The pretty negative review is based on the fact that the book is made of 95% trapping drills which are very very difficult to follow.
The rest 5% is actually quite interesting as it covers fighting tactics against different opponents types (boxers, grapplers, karatekas, etc....) but the pages dedicated to that are the extreme minority.
The book should have just been called: Advanced trapping exercises.
Good if you are a trapping fan, but wasted time if you are much more "street oriented".... more info
It's... there:
Having been trained in JKD, I bought this book to maybe reinforce some teachings, or hopefully learn something new.
It makes a nice reference in case I forget the names of some moves, but aside from that, I couldn't really find a good use for it.
Might be a good read for someone a bit newer to the art.
Very good picture flow and explanations of moves.
Okay.:
Unlike his older books, this one is more specialized to jkd'ers (& maybe wing chun folks). Also, imo, the techs. shown for dealing with grapplers are not as strong/solid as those shown in his older books, or in material taught in his seminars. Prof. Hartsell is great, but this is not my favorite work of his.
Fine book by one of the greats:
For those of you who know Mr. Hartsell, he needs no introduction, but he's one of the Lee's original inner circle of JKD students and is also an excellent grappler. So he combines the best of outfighting and infighting techniques in his personal approach. I've never had the chance to train with Mr. Hartsell myself, but I had the opportunity to buy the Wisconsin summer camp training tape featuring him, Danny Innosanto, Paul de Thouars, and Sirisute a few years ago, and it was excellent. So when I saw this... more info
