Category Archives: martial arts

BOOK: “Fight Ready” by Santino DeFranco

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Fight Ready: An MMA Coach’s Guide to Losing Weight, Getting Strong, and Kicking AssFight Ready: An MMA Coach’s Guide to Losing Weight, Getting Strong, and Kicking Ass by Santino DeFranco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher site –St. Martin’s

Release Date: May 19, 2026

MMA fighter turned coach, Santino DeFranco, offers an insightful and pragmatic overview of the process of getting one’s body shipshape, including: getting sleep, dealing with injuries, strength and conditioning practices, nutrition, and more. The book attempts to be of broad appeal, not just relevant to MMA and other competitive fighters, but to athletes of other sports and non-athletes as well. It was not clear to me that the book achieves said broad appeal. One of the most fascinating and engaging chapters dealt with the process of cutting weight, an activity that applies to few outside weight-graded combative sports. (And an activity which the author, with the pragmatic approach that makes the book so useful, attempts to dissuade general readers from attempting.) The book does discuss the calories-in-and-calories-out basics of nutrition in a more generally relevant manner, as well. And there is certainly wisdom to be gleaned for the non-fighter, but, overall, I don’t know that this would be a good book to send a person toward if they were a typically unathletic person trying to lose a few pounds and be in better shape. (Though I do acknowledge a sort of aspirational motivation that a book might have for such readers, particularly UFC fans.) [And it’s completely out of my wheelhouse to know how generally applicable strength and conditioning approaches are for completely different sports, but I can’t help but have doubts.]

That said, I did come across many thought-provoking tidbits of wisdom in this book. The author is clearly one prone to look to the science and established best practices and to challenge the fad-laden fitness influencers and not dive headlong into the trend du jour. The book uses stories and anecdotes to increase the book’s readability and relatability. Here I’d say the results are mixed, but the aforementioned Tracy Cortez weight cut story is one example of when it is done very well.

If you’re curious about the training life of professional fighters and are looking for a few health and fitness concepts you might apply in your own life, I’d highly recommend this book.

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BOOK: “Scientific Jiu-jitsu” by Will Weisser

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Scientific Jiu-Jitsu: A Unified Theory of Grappling (Martial Science)Scientific Jiu-Jitsu: A Unified Theory of Grappling by Will Weisser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – YMAA Publication Center

Release date: June 2, 2026

This book outlines principles of positioning, alignment, and movement used to gain advantage while grappling. It is not a technique-centric book but rather is a concept-centric one. Weisser does for Brazilian Jiu-jitsu what Jiichi Watanabe and Lindy Avakian did for Judo with their book alternatively titled The Secrets of Judo or The Art and Science of Judo. Watanabe and Avakian focused more on both technique and elementary physics than does Weisser, but there is common ground in ideas of what positions make a body strong and what movements bring vulnerability. The biggest area of divergence between Watanabe’s book and Weisser’s is simply the difference between Judo and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Watanabe and Avakian direct the vast majority of their attention to how one gets the opponent to the ground and relatively little on what to do when one gets there, and Weisser’s book is the other way around — i.e. primarily assuming at least one person is already on the ground.

Weisser’s book does assume that the reader has a background in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, using terms specific to that system without necessarily providing elaboration. I say this just to point it out as (to be fair) I realized that I would have thought nothing of it if it used Japanese Jujutsu / Judo terminology in the same way. (I did have to go to Google at one point to elucidate what turned out to be a Dragonball-Z reference that went right over my head.)

Weisser’s book uses a combination of graphics, including photographs. I found it easier to see the linkage between what the author was describing in the text and what was in the photos in some cases than in others. Often, there was a single photo catching one static situation, and if the grapplers were closely entangled (as grapplers are want to be,) it was not so easy to see — even with different colored uniforms. [Note: I should point out that I was reading an ARC galley, and so that may all be sorted in the final formatting.]

As one who knows little of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, but with some experience with other grappling systems, I found this book readable and thought-provoking. The statement of ideas is clear, and I’d recommend it for grapplers looking to engage in thinking about first principles of grappling.

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PROMPT: Physical Activities or Exercises

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Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite physical activities or exercises?
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I never met a one I didn’t like.

BOOK: “The Young Monk” [Vol. 4 of the “Journey to the West” Series] ed. by Jeff Pepper / trans. by Xiao Hui Wang

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The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to the West Book 4)The Young Monk: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary by Jeff Pepper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Imagin8

This book, Volume 4 of the Journey to the West series, takes a turn from the books thus far. While the first three volumes (Ch. 1-7) focus on Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, this volume leaves him under the mountain where the last volume left him, and — instead — focuses on the origin story of Xuanzang — the monk who is sent by the Buddha to India to get scriptures in the original book — based on the real-world monk who did travel to India to complete the selection of Buddhist scriptures available to Chinese Buddhists.

The monk’s story might not sound like it would be as thrilling as that of the superpowered immortal monkey, but it’s a gripping tale. The story begins before Xuanzang is born and ends in his eighteenth year. So, before he is assigned to travel West to get scriptures.

As I’ve said in earlier reviews, I really like the approach of this series. It has Simplified Chinese script, pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary of terms used, and it’s organized so as to facilitate reading by a language learner.

I continue to recommend this series for language learners who need a linguistically simplified text to be able to read.

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PROMPT: Physical Exercise

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What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

I’m a big fan of them all. I like to move it, move it.

Each in its time.

Though the less special equipment I need access to, the better. I’m a firm believer that one needs only the body and mind to keep a fit body. It’s all a matter of how, how often, how intensely, and how safely one moves one’s body. Gadgety fitness can become too fetishist, and not build integration of the body as much as is ideal.

BOOK: “The Immortal Peaches” [Vol. 3 of “Journey to the West”] Ed. by Jeff Pepper / Trans. by Xiao Hui Wang

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The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary (Journey to the West Book 3)The Immortal Peaches: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary by Jeff Pepper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Imagin8

This is the third volume in this Journey to the West series aimed at language learners. It covers Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of the book, which includes events from Sun Wukong’s return to heaven acknowledged with the title “Great Sage Equal to Heaven” through the conflicts that result from his lack of control and decorum to Buddha’s bet with Monkey King.

I’ve enjoyed this series. The pinyin is interspersed with an abridged and linguistically simplified Chinese telling of the story on a paragraph basis, and the English translation is at the end. This allows one relatively quick access to the pinyin without continually cheating by stray glance. Also, one can determine whether one wants to read the English translation before or after reading the Chinese, as is appropriate to one’s level and language learning strategy. The book also has a glossary of all the Chinese words it uses, and the words beyond the most basic (beyond HSK3, or so) are footnoted. (I read on kindle, so looking up translations of any words is as quick as highlighting them.)

This is a great language learning tool, featuring one of Chinese literature’s most engrossing stories. I’d highly recommend it for those learning Mandarin Chinese with Simplified script.

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PROMPT: Athletes

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Daily writing prompt
Name the professional athletes you respect the most and why.
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Muay Thai fighters. To survive careers spanning of hundreds of fights, taking knees and elbows, is a feat. While they might not be fighting as often these days, you still probably have to go through a period of a fight per week to raise up to the point where you can have a more sensible rest-to-fight ratio.

PROMPT: Movies

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Daily writing prompt
What are your top ten favorite movies?
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No particular order: Kung Fu Hustle, Caddyshack, Matrix, Inception, John Wick 4, Airplane, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, Hero, and Drunken Master II.

BOOKS: “Rise of the Monkey King” ed. / trans. Jeff Pepper & Xiao Hui Wang

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The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level (Chinese Edition)The Rise of the Monkey King: A Story in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary Level by Jeff Pepper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Imagin8

This is an abridged and linguistically simplified telling of the first two chapters of Journey to the West. It contains the birth story of Sun Wukong (i.e. the Monkey King) and describes his studies with a sage in an attempt to become immortal.

As someone learning Chinese but at a point where I can only read grammatically and lexically simple content, it’s not easy to find reading material that is both fun to read and readable. The discovery of this series was a godsend. It’s hard to get more thrilling than the story of the Monkey King, and it helps that I’ve already read translations – and so have a bit of context to piece together challenging sentences and to avoid the misunderstandings that can arise when reading a new language. It’s much easier to be a disciplined reader when reading something that is neither a children’s book nor the life story of a preternaturally typical person [which is the usual adult equivalent of a beginner level reader.]

I was pleased by how this book was laid out. Often reading material for learners puts the Chinese characters (hanzi,) the Romanized phonetics (pinyin,) and the English translation all in adjacent rows. While this has its advantages, it also makes it too easy to cheat by eye saccade and not be reading as well as one thinks one is. This book does have all three elements, but it alternates paragraphs of hanzi and pinyin but then puts the translation in an unbroken format after the Mandarin. The book also has a glossary of the book’s vocabulary.

Whether you’ve already read Journey to the West or not, if you’re just learning to read Simplified Chinese, I’d highly recommend this book.

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BOOK: “Ma” ed. by Ken Rodgers & John Einarsen

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Ma: The Japanese Secret to Contemplation and Calm: An Invitation to AwarenessMa: The Japanese Secret to Contemplation and Calm: An Invitation to Awareness by Ken Rodgers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Tuttle

Release date: October 27, 2025

My introduction to the concept of ma came as a young martial arts student, where it was thought of as distancing, but not distancing in a static sense — rather in a way that incorporated timing as well [so, more of an interval in space-time.] I would later hear the term applied to domains such as joke telling in which perfection of pause could be as critical to a laugh as the words that comprised the joke. This book expanded my understanding to numerous realms I’d never much considered before such as architecture, photography, and gardening. (Incidentally, this book does contain a chapter addressing the martial arts aspect of ma, though not the comedic ramifications of the concept.)

I haven’t seen any other books that focus entirely on this concept. Ma is often mentioned in books on Japanese philosophy and aesthetics but rarely with such depth and singular attention. If there are other books that drill down into the concept in this way, I doubt they are as readable as this one (that is, I suspect such a book would be intensely philosophic and scholarly.) So, this book seems to have a solid niche.

There were a couple chapters that took my thinking on the subject to entirely new places. One was on ma in the domain of virtual reality. This raised interesting metaphysical considerations. Another was about the Heart Sutra and how the translations used have led to longstanding misunderstandings of that work.

If you are interested in art and or philosophy, I’d highly recommend this book.

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