BJ Penn's MMA Book

Anyone else seen this? I just got BJ Penn’s “Mixed Martial Arts-The Book of Knowledge” from Victory Belt publishing. Great step by step photos from different angles give me a clear understanding of his techniques. There’s different sections on stand up jujitsu and wrestling. Gotta be the best MMA book I’ve seen.

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Compare it to other materials you own, mentioning them specifically.

What level of detail is granted in this 300 page book, which deals with so many subjects?

What is your training background? How useful will this book be to supplement that training?

Based on other Victory publishings, I am betting this is pretty solid. For general readers, remember that without instruction and training partners, training aids such as this are nearly useless.

Actually the guys that wrote it are old friends of mine so I’m just hyping it up a bit. Their trying to get into Amazon’s top 100. I’ve seen all their books and own a few and we all think this came out great. I’ve also hung out and helped on some photo shoots. Its interesting how they put the books together.

Last week I was at Legends for Karo Parisyan’s photo shoot. It really didn’t take them long to get all the moves photoed and explained on tape.
I don’t train MMA anymore but I’m a big fan. Right now I just body build and play guitar.

The Books are given to me. The guys at Victory belt really bust their asses working on these books. 16hr days most the time working and living in a dingy basement with nice computers.

[quote]Hagar wrote:
The Books are given to me. The guys at Victory belt really bust their asses working on these books. [/quote]

Agreed. I’ve got Eddie Bravo’s book on rubber guard from the same publisher. It’s good enough that it’s possible to apply it even when no one else in your school trains rubber guard. The excerpt on the Victory Belt website makes Penn’s book look similar. BTW, How could you hype the book without linking to this page?
http://victorybelt.com/store/bj-penn-mma-the-book-of-knowledge/

I’ve heard Penn’s book is good as a stand-alone jiu jitsu reference.

[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
I’ve heard Penn’s book is good as a stand-alone jiu jitsu reference.[/quote]

It’s the most comprehensive manual on no-gi grappling I have run across. I’ve been pulling a technique or two form the book and drilling it after judo practice and I’ve already found some things that have taken my very meager game up a few notches (not my judo game, if your interested in traditional gi-based grappling this book will be of little help).

All the grappling moves are shown with consideration as to striking being involved which I think would make it a useful reference to anyone looking to modify BJJ for self-defense purposes. No fancy stuff like X-gaurd or anything that doesn’t carry outside of BJJ competition.

The book is somewhat limited in scope in that it is basically how BJ Penn fights. Punch, takedown, position, submission is pretty much the strategy that governs BJ’s fight plans and the book reflects this.

It doesn’t cover using kicks, for example, because BJ doesn’t use kicks because they don’t work for him. BJ believes in using the basics to perfection, and there isn’t anything shown in the book that is too complicated to be out of reach for the average guy to learn and get a handle on (save for some of the rubber gaurd stuff he touches on, I doubt 99% of people have the flexbility without significant stretching to use these).

Even for someone not interested in participating in MMA or any of it’s components, reading this book would give you a very deep understanding of what is going on and heighten your enjoyment of the sport I would think.

[quote]Donut62 wrote:
It’s the most comprehensive manual on no-gi grappling I have run across. [/quote]

Have you read Royler Gracie’s “Submission Grappling”?

It’s really good about covering the basics. It’s the only other good no-gi book (other than Bravo’s, which is a different animal all together) out there.

I personally hate training in a gi and think tradition is the only reason anyone does it. I’m not some aspiring MMA guy, and I imagine I’ll never been in another real fight but still, why learn collar chokes? I have a black belt’s worth of worthless forms in my head already.

Anyhow, I ordered the book. So Haagar, make your friends buy you a beer or something.

Thanks CalLaw. They’ve bought me plenty beer already but hey whats one more(unfortunately I can only drink them on the weekends AD you know) I live 3 blocks away from Legends Gym in Hollywood. So my buddies come down and stay at my place while they shoot the book. Great house guests.

I’ve met Eddie a few times, funny guy. You got the 10th planet jujitsu book? My buddy Glen who worked on that book just got his purple belt from him. He was submitting guys left and right and pulling off some of Eddies moves. Believe it or not his ground game really improved since he’s spent so much time working on the books. Plus he lived and trained with BJ from a couple of months.

You should check out Karo’s book when it comes out. He’s got some great moves and he pays close attention to detail. He fights in the UFC wins most the time but he hardly trains maybe a half hour then he gets board.