand/body formations, not a sequence of movements that other systems refer to as "palm" meaning the movement sequence bracketed by the changing palm movement in a 'kata' set of eight such movements. The palm formations find their way into this volume, but without a specific list of all the palms as a reference. I know Dr. Painter has single palm change, double palm change etc., but those are not in this volume. I've read magazine articles by Dr. Painter that go more in depth, and it's a shame he didn't include some of the same here.

All that being said, I'm glad I purchased the book. The section on training was good (although it also suffered from "the interested reader can figure out more on thier own" treatment in some places). In general, it's well put together and he gets a lot of things mentioned. The guy obviously knows his stuff.

As one reviewer said, this calls for a third volume. I thought the first volume of this series was very good.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Volume Two demands a Volume Three, April 8, 2009

By 

V. K. Lin (Eugene, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Combat Baguazhang Nine Dragon System, Volume Two (Paperback)

Level: Beginner to Intermediate

So this book is what it is advertised to be... a treatise on Nine Dragon Ba Gua training and combat applications. John Painter's approach is clear, concise, and brass tacks reality. He's very to the point and very real about the violent truth of life or death combat. This isn't tournament, this isn't even cage fighting. It's real, and it's all on the line.

The book opens much like Bruce Lee's classic: Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Concepts such as range, closing the gap, vital areas, basic training methods, perception (vision and touch), angles of attack and defense and the like... all with a Ba Gua flair that is somewhat unique but mostly not. He then moves into specific principles from his system that are an interesting approach. The primary concept is the wedge, and the different ways that the various Ba Gua palms provide that structural wedge as a basis for disrupting the opponent's center and moving you into a position to neutralize/counterattack an attack.

The most interesting sections for me were the Ba Gua specific training methods--the various push palms drills, circling drills, iron sphere, nine poles and other footwork drills. Documentation on this sort of thing is somewhat hard to come by, and as a bonus, Painter brings in his very practical perspective into all the training. Dr. Painter is not into all this qi flow stuff as a mystical energy source. It's about physics, the biophysiological principles of relaxation, and total body coordination combined with practical combat tactics, strategy, and attitude. Unlike some authors with this bent, Painter is not inclined to go out on a limb-- he cites well known scientific principles and uses them in very elementary ways to support his perceptions. When it doesn't apply, he just says-- this is what we do, and this is why.

Much of the latter half of the book is combat strategies against various attacks, opponent types, scenarios. It's a sort of practical how-to guide. There are a good number of step-by-step examples illustrating his system's fundamental approach and enough variations to get a good feel for the way they approach applications in general.

There probably wasn't enough space in this book to address my main interests-- that is biomechanics of power generation, more detailed analysis of touch sensitivity, controlling lines, disrupting an opponent's structure at the limb level, not just the more brute wedge going straight for the opponent's center. That works when you're a massive guy (Painter's biceps are truly a marvel for a man of his age, for example), but if you're substantially smaller than your attacker a wedge may or may not work without perceiving/controlling/disrupting limb structure, too. I basically wanted more detail on what Painter referred to in Volume One-- that each palm needed to be studied 100 hours to completely understand it. Well... how about some details as examples to lay some groundwork for that analysis? Basically, I want a Volume Three, and am somewhat disappointed that Volume Two was not my imaginary Volume Three. Still, given Painter's priorities (that is: combat) I can see why he chose to write what he did.

All in all, a refreshing book, because he's no-nonsense, reality-based... basically a train hard to understand the concepts and body awareness and applications, and be prepared. No fancy stories (although he generously quotes his instructor-- to excellent effect). A general principles and overview of concepts book with some nice examples, overall, but not a rigorous, more finely detailed analysis of the techniques.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Volume 2 - a must read for anyone seriously interested in martial arts, January 5, 2010

By 

Sandy Troster (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Combat Baguazhang Nine Dragon System, Volume Two (Paperback)

For anyone seriously interested in learning internal martial arts applications, volume 2 is the entrance to a goldmine of information for the serious student or very interested reader. While volume 1 provides the body mechanics and internal principles without which the applications do not work, volume 2 give examples of the effectiveness of the art.

Every segment of this book provides information. Starting with understanding combat principles (too close/too far red-yellow-green zone concept, 3 to 1 rule, wedge, et. al.) each segment gives one or two examples of how they work. There are not enough trees in the world to illustrate each and every situation and indeed, students are taught to research each principle on their own to fully understand the feeling behind the theory. In this way, the book is true to how the art is taught, so that any reader understands that this art and its training are geared to prepare you to react to situations using principles rather than memorized movements and techniques.

All in all, a great companion book to volume one and on its own, a fascinating insight into training methods and ideas for the serious martial student.