What are some good martial arts books? Ramsey Dewey reviews the majority of the Victory Belt Publications MMA and BJJ books as well as a bunch of publications on the art of fighting.
For those who want to look out for the books later on, here is the list, and some of my notes on the video: # MMA Books, by Ramsey Dewey Victory Belt publishing is apparently pretty good. 1. Jack Dempsey - Championship Fighting 2. Eddie Bravo - Mastering the Twister 3. Machado - Encyclopedia of Jiu Jitsu 4. Eddie Bravo - Mastering the Rubber Guard 5. Eddie Bravo - Advanced Rubber Guard 6. Randy Couture - Wrestling for Fighting, The Natural Way 7. Winning on the Ground - Anna Maria (Ronda Rousey's Mom) - Great for gameplans. 8. Saulo Ribeiro - Jiu Jitsu University 9. Daniel DeMarzio - Catch Wrestling, Entering the Snake Pit 10. Antonion Rodrigo Nogueira - Mastering Mixed Martial Arts - The Guard - Roger Gracie: 80% of Jiu Jitsu doesn't work in MMA. 11. Lt. Jack Dempsey - How to Fight Tough - Jack Dempsey was also a Catch Wrestler and Judoka, besides a legendary boxer. 12. Anderson Silva - Striking 13. Anderson Silva - MMA Instruction Manual - Doesn't cover the cage unfortunately. 14. Neil Melanson - Mastering Triangle Chokes Ramsey's favorite submissions: - Rear-naked choke (highest success percentage, about half of all submissions) - Triangle (control even if you miss) - Heel hook (equalizer for bigger opponents) ## Some Other Books - Lance Freimuth - The Grappler's Manifesto - Marcelo Garcia - The X Guard - Marcelo Garcia - Advanced BJJ Techniques - Fedor Emelianenko - A Fighting System - Greg Jackson - The Stand Up Game - Greg Jackson - The Ground Game - Great books for beginners. - BJ Penn - The Book of Knowledge - Karo Parisyan - How to Use Judo in MMA - Bruce Lee - The Dao of Jeet Kune Do
Place thick, hardcover book over vitals. This is your Libro Aegis, and is only for DEFENSE. Libro Malleus requires a hardcover book, of more modest thickness - your Aegis should be as thick as possible; the Malleus should be thin and light enough for fast, effective striking. There are more advanced techniques, but be careful, as this is absolutely just FOR THE STREETS(!). You can do it the right way, or the Wong way. Y'all stay safe. Spoiler: I'm full of shit, don't do ANYTHING I wrote... pardon my spelling that out, I just feel obligated to highlight an obviously smartass quip as just a sardonic remark in so clinical a manner due the subject matter.
Book recommendation: The book of five rings from miyamoto musashi! It's not really about mma fighting but you can learn much about mindset, some strategic stuff, life lessons and it's just very very interesting!
You mention Marcelo saying "this is good for gi, this is good for gi or no gi." That's cool, but reminds me of Fiore dei Liberie "This guard is good only in armor, the text play is good both with and without armor." There's a martial arts book for you to read.
I think that can be good though, since most of the European fighting traditions have been gamified or lost. So if more people know that there were fighting manuals and technical moves being performed, it could help reduce inaccurate media portrayals. I would like to see what Ramsey thinks of the system though. Mostly the Unarmed, Baton (Cloak, Rope) and Dagger sections. Fiore mentions having to have a large knowledge of holds and escapes is needed to perform the techniques in a real situation. It would be nice if we had a better idea of how people fought in Europe before guns. Of course, going in with the blinding eye powder could be a really good option.
* takes notes * goes to Amazon * puts books into basket * notices most of them are already in the basket ... oh well ! 😆 *sees checkout total “Oh dear ...” 😧 (And thanks for your thoughts, Coach)
If anyone wants to see the whole list, click here :) www.amazon.ca/hz/wishlist/ls/3LPOISSAIDZKJ?&sort=default It is Amazon Canada tho :) you can just change the .ca to .com or whichever and it works.
There’s nothing like a physical book. I find it difficult to hold on to information I read on my phone screen. Thank you for the great recommendations!
I only own Bruce Lee's _"The Tao of Jeet Kune Do'"_ I'm gonna buy Jack Dempsey's Championship Fighting one day Your love for that book made me curious about its content
Bruce Lee loved Dempsey and references his book in the "Tao of Jeet Kune Do". Both Dempsey and Wing Chun stress a complementary "3 knuckle" striking system. Dempsey has perhaps the best description of how to punch properly I've ever seen. Get the book if you can.
@Mestre do Val , Dempsey's book is available on Web Archives. Tons of Books and vidéos are stores there. archive.org/details/Championship_Fighting_Explosive_Punching_and_Aggressive_Defense_1950_Jack_Dempse/mode/2up
Ramsey this is a great video. It's easy to lose interest in martial arts books especially if you happen to stumble upon the wrong selection - and between all the bad ones, oneself not being ready to understand what's being displayed and limitations associated with the older formats, that's very likely to happen. Therefore your guidance and recommendations are very welcome. How lucky was I to randomly stumble upon and read that book you started the video with in a time where I wasn't getting any power from my punches? I wish someone had actually recommended it to me. This video I watched twice, second time making a to read list. Thank you for sharing the materials. Now get out there and... complete the championship fighting audio book. Pretty please. :)
Hey Coach ramsey why don't you have cauliflower ears? if you're fighting for a long time how did you avoid that injury? It would be awesome to know that becoming a great grappler doesn't require having the cauliflower ears..
He answered that some times ago. IIRC he just doesn't get cauliflower ears. Human bodies are different and do different things. And his blood just doesn't clot in the ears.
He's gotten as much coliflower ear as he can, it can be removed by a simple surgery. If you can get coliflower ear the only thing you can do is cover your ears.
scythe death People only tend to get that by going to the ground a lot..Grappling game...although Ramsey trained for all this perhaps he was a striking fighter who won more contests not having to go to the ground...Hence he doesn't have those kind of ears. Guys like Brad Scott was UFC pro for eight years so he has them.But I understand Ramsey had to retire from Pro MMA because of a very serious head injury.
I don't really like talking about myself, much less "life story" level shit... but: I'm 39, a life-long student of practical combat "arts" (armed & unarmed), have a hole in my skull (with a much less badass story behind it, tbh), and also have TP bookmarks in all of my reference books... at least I'm in good company. It didn't quite occur to me how insane some of those "guides" I've read are -- maybe a single low-res, still photo of a technique per 20 pages of descriptive text - which, as you astutely observe: won't teach 99/100 people a damned thing unless they're already somewhat skilled. I have to order some resistance bands and other misc gear today, ya convinced me that I NEED to get every book Jack Dempsey authored, and should have gotten them long ago. Definitely before I got/read Tao of JKD, which is... handy, for theory, less so for practical gains, imho (addendum - well shit: yeah, what you said, much more eloquently... wrote before I heard you got to that one, lol.). Sorry for rant, in addition to the (relatively rare, I think) commonalities I blurted out, I tend to skim comments when I'm watching & not busy; a lot of the people here actually know what they're talking about and I'll rattle off a few hundred words w/o realizing it, as there are good, civil discussions to be had, and I love that. Y'all stay safe and take it easy.
Hi I love your videos and would love to see you try an Escanore impression from seven deadly sins please, also the narrator would be great if possible.
b-ok.cc/book/3282892/b1c721 . one of the books ramsey mentioned in a free download. if u look at the bottom another 4 books he meantioned are on the same page. the eddie bravo ones and randy c.
Ooooohhh, jack slacks articles on fightland are sublime. He's the master at breaking down mma fights particularly from a striking perspective. He famously called the holly Holm vs rhonder rousey upset. Also lawrence kenshins RU-vid videos are also great and he has more or a maiy thai/kickboxing focus. But jack slack is the king.
Speaking of martial art related media did you hear shenmue 3 is about to be released after like 20 yrs of fan waiting? Have you gave this video game series a try? Apparently this one may be a system seller. Some video reviews already exist.
I liked the victory belt Karo Parisyan, Matt Linland, and Minotauro Nogueira books. I did not like the striking in the victory belt books; it just seemed to rehash what all the punches looked like and some combinations presented kinda randomly. For striking I wish victory belt would have done something like Lawrence Kenshin's work.
Ramsey, thank you for the book advices, I've put them on my list. I have a question for you : do you recommend any method aside from those books (for example dvd, planning, advices...) for training mma and mma applicable wrestling when you have no mma/wrestling gym around ? I used to train boxing and bjj separately, but I'd like to be able to practice at home with some friends to connect stuff into a more global mma approach.
I'm curious on your thoughts of the book' "Footwork Wins Fighte" by David Christian. I ordered it recently because it's one of the the most sold on amazon. It is made by a fellow youtuber!
As a hobbyist boxer who doesn't plan on competing in MMA, the one book I really wish existed is, "How to not get ground and pounded by random nobodies on the street - for dummies." Maybe also an advanced sequel, "How to not get destroyed by low kicks - for dummies."
@@RamseyDewey Except, I already know how to do completely beginner random nobody ground and pound - everyone is born knowing that :P From what I've seen, the instinctive defenses to it are all not recommended? (eg. turning over facedown and covering the back of your head.)
technocrat9000 That’s an indirect way of saying you need to learn how to wrestle so you don’t get taken down and pinned on your back in a compromising position where you’ll get pounded. And no, nobody knows the fine art of ground and pound who hasn’t diligently practiced it. You know how to ball your hands into fists, and you know how to hit a stationary target. What you don’t know if how to put your opponent in that position in the first place.
@@RamseyDewey Well, of *course* I could take the time to learn things properly (if I had such time.) What i was jokingly hoping for was just a simple set of tips to keep in mind that will help against completely untrained attackers. That I could keep in mind until I one day manage to find that time. Since it seems many self defense fights end up with someone getting knocked down and then ground pounded.
technocrat9000 untrained attackers are wild humans. Tips don’t help you fight wild humans, experience with wild humans does. There are too many variables at play to give a blanket answer.
The definition of what is a "good" martial arts book will probably vary from person-to-person. Ramsey, you are obviously a visual learner, and I would imagine that most of us learn visually (at least as part of our learning). But I have quite a few martial arts books, published from the early Twentieth Century up to now, which I find very useful - because of the illustration and the text. And of course I have others which suffer from what you talk about. One of the things that I think would make things clearer, is using line-drawings rather than using photographs. Illustrations (such as line drawings) allow the illustrator to emphasize what they want to emphasize much more clearly than using photos, in my opinion.
@@RamseyDewey For reference, it's Big Book of Combat. It's actually two volumes, lots of pictures breaking things down and trying to be as comprehensive as possible based mainly on Bas's experience.
@@RamseyDewey you could argue that of any of these books big R, you have to practice stuff you can’t just read it and get better boom so I think it matters what you do with the books that matters. There’s a guy who reads Arnold’s books and just exercises having read them, then another man who actually exercised how the book showed which do you think gets the benefit? Personally the two of jeet kune do taught me the corkscrew punch and a few other things like moving to the outside of an opponents power hand or hitting them when they come in. Those are all things I was able to apply within days of reading it as a beginner now I can’t speak to how useful it would be for someone like Ramsay Dewey but I can say that it isn’t bullshido and you won’t learn “nothing” from it if you seek earnestly for the stuff you need
Because here on my planet, we, the dominant life form, communicate by pushing air through our vocal chords creating sonic vibrations so other Earthlings can sense the sounds coming out of our mouths and extrapolate their meanings based on relative experiences. How do you talk on your planet?
The Neil Melanson book is interesting, because it's almost one book pretending to be another. It's ostensibly a triangle book, but it's more broadly a book about working different guard systems in response to different pressures and angles. It's most noticeable in those moments where he shows a back take and then jumps back into the triangle because that's the book he sold to the publishers.
@@RamseyDewey Hi Ramsey Can you pls do a vdo on why khabib, Floyd Mayweather and Jon Jones are undefeated ??? The role of innate talent in their streak ??
@@RamseyDewey hello Coach 🙏🏼 What are your thoughts on . miyamoto musashi's Fight quotes ...have u ever made a vdo on his Fight Psychology quotes ? What are your thoughts on some of His most most famous , war / fight quotes ... Please make a vdo , at the earliest 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
Man I really love you channel I've been absent for a couple months because problems have been homeless and I got to save as much battery as I can do you know but every time I see your Shadow I get happy I get hope thank you very much you're the best man I swear to God
What I liked about Bruce notes was it showed that you needed stand up and ground skills and he showed art from around world. Awesome book collection and I see one I want to get now.
@Rasmey Dewey Thank you for this list especially the first book. As Kyokushin Karate fighter who is working on the punching part this fundamental text came at the right time. Having read the Tao Of jeet Kun Do I share your opinion on the matter, even if I find the last chapter abut the 5 Ways of Attack useful. Now my attack strategy has a lot more coherence than before. Another con's for the book is that since they are notes and not final work collected from Bruce Lee, we may not know what he at the end would have deleted. I would want to know your opinion about the other series of the book from Bruce: Te Bruce Lee Method of Fighting in 4 volumes. Especially of their validity in an MMA setting since they seem to focus more on a no grappling and no low kicks situations. Thanks again
Master Wong & Ramsey could write a book TOGETHER...lol....It could be called 'how to correctly do the rear naked choke'....But it would quickly descend into diatribe & the two authors would probably end up trying to do it on each other at their book signing....lol
Hey Ramsey ,on different subject. Could a 40 year old with no mma experience, and an epileptic condition that’s under control with medication start training and then compete in amateur mma. I lift weights and get about 5 miles of cardio a day currently without training. Thnx Coach
Great video! I listed some of these books so I can search them... I'm now reading a Choy Lee Fut book, then I will read the Bubishi. Cheers, Ramsey! 🙏🏻
