The Glade 4.0

I bought this book a few months back. It is authored by Renzo Gracie and one of his top students/instructors, John Danaher.

The book itself is somewhat limited and nonspecific in its instruction. While it does cover some fundamental techniques such as a few ways to pass the guard, the elbow escape from both the rear mount and mount position, takedowns and core submissions like keylocks, armlocks, and strangles, it does so from a more fundamental perspective.

The book is heavily prefaced by a historical look at the development of martial arts, including development theory, and how societies and circumstances dictate the philosophy of martial arts and why that leads to the development of certain types of techniques, overall guiding strategies and training methodologies. The type of martial art in question specifically is Jujitsu, the Gracie clan's own system. From this perspective of the art, the techniques are then explained as to how they belong in the hierarchy of importance and specifically, why and how they fit into the overall strategy employed by the Gracie family.

Most of the things said in the book are extremely intuitive once you read it, but the detail and explanation given as to where and how the technical details fit together to form an overall plan of attack and how that plan of attack fits into the guiding philosophy of the art is very well done. Lastly, the book ties in some more societal philosophical notes about self defense in general and nicely places modern martial arts in the context of this backdrop.

A very entertaining read. Renzo has done an excellent job writing this book.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones