The Complete Martial Arts Training Manual: An Integrated Approach [DVD Included] Paperback – May 10, 2010

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I borrowed this book/DVD set from the library on a whim, and was leafing through the book when I noticed a some pictures in the Ground Fighting chapter that were straight out an entry-level jiu jitsu class when the instructor says, "never do this". After studying various martial arts for a decade, I couldn't believe that the author was advocating passing a closed guard with one arm inside and the other outside of the opponent's locked legs, not to mention pictures of arm bars with the opponent's thumb pointing in the wrong direction, making the submission largely ineffective. Then I flipped back through to the standup fighting techniques and began to notice some things that had evaded my first perusal: a ball-of-the-foot roundhouse kick, and the kind of old-school karate blocks look pretty badass in a kata, but will get you beaten to a pulp on the street. While there are some effective, proven techniques in this book, there are also some maneuvers that could either get you hurt, or, in a best-case scenario, laughed at.Thinking that the DVD could only be better, I gave that a try. This was pure comedy, showcasing two stickly guys throwing half speed punches with the form of eight-year-old girls. I can't believe this footage hasn't gone viral yet. There was little to no editing as they were constantly readjusting the four tumbling mats that they had set up, and were often whispering instructions to one another. At one point, the sound of a fire truck siren lingered outside of the building until they shut off the microphone and continued in silence. I won't even get into this DVD's other home-movie production values. Anyway, the whole thing was so bad, it was good.I would not recommend this to anyone unless they needed a good laugh.

Very basic and focused on fundamental elements of modern MMA techniques. A good quick read before getting further involved in any of the topics included within.

This book is short overview through different martial arts. This is not manual. This book is not about training. The complete... is a great joke. If you looking for training schemes or how to build plans for training you will NOT find that. If you looking for martial art conditioning you will NOT find that. You can find just few technical elements across martial arts. This book is just WASTE of money.