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Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: A great look at not only classic JKD techniques but also new ones developed by Larry Hartsell. Being an original student of Bruce Lee Larry has the rare ability to absorb what is useful and transmit that to his students. The drills found this book are very helpful and will help those of us with some expirince get better that much faster. For the Newbies it will give you an inside look at what JKD is about.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine book by one of the greats
Review: For those of you who know Mr. Hartsell, he needs no introduction, but he's one of the Lee's original inner circle of JKD students and is also an excellent grappler. So he combines the best of outfighting and infighting techniques in his personal approach. I've never had the chance to train with Mr. Hartsell myself, but I had the opportunity to buy the Wisconsin summer camp training tape featuring him, Danny Innosanto, Paul de Thouars, and Sirisute a few years ago, and it was excellent. So when I saw this book I thought I would check it out.
Mr. Hartsell is no longer a young man and has been doing martial arts for probably 40 years (like me). I like guys like that since after four decades one knows what works and what doesn't, and one can distill the essence of one's art down to the most effective and essential and practical principles. It's fun to do the fancy stuff and moves and combos, and I sometimes show off a little bit too during my workouts and teaching. But when pressed, I resort to simple techniques which will work in almost any situation, but which require a good foundation in the basics.
Mr. Hartsell has done the same in this book about JKD. He is old and wise now in the ways of the fistic arts. As someone once said, "old age and trickery beats youth and strength." Mr. Hartsell presents the main aspects of JKD, from basic techniques to trapping and energy drills, wooden dummy, JKD sparrying, and basic and advanced strategies and tactics. As I said, one thing that impressed me was that he didn't try to write an exhaustive presentation of JKD, but rather has set down the most important concepts and techniques.
One controversial area of JKD and Wing Chun is trapping. As you may know, Lee during his last years decided trapping wasn't as effective as claimed and got away from it, and I even heard he stopped teaching it as part of the standard curriculum, a major change from the early days when trapping was part of the original "Chinatown curriculum." However, Hartsell addresses that issue too. There is a time and place for everything, and many things in the martial arts are situational rather than universal principles, and trapping is one of them, and Hartsell discusses the issues relating to trapping and how to deal with them.
My favorite part of the book was the section on advanced sparring skills and how to deal with various opponients, such as western boxer, wrestler, Thai boxer, streetfighter, and so on. There is some very practical advice here. Lee was nothing if not a profound strategist, and that approach is reflected here in this section.
Finally, there is a nice section showing the intial attack, and proceeding from there to counters, strikes and kicks, holds and chokes, and takedowns, covering the entire sequence of ranges and techniques, and from standing to ground-based arts. Also, there is an appendix done in Question and Answer format where Mr. Hartsell deals with specific questions and issues there, such as "How to cultivate a killer instinct," and more details on strategies for different fighters, such as tall, big, fast, slow, "hit and run fighters," and many other topics.
I had one last piece of advice, which is that if you're a novice this book should be used in conjunction with a video or videos on JKD showing the actual drills and techniques, of which there are many out there. It would be difficult to pick these up just from the photos. Steve Grody has done an excellent series specifically on trapping skills, and others have done video series covering the more general JKD curriculum. In fact, you can often find these used at bargain prices on e Bay. You might have to check the auctions there for a few weeks to find some, but eventually you should be able to get them. If you're an experienced JKD practitioner you shouldn't have any trouble following the photos.
Rating:
Summary: good collection of training drills and strategies
Review: The book has a good collection of drills for improving one's sensetivity and trapping range skills, as well as sections on strategies for dealing with a few general categories of fighters; boxers, kickboxers, grapplers and "street fighters".Although anybody interested in Jun Fan Gung Fu or Jeet Kune Do would probably enjoy this book and learn from it, I'm doubtful that someone who hasn't studied Jun Fan or Wing Chun under a qualified instructor will be able to follow what's going on in the energy and trapping drills. Although the photographs are very well done, and other than a few minor typographical errors, the descriptions are clear to me, I've shown the book to friends who've had no instruction in Jun Fan or Wing Chun and they weren't able to figure out how perform the drills properly from the book. If you already know Wing Chun or Jun Fan, the drills are helpful, but if you don't, you're not going to learn trapping from them. It is also important to note for those w/o training that these are meant as drills and not techniques. I suggest finding a qualified Jun Fan or Wing Chun instructor (there is a directory of certified Jun Fan/JKD instructors at Dan Inosanto's web site) and then get this book after you've learned some trapping and the ping chuei gua chuie and 1-2 and 1-3 series. You'll get a lot more out of it then. The book also contains a section on the Jun Fan wooden dummy form, but like the trapping drills, unless you already have the training, you may have a difficult time figuring how he's moving between the photographs. Like all of Larry Hartsell's other books, this one is a must for any Jun Fan/JKD student's library, but it might be a bit hard for the untrained to get what's going on. If you're really interested though, go find a teacher :)
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This is a great book by one of Bruce Lee's original students. For those of us with some expirience in JKD this book gives us new drills to help us develop. For the novices this book gives you some insight in what JKD is and how we train.
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