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Summary
The first part of the book starts with the fact that Martial Arts started for combats creating large men in short time. Then author beautifully moves on to history of some great founders of Martial Arts and how various arts originated and progressed with time. It also highlights the importance of some Martial Arts like Kiai and Grappling that may seem small arts with little applications but in fact prove quite useful during Martial Arts especially self-defense.
The second and third parts of the book are about self-protection and how children should actually be trained for self-defense. He has shared his tenets; respect, awareness, courage, discipline and open mind. In these two parts author shares many topics like what children think, shares and fear. How they should be treated and trained to face the dangers of outside world. He has discussed that how he discovered his very own methods of training children by using games like build-up tig/tag, fence, strategy one versus strategy two etc and by actually listening to their feed backs and ideas. The grim fact exists that most of the Martial Arts training centres focus only on money and their mere goal to produce rows of students standing in so called discipline and succeeding in games and competitions with a little ability to defend them when facing threat outside walls. The last part of the book is for martial artists, how they should train themselves and use various tactics and exercises to become better and stronger. He also shares some of his most interesting experiences and routines with us and also some memories of his childhood.
What does the title say?
A reader will wonder about the title of the book that “What does Mordred has to do with Martial Arts?” Well this is the part that I loved most about this book. In the second chapter Clubb has narrated the story of rivalry between Arthur and his son Mordred and with this story he has brilliantly related examples of many rival players like Muhammad Ali and his “catcher” Joe Frazier, Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, Royce Gracie and Kimo Leopoldo, Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake La Motta and many more. He showed both the Arthur and the Mordred in each one of them.
What do I think about this book?
Remember a time when you have to take a class or subject with which you are not familiar and find it really hard? You fear that no matter what you do, you won’t be able to do well in it. But miraculously you get a teacher who explains things like they are a story. You enjoy yourself, get entertained and before you know it you have learned things. You have memorized facts and figures. I felt the same way when I finished reading this book. Once started I couldn't put it down.
I gave it 3 out of 4 starts. I am leaving one star behind as I am not a martial art expert and don’t know anything about it besides seeing some moves in Jackie Chan’s movies and enjoying them. But whether you are a martial artist or not, if you are a parent or a teacher then you should give it a try as it has some great advice. As I said before it is a piece of intellect and if you are looking for a good book to read with sound information and good quotes then this book is one of them.
***
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