Dave is a new reader of ours who has already inspired me to write an article and begin another book based on his e-mail comments and questions. In this day and age where only the top writers get an editor, having intelligent, inquisitive readers is a boon.
The Man Question
Glad I could provide some inspiration. I look forward to the article. The Allure Of Achilles
My profile pic benefits from a lighting irregularity but I'll take all the help I can get these days. So I don't actually have a bull neck but I wish I did. The muscle I do have is from me being a gym owner after I failed at running a traditional martial arts school. The reason behind my recent book purchases is I'm interested in your fighting development and it looks like one of the ones I ordered is answering my questions. I'm switching over to combatives because listening to traditional martial arts guys make me feel nauseous these days. As I get older, I have little patience for the style wars and as my family grows, I feel the need to defend them in our rapidly declining society without all the fluff. With that stuff in mind, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions if I may:
1. I was amused to read that you watched the Dog Brothers power video everyday and I'm guessing you did the workout at the end of tape 1, am I correct? I did that too and I had a match with a JKD kali guy that took my hand off every time I did a forehand strike. He told me that the big forehands are powerful but are easily telegraphed. He also advised me that boxing footwork was just as good as all the male/female triangle footwork I'm struggling to learn. What do you think of that?
2. Urban survival is becoming an obsession of mine, especially now that I have three wonderful kids. Which of your books do you recommend I get next?
Thanks for the tip on ordering your books in the e-book format. You anticipated a question I had. I use the Aldiko reader on my Android phone BTW. And thanks for the previews of the books you sent. Your output is very impressive!
Thanks again,
Dave
Author’s Response
Dave, the thing to take from the Dog Brothers power video is power, not tactics. I did not do the workout at the end of the tape but aped what Eric was doing during the body of the tape and then got out there three times a week and fought a hockey player on a netless city basketball court.
You, having a muscular build—compared to this old twerp—predisposes you toward telegraphing weapon strokes. Your JKD opponent was working the six-direction boxing footwork [+ & x] inside of your FMA triangles. I combine boxing, FMA and fencing footwork in weapon fighting. Against top fighters boxing footwork is not enough. Against fresh guys it gets it done. The best way to learn to not give up the hand in a stick match is to do hundreds of hours of full contact knife sparring with small sticks and polypropylene blunts. Look on our agonistics page for sparring examples. I will do a brief video on hand discipline this summer.
Checkout this training video and look at the slow motion forehands we use from the guard. Your elbow needs to come behind the back to refuse the hand [which is hard for muscle guys as those nice lats get in the way], and, the stroke begins with the stick moving in the hand and coming in at the forehand angle before the hand moves away from the body. Even then, if you just try to lead with a deliberate forehand the results will tend to be as bad against a good fighter as boxing without a double jab. If every lead jab a boxer throws is a power jab, unless he is a giant with fleet feet, he's dead meat. The forehand in stick fighting is analogous to the power jab in boxing, which needs to be set up with blind jabs, posted jabs, sneaky jabs, and, most of all, feints. Stick fighting without feinting is a recipe for a broken hand. Bag Work
Definitely check out the Let the Weak Fall tab at the top of this article. We have over 2,500 posts now. So using this redundant overlapping tagging system should help you navigate the site.
As far as urban survival, just look to the Harm City category here at this link, with When You’re Food and Don’t Get Boned the first ones I would suggest. And, if you keep up on the Harm City posts on the site, you are typically looking at an article a day. A lot of this verges on lifestyle memoir but, lifestyle is what gets you boned, Bro.
Take care of you so you can take care of those children, Dave, and thanks for the input.
Books by James LaFond
Thanks James. You answered the questions in my previous comment.
Are you a fan of Rory Miller and Marc MacYoung?
I have not read anything by Rory Miller, though I noticed about five years ago that when you looked at my books he would come up as a recommendation.
Marc is an interesting case. I read his first three books and liked them a lot, then red a book by Alain Burreese, a friend of his, who I interviewed, and who turned out to be a great guy. I read Marc's books after I wrote my first book, and then inserted recommendations to read them into the footnotes, as I felt like he had covered some of the material I had just touched on in much better depth.
I received a terrible review on Amazon for the Fighting Edge, which is still there, that was obviously written by a MacYoung fan. A letter through Paladin, from a mutual fan, was written to me. The reader said he bought my book because of that horrible review and liked it. He then exchanged e-mails with Marc, in which Marc bad-mouthed me and claimed I was just ripping off his content [as if I knew anything about LA] and that he and Allain and Peyton had had a conversation at a cookout about me being some kind of sneak-thief louse; that I was just using Marc's material and rewriting it.
Our publisher, Paladin, did not share this view. However, after this exchange, my editor Jon Ford told me that certain unnamed experts had called into question my tactical blade deductions for my second book. I also spoke with another Paladin author how as working in an editorial capacity who told me my tactical deductions were flawed. At the same time he told me that he had given a free copy of The Logic of Steel to knife making millionaire Lynn Thompson.
The very same year, in Black Belt magazine, appeared a knife article—fast tracked, as I know Black Belt's normal pace , having had 7 articles published with them—by an associate of Lyn Thompson or himself [I forget which] in which my work from The Logic of Steel was condensed and credited to Lyn Thompson's genius. They even had a bandana and flannel shirt looking bad guy that looked like he was my stunt double!
After that Paladin declined to publish When You're Food, and breached their contract on The Broken Dance, the advance for which I am paying back through my remaining royalties for The Logic of Steel, The Fighting Edge and The Logic of Force, which is my worst book, and was somehow chosen over When You're Food which is my best book by far.
Hence, I have not read more Marc MacYoung or Paladin books in general.
I wish Marc and the rest the best, but have declined to wear down my tired eyes reading books written by those who expended actual effort to hurt my writing future, even as I extolled their writing past.
I feel better!
Thanks PR!
You aren't missing much by not following those guys. I always look at who attracts who and many of the self-defense authors I thought I admired lost my respect after seeing their fans on Facebook. Some of the most bizarre statements that you would think a fan of their work would never make wind up in the comments to their posts. I've gotten to where I judge the author at least a little by the quality of his audience and the type of stuff that authors egg on in their fanbase. By that measure, again you aren't missing much with those guys.
Dave, when reading any other site, I have gotten to the point where I will not check reader posts as they tend to be such a descending well of negativity. [Most of my webzine reading is in Culture and politics.]
I feel really lucky that almost all of my readers are developing the discussion. I would say 10% of my articles are based on reader comments and e-mails.
To Dave and any other readers of James LaFond:
I have a first edition of Logic of Steel, heavily highlited and underlined, which I will never sell.
When You're Food is excellent, but Don't Get Boned is stunning: I've been training in martial arts since 1972, reading m.a. books since Bruce Tegner in 1963-64, and LaFond's Don't Get Boned beats everything I've ever read.
Many badasses, like Geoff Thompson, have brilliant advice.
As I approach 63, LaFond's advice beats anything I've read, anywhere.
I recently finished Don't Get Boned, but I have to re-read it, as it has too much information, for just one reading.
I read Animal Mac and P. Quinn, years ago, but LaFond goes far beyond them. I can't read MacYoung, now, as it seems somewhat juvenile in mindset.
Please keep writing, James.
Mark Lawrence
Phoenix, Arizona
Thank you so much for these kind words, Mark.
Hope you are doing well.
James
From what I can gather from the net, and reading some of Macyoung's books, I have come to regard him a a fantasist with, most likely, little to no actual fighting experience.
I think he is a Walter Mitty who gave himself the "Animal" nickname. He claims to have a been a "streetfighter" and all round "badass" but there is no evidence to support any of these claims other than his word on them.
He is very short, very fat, and seems more like a tubby used car salesman than a badass self defence instructor.