Amazon.com, Customer Reviews
A reader from New Jersey
January 18, 1999

Physical principles for effective infighting
Indonesian Fighting Fundamentals (IFF for short) is a different from your average martial arts book.  You won't find a collection of techniques or "moves" that will make you a better fighter.  Rather you will find a collection of physical principles that are the foundation of many of the techniques of Silat and Kuntao which are the major systems covered in this book.

As an example here's what you won't find in this book, "How to punch, how to kick, how to block, how to evade."

What you will find are principles to maximize the effectiveness of your techniques and more importantly (in my opinion) how to analyze and learn martial arts techniques and strategies.

What also sets this book apart from most martial arts is that the bulk of the book principles are all focused on how to "in fight" i.e. what are the main principles to use when fighting is up close and personal, when you are close enough to bite, head butt, elbow, knee and trip as primary weapons and techniques.  For example the foundation principle the author discusses is "adhesion".  This is the principle of using full body contact with your opponent during a confrontation.  For most people this principle is completely counter intuitive i.e. if your a 110 pound female the last strategy in the world you'd use is infighting with a 220 pound male.  The author goes into tremendous detail on this very concept.

Besides the section on principles the author spends some time on principles on learning martial arts by analyzing his personal learning experiences in learning and teaching martial arts and leads you into understanding and hopefully questioning how you learn and analyze your current training (for those that are thinking of starting up in martial arts or switching to a different "style" see the author's other book, "Martial Arts America" – a must read) [emphasis added].

This book also has valuable sections on integrating principles, comparing and contrasting different martial art systems, some historical notes on Silat and Kuntao, some basic drills to illustrate how a principle can be drilled into your physical system and even a chapter called "Learning How to Hurt Someone" which deals with some questions in martial arts which few people take the time to think about.

Negatives? The book is only 180 pages and $40.  The price is justified because the book is filled with large, sharp B&W photo sequences that illustrate the principles and these are expensive to produce.  The shortness of the book is really a shortcoming created by the author's excellent analytical and tight writing ability that makes you sad that you came to the end of the book but for me the beginning (well actually a renewal) of my martial arts journey of discovery.

The one real negative I have is the book is very sparse on "entry" i.e. how to close the gap to use the weapons/principles in this book.  From a street perspective this probably is not important because most real physical confrontations are going to start when someone is in your face but I think some more detail on principles and strategies to get you safely inside would have made the book more complete.