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Tristan Sutrisno

Marc MacYoung

Becoming a Complete Martial Artist: Error Detection in Self-Defense and the Martial Arts Hardcover – October 1, 2005

by Marc MacYoung (Author), Tris Sutrisno (Author)

4.0 12 ratings

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Self-Defense: Error Detection in the Martial Arts is a graduate-level course in the most important strategic principles of self-defense from the legendary Tristan Sutrisno and the indefatigable Marc MacYoung. Not a manual for beginners or dilettantes, but a key to the highest level of tactical self-defense, this volume concentrates not on a catalog of specific defenses for specific situations but on teaching situational awareness and understanding of the wide range of opportunities, possibilities, and options available to the skilled defender, in any situation. The key presented here is error detection-developing the ability to understand instantly the flaws and vulnerabilities in an aggressor's attack or posture (after a thorough exploration of one's own habitual defensive response patterns in dealing with attacks). With a strong grasp of the mechanics of error detection, the martial artist will be able to step up to a new awareness and a vastly enhanced ability to use an existing arsenal of skills to greater advantage.
Sutrisno and MacYoung bring over sixty years of combined experience to their teaching, and Self-Defense is the fruit of their long study.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

The Lyons Press
Publication date

October 1, 2005
Dimensions

6 x 0.75 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1592283705
ISBN-13

978-1592283705
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David James Christian
158
Paperback
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Many errors and misunderstandings have crept into what is currently being presented as "martial arts." Students are taught sports-based moves and modern interpretations and told that they are both traditional martial art systems and effective for self-defense. Neither is true. Often, when these techniques fail, the student feels responsible for not doing the move correctly. But in fact, the technique - as it was taught - is missing vital components that would make it both traditional and effective. The fault, of which the instructor is probably not even aware, is not with the student, but with the information that was given to him.
Becoming a Complete Martial Artist introduces the reader to the concepts necessary to restore lost aspects, repair corrupted data, and analyze for errors, whatever martial arts system he studies. In addition, the explanations of fundamental principles that apply to all martial arts systems will assist both the student and the instructor. With a strong grasp of the mechanics of error detection, the martial artist will be able to step up to a new awareness and a vastly enhanced ability to use an existing arsenal of skills to greater advantage.
Sutrisno and MacYoung bring over eighty years of combined experience to their teaching, and this book is the fruit of their long study. No matter your level of experience, Becoming a Complete Marital Artist will help you better understand the depths of your system.

About the Author

Tristan Sutrisno was born in 1950 in Jakarta, Indonesia. He was introduced to the martial arts at the age of four, when his father and uncle began coaching him at home in the Japanese martial arts and Indonesian Pencak Silat. Sutrisno has taught martial arts at the YMCA and his own school since 1973. An avid martial arts tournament competitor, he has also conducted numerous seminars over the years. He now lives in Sheppton, Pennsylvania, and continues to help promote martial arts in the United States.

Marc MacYoung was introduced to the martial arts at the age of ten. After more than thirty years, he has undergone formal training in karate, wing chun, tai chi, silat, bagua, hsing-i, boxing, Western swordsmanship, and kali. His emphasis has always been to take traditional martial arts and apply them in a modern context, both tactically and legally. He teaches martial artists, and also teaches close-quarter combat to police and military personnel around the world. A Los Angeles native, he currently lives in Castle Rock, Colorado.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Lyons Press; First Edition (October 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1592283705
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1592283705
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,668,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,445 in Martial Arts (Books)
- #38,230 in Exercise & Fitness (Books)

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4.0 12 ratings

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Tristan Sutrisno
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Marc MacYoung
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Marc MacYoung has never fit well into simple categories. That's because of his diverse past. When his family fell into situational poverty he found himself facing lifestyles and problems that most people have no idea exist, much less have experience dealing with. It was during that time the earned the street name "Animal." Many of his stories start with qualifiers like "The first time I was shot at..." and "The last time I had someone try to stab me..." (It was a long hard climb out of that lifestyle.) Decades of experience in environments and professions where violence was common, would eventually lead him to being a court recognized expert about violence, crime, and self-defense.
This wide ranging background gives him a completely different perspectives of the complex problems involved with personal safety, conflict, violence, and crime avoidance —especially how there are no simple answers (e.g., martial arts or carrying a gun). Those approaches may soothe fears, but they don't actually address danger —or the problems you'll face if you have to use them.
Over the years his works have evolved from that of a streetfighter to taking a more practical approach of avoidance and/or deterrence. This opens far more effective and non-violent options for his readers. As he often says "I'm not about fear management. My goal is danger management. I'm more interested in teaching you how to avoid walking into the lion's jaws than giving you false confidence about doing so."
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Clear, comprehensive, and highly recommended

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2005

Verified Purchase

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

19 people found this helpful

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Dave Chapman

Keeping It Real.

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2020

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Principles to think about for EVERY Martial Artist and Self Defense Expert in these pages.
Marc has a way with words and even deeper experience from which we should all be drawing by continuous study in the hopes that these principles serve us by keeping us out of violent situations.
One of many great books in the MacYoubg Collection.

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Jeffrey Amen

More suited for Hard Style Martial artists

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2011

Verified Purchase

This book was presented as a "graduate-level" course for martial artists. As a long-time Aikido practioner, I found almost all the concepts in this book consistent with basic level Aikido concepts- for me, there was nothing "advanced" about them. Perhaps martial artists trained in a hard style art will benefit from reading this book. But for those trained in a "soft" art, it will seem remedial. The last two chapters on Asian Weapons and Real World were outstanding, living up to the "graduate-level" billing.

One person found this helpful

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Jose Quesada

Did he miss the "mark"?

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2015

Verified Purchase

I collect his books but this one is not his best book on martial arts. Still I did read the book a long time ago and soon I will get back to it again and see if it changes my mind on it.

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

Awesome assessment of the basics! I recommend reading anything Marc MacYoung has a hand in.

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2013

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I was looking for the material in this book. It contains exactly what I wanted. I give my full recommendation.

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2021

My title is a phrase from the author's own text. How many times can you say, "one, two, three...nine, ten?" The book focuses on the basic moves of nearly every Asian hard martial arts system, which is okay, but it gives the false impression that these martial arts systems are inherently flawed due to poor instruction and must be fixed. That simply isn't true. Any worthwhile instructor would not allow these sorts of errors to endure in his teaching and mistakes such as those described in the book are corrected during lower-belt training. The only pages I found helpful critiqued the use of flashy high kicks, which look good in demonstrations but leave the student needlessly open to a painful ride to the floor if attempted in sparring, unless the practioner really knows what he is doing. That lesson is also something learned early in your journey, often the hard way. I sincerely hope that the author did not have the level of poor teaching from his instructors during his own training that he describes in his book.

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Erik Harris

Achieves its very focused goal excellently, making it great for certain audiences, not so helpful for others.

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2005

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.

16 people found this helpful

Helpful

Tim Bown

The perfect handbook for traditional martial arts

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2008

One of the biggest plagues in the martial arts world is the simple statement, "we do that." Most martial artists run on the assumption that what they do works and is effective either because of its roots or because of their instructor's impressive skill set. When a practitioner from another style points out a fundamental principle, the natural response from the student is to say, "we do that," based on the fact that they heard their instructor say it.

Unfortunately, most of what is taught as traditional martial arts has been watered down, with fundamentals removed or glazed over and patched with either speed or power. This book is an excellent attempt at making martial artists look at their own art from an objective standpoint to see if it really works, or if they have been victims of patching.

The physical examples given are based on Shotokan Karate, one of Tristan's primary arts (along with silat and iaijutsu). If the reader pays attention, however, he or she will find that the principles are the same regardless of the style and that they can then begin to fill in the holes in their practice that were previously covered by patching.

Overall, a very valuable addition to the library of any traditional martial artist!

One person found this helpful

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