Review: BJ Penn's Mixed Martial Arts: the Book of Knowledge

by Mike

Overview:

BJ Penn's Mixed Martial Arts: The Book of Knowledge is one of the most comprehensive books on the overall game of MMA. BJ is one of the all-time greats and has a particularly confounding style, one that others have a hard time adapting to/adopting for their own. Watching any MMA event he fights in at the bar, you can practically hear the guys in the audience think, "Dude!...I'm going to try that out tomorrow." And for the most part it doesn't work, but you know....

The one thing I was worried about with this book was that you'd have to actually be BJ (with his bizarre flexibility and preternatural sense of balance) to pull off most of this stuff. Like any instructional, there's going to be stuff that you can't do, or that doesn't fit into your game, but I was pleased to see that very few of the techniques in here rely on anything other than a standard level of physical ability. Even the ones that don't are presented in such a way that you can either leave them out or just drill them a little harder to incorporate.

A buddy of mine picked this book up and said he was disappointed, calling it too basic.

I don't know if that complaint is valid - a lot of the techniques and information that you'll find in this book is stuff that you've seen before, but there aren't too many books that teach you the proper way to do upkicks from the shell, nor teach you how to escape from the bottom in an MMA scenario. Regardless, given the sheer number of techniques in this book, there's going to be both a lot of stuff you've never seen before as well as stuff that you never thought of using as shown.

Another buddy is fond of telling the new guys that show up wanting "to be a fighter" that the hardest thing in the world to find good instruction on is striking on the ground. BJ covers that topic exhaustively, from a number of top positions as well as striking from being on the bottom in the guard.

The introduction lays out BJ's philosphy on training and some of the workouts he uses in a general strength/conditioning sense, which cool because of the emphasis on training as if everything's gone wrong - i.e. tired-as-hell-you vs. fresh opponent. On the whole, this doesn't seem like an entire system (nor should it be), but it is a great example of some sport-specific drills for those who might not have implemented them into their own training already.

Despite a somewhat curious explanation of basic punching (I'm hesitant to call it "striking"), the book supposed you have a basic understanding of both the standing and ground games.

From there, though, it's full speed ahead. At 300+ pages divided into two main sections - the "Stand Up Game" and the "Ground Game" and what looks to be 100+ techniques, there's the hell of a lot of ground to cover.

We start with basic punches, then get right into striking-to-the-takedown and takedown defense. You've probably seen all this before, but he puts a new spin on a lot of it. I'm glad that he has contingency plans in place, In including an entire section on what to do when your shot gets stuffed.

A section on the clinch follows and it's some great stuff, covering the Muay Thai clinch, a Greco-style clinch and everyone's favorite, dirty boxing. A great section on fighting against the cage and working against an opponent in the "downed guard" while you're still standing round out the section.

Throughout the Ground Game section, BJ emphasizes the necessity of maintaining constant action so as to avoid standups - you worked hard to get the fight to the ground, you deserve a chance to work (oddly, he doesn't cover stalling at all....). To that end, he's got a lot of nice little tricks for forcing the action.

BJ does a great job of covering both offense and defense, while keeping in mind that both guys need to be aware of both strikes and submissions and the aforementioned standup at all times. Some techniques are fairly advanced in jiu-jitsu terms, but nearly everything here fits together well and covers nearly all situations I can think of. Unless you're going up against Sakuraba and need to worry about cartwheel guard passes that is.

The guard and several variations are covered, again both offensive and defensive. Half-Guard, Mount and the back/turtle positions are also covered fairly extensively. Using the cage on the ground, both offensively and defensively is covered.

There are two major holes in this book - the first is the lack of offensive kicking coverage. Muay Thai guys looking to make a transition to MMA and CroCop fans might be a bit disappointed by this.

The second is this book assumes that you'll be fighting in a cage as opposed to a ring or square enclosure. The corners present challenges and opportunities alike, as does the threat of falling through the ropes, or slipping under them to force a restart. These very real concerns for fighters in a ring and will affect their strategy. Obviously, only the cage-specific techniques are rendered invalid but this (for instance, you need to be more careful about how you keep your weight against the ropes vs. a cage wall) doesn't make the rest of the book less useful, just incomplete. Perhaps an addenda or second edition will address this.

The Good:

• Many of the more complex techniques are shown from several different angles. This is one of those ideas where once you've heard it, it sounds like a no-brainer, but to my knowledge no one has done it before Victory Belt. You remember all those times in class where you had to wonder, "where did this hand go?" because you were standing on the opposite side, or if you needed to run around the instructor to see what he was doing...it's more annoying with a book because if they didn't show it, there's no way you could ask them to do it again. It's very clear where all the bits go in this book. What a great idea!
  
  
• They "key concepts" at the beginning of each section give you the "big picture" things to keep in mind, either bits of strategy, or general notes that apply to that section.
  
  
• BJ covers techniques from both the Pride/K-1 rulesets as well as the UFC/"unified" rules. Not that stomps need a lot of explanation, but the high knees from a guillotine was pretty slick. Just be careful in practice with a lot of these. No need to go all Mark Coleman on your training partners.
  

The Bad:

• No kicking! The only kicks covered in this book are a "sweep kick" (which doesn't seem to be a kick at all, rather a reap) and kicking to a downed opponent. Countering kicks while standing is covered, but not kicks as offense. It's BJ's book and BJ's style doesn't involve many/any kicks, so no problem, but for Savate and Muay Thai types should be aware that kicking is neglected in this book.
  
  Granted, kicking in MMA is generally limited to leg kicks and I think the desperation spinning side kick gets more usage than the mighty teep, so perhaps the lack of coverage is warranted.
  
  
• The book assumes that you'll be fighting in a cage and not in a ring. The ropes and a square boundary provide some significant tactical advantages and defensive concerns that can't be translated from the cage/not square boundary.
  
  
• One complaint that I have about the Victory Belt books in general is that the layout is obnoxious. They do a good job of cramming a lot of information into the book, but that leads to some claustrophobic bits. The instruction is generally clear, but the text-heavy bits are often painful to read.
  
  
• There's a weird conceptual gap in the book where BJ explains a couple basic punches and basic punch defense (I'm hesitant to call any of it boxing), but doesn't give similar tutorials about other strikes. He assumes that you know the basics of striking (as he does the basics of wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu), which he should, but this just sticks out in my mind as something that's not in the right place. I'd be surprised if anyone else noticed this, much less cared and there's always the possibility that I'd complain about it not being included if it wasn't, so take this for what it's worth.
  

Recommendation:

This book is great! This is a must-have for anyone interested in competing in MMA and a great resource for everyone else interested in the game as a whole. Even if you only have a basic knowledge of the stand up game and the ground game, you'll definitely be able to pull bits and pieces from this book and include it in your game. Even if you can't, you can still study the offense and figure out how to defend against it, for those techniques that don't have a corresponding defense or counter associated with them.

Just be warned - no kicking and no ring-specific tactics in here.



Update 03/17/08: it occurs to me that the terms "B.J. Penn" doesn't occur in this article and therefore may be difficult to find on a search. Added for intrasite SEO as it were.