Recommended MMA Books or DVD's?

[Brian Lawyer]

I know you can't learn MMA from a book or DVD but I already have about 3 years experience as a foundation for the sport and just wanted to get back into some MMA training for fun. I don't have any money to join a local MMA gym, so I thought I would just grab a cheap book or DVD and workout on my own. My training would probably be heavily weighted towards standup since it will be hard to train ground work without a partner. I saw that BJ Penn's book of Knowledge seems to be popular and I also saw some Pit instructional DVD's with Chuck Liddell. Does anyone have good recommendations...

[Matt Corley]

Victory belt's books are all very high quality. Not sure how much you'll get from them, especially when working alone but they are really nice. I thought that the Eddie Bravo and Marcelo Garcia books were very well put together, but once again they aren't enough by themselves.

I would recommend going to a big bookstore (Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc...) and going to the martial arts section and just looking through the books for a while. Most of them aren't cheap, about $30 each last time I looked.

Might also want to try the Library if you haven't already. MMA is getting pretty mainstream and some libraries have some MMA related material.

Youtube is free and does have quite a bit of instructional info on it. Some of it is pretty bad but if you do a little research you should be able to find some worthwhile info on there as well.

BJ Penn's website has a HUGE amount of free instructionals and they are very good.

[Matthew Apostol]

I would echo what Matt said.

Eddie Bravo's book on the Rubber Guard has done wonders from my jiu jitsu game. The layout of the book is very professional and thorough, very easy to understand and has large color photographs. Even though it says Rubber Guard on the front, only about a third of the book is actually devoted it. He as a lot of other great techniques in there, too, both traditional and non-traditional.

I've also flipped through BJ Penn's book and it very well written as well. His approach to MMA is more holistic with stand up techniques added with wrestling and jiu jitsu.

Nothing beats one-on-one instruction from a professional, but you can still learn a ton of stuff from books and DVDs when you practice them on a live partner.

[Brian Lawyer]

Originally Posted by Matthew Apostol

...but you can still learn a ton of stuff from books and DVDs when you practice them on a live partner.

My live partners right now are 3.5 years old and 2 years old although my 2 year old is a beast. He weighs 41lbs and I've seen him carry 24 packs of coke in from the garage and he has carried the gasoline blower all the way around our house while it is running.

[Doug Blankenship]

Originally Posted by Matthew Apostol

I would echo what Matt said.

Eddie Bravo's book on the Rubber Guard has done wonders from my jiu jitsu game. The layout of the book is very professional and thorough, very easy to understand and has large color photographs. Even though it says Rubber Guard on the front, only about a third of the book is actually devoted it. He as a lot of other great techniques in there, too, both traditional and non-traditional.

I've also flipped through BJ Penn's book and it very well written as well. His approach to MMA is more holistic with stand up techniques added with wrestling and jiu jitsu.

Nothing beats one-on-one instruction from a professional, but you can still learn a ton of stuff from books and DVDs when you practice them on a live partner.

I will third the Eddie Bravo recommendation. I have the Pit DVD's and if your doing CrossFit you don't really need to follow the Pit workout DVD's. A very good basic DVD for striking is here Link is WFS

Eddie Bravo's Stuff is here Link WFS

[Doug Blankenship]

Originally Posted by Brian Lawyer

My live partners right now are 3.5 years old and 2 years old although my 2 year old is a beast. He weighs 41lbs and I've seen him carry 24 packs of coke in from the garage and he has carried the gasoline blower all the way around our house while it is running.

That's awesome. ^^^

[Brian Lawyer]

Thanks guys. Those Victory belt publications are awesome! They have a surplus of them at Half Price book stores. I picked up the BJ Penn MMA book of knowledge for 12 bucks. I am thinking about going back and getting the Fedor one which was $17. The Fedor looked to be more weighted towards striking while Penn's book was weighted toward the transition from standing to ground then obviously weighted heavily on BJJ since that is BJ Penn's forte.

Also, while I was researching I found this DVD set: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...pf_rd_i=507846.

I got to work out at Saeksons gym for about a month and he is awesome. Purely Muay Thai. I can't afford that DVD set but for anyone that wants to work on striking I would highly recommend.

Also, I found a group of guys to train with locally out of some guys garage!

[Matt Corley]

Forgot to mention these but Ed Beneville's books are very good if you are doing mostly gi work. Very detailed and pretty easy to follow.

[James Lovell]

For ground cant beat eddie bravo books, BJ Penn's book is good too, if you're looking more towards standup, Mark hatmaker is the best for drills that i have come across. Bob Spours books and DVDs are good such as his Combat Clinch DVD. He is probably unknown in the US so it might be difficult finding most of his DVDs.


Mark Hatmaker NHB range
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?ur...=Mark+Hatmaker

Bob Spours ultimate Muay Thai is a good buy
http://www.amazon.com/Muay-Thai-Book...4776409&sr=8-1

[Brian Lawyer]

Not all victory belt books appear to be equal in quality. I've purchased the BJ Penn MMA book of knowledge and I have been perusing all the other books at the local book store. I have mainly had my eye on the Fedor or Anderson Silva book.

I noticed the Fedor and Penn books have very nice Introductions to each chapter with summary points. The pictures are nicely done at 3 different angles. The books include key concepts bulletted out at the end of each technique. In general, I thought they were very user friendly.

On the other hand the Anderson Silva book on striking was a mess. I wouldn't recommend spending the money on that book. There are no summary introductions or key concept bullets. They basically just barfed out this long run on paragraph at the beginning of each technique. The pictures are incredibly confusing because Silva fights southpaw but throughout the book they keep switching back and forth between standard and southpaw.