Customer Reviews

Combat Strategy

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I thought this was a good book. The author is extremely knowledgable about the subject material and it is a no nonsense book that gets right to the heart of strategy.

One of the most important things in a strategy is the ability to adapt to the situation, the ability to change your strategy if it isn't working. Hahno does an excellent job of emphasizing this point. He covers a large amount of situations. He talks about terrain, opponents attributes and size, your own attributes and size, environment, emotions, variables (timing, distance, speed etc...) drawing, feinting, combinations and much much more. There is alot of useful information in this book.

I highly recommend this book for anyone intersted in hand to hand combat.

This book is a good one for the begginer or intermediate martial artist to pick up. It's basic topic is how to apply various martial skills to an overall strategy. The author starts off by defining combat, which he compares to a physical game of chess. He also devides combat into arranged and spontaneous, noting that spontaneous combat is both physical and psychological. He also lists the martial artist's combat skills, the opponent's quallities, and aspects of the environment which could al be a factor. He then talks about how strategy varies from tactics before going on to describe the role that strategy plays in combat, both offensively and defensively, before introducing us to how strategy relates to Junsado, his martial system.

"Book Two" is on the fundamental techniques used in Junsado, covering stances (two of them, their pros & cons), movement, striking tools, locks, and throws. I found the scant number of stances surprising, but they seem to work well with the overall strategy. The lack of kicks surprised me, as well, considering this is a Korean system. Disappointingly, the author doesn't go into much detail when describing the offensive techniques, but students of most systems ought to recognize most of the movements.

The next section, or "book", is on tactics and strategy. Hanho starts by addressing the first response to a physical threat, and divides the possible responses into four categories: blocking, evading, parrying, and cutting in (similar to irimi in Japanese arts). Included in here is a nice comparison of blocks to parries. Once again, though, the techniques themselves aren't given too much detail, if any. Next, he goes into the secondary response, often an attack. He talks about lateral vs. planar combinations, and unified, circular, and opposing force combinations. After that, the author talks about how to combine primary and secondary responses, and gives examples of the goals of these responses. Moving on, he covers, in pretty good detail, direct attacks, indirect attacks (such as those that involve fakes), and combination attacks. Chapters on range, circular vs. trianglular structure, and the attributes of a fighter round out this section, which appears to be the most scientific.

The next "book", entitled "Beyond Tactics", addresses mental preparation, emotion, fight-or-flight responses, planning, and analysis of different variables of the opponent, including group psychology and the role environment plays. Though not as technical as the previous "book", this is an invaluable section, perhaps the best in the book.

The last "book" is more philosophical, with a few pages coverins such topics as "Openness" and "Duality".

Overall, this was a pretty good book. The formatting was very good, and important points were highlighted by grey blocks. The subject, fighting strategy, is one that isn't covered often enough, in my oppinion. The author seems to really have put a lot of time and thought into breaking down the various elements of a combat situation. The only thing I found bothersome about the book is the lack of detail when describing the techniques. While it wasn't necessary, I also think a chapter on awareness and avoidance might have made this a better book. I'd say that any martial artist would bennifit from having this book in his collection, but a good grasp of fundamental striking and blocking techniques is a must to be able to put the strategies presented here into practice.

When I bought this book I was looking for different martial arts to study. This book is great for self defense. The only thing I found with Junsado is that it dosen't use Ki as its source of power. I think this book would be great for some one looking for a hand to hand combat kind of thing. Well worth what it cost here on amazon.com