Coach Jackson Reviews his top Hand to Hand Combat Books for jacksons.tv
The three best books every written for hand to hand combat, in my humble opinion are, in the following order: 1) Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho) by Miyamoto Musashi, 2) Art of War by Sun Tzu and 3) Strategy by Liddell Hart.
Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho) by Miyamoto Musashi
This is the best hand to hand combat book ever written. It contains both macro strategies, in other words how you should think, how you should approach training and fighting, but it also covers individualized techniques. What I mean by individualized techniques is not so much how to do an arm bar but how to acquire rhythm, how to take the initiative, how to do these really important things in combat that you just can’t learn. You can’t just say here is a rhythm and follow the rhythm. It teaches you how to find the void – that place where you forget everything and you can still do your techniques because they are a part of you. It really covers all the bases from A to Z. In my opinion it is the best book and the book I learned the most from and I continue to learn the most from. It is an amazing, amazing book. So, the number one by far is the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
Art of War by Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu’s Art of War not Machiavelli’s Art of War. I like Sun Tzu’s Art of War because it has a lot of great maxims that you should follow basically in game planning. To me the Art of War is very much a game plan book. Use it when you decide to make a game plan to fight your enemy, where as the Book of Five Rings is more an individualized book. The Art of War gives you a structure for game planning. It provides understanding for the maxims of game planning – know yourself, know your enemy, know your terrain, etc. It also helps with dealing with the political side of martial arts. You get a lot from the Art of War – mostly for its macro strategy. As long as you follow the principles for your game plan, you should win against your opponent.
Strategy by Liddell Hart
Last but not least is a book just called Strategy by the British World War I veteran Liddell Hart. The book is a huge treatise on the indirect approach. The indirect approach is probably the most under used technique in all of combat. He shows how this one principle, one ubiquitous principle, that should be used for any kind of fighting – is applicable and successful all the way from the Greeks to World War II. You get a real sense of anyone who has been victorious on a grand scale, especially when you are outnumbered or outmanned – you follow the principle of the indirect approach. That was a huge influence on me and should be a huge influence on everyone because you can see how this one idea, if you just follow this one idea, you are going to up your chances for success exponentially and that is important. It is important to understand that ideas should drive your art. It’s not just running out there and painting a picture and say, “Oh, look what I got” – like a 3 year old. It’s much more of a conscious decision to follow these principles and see what kind of art you can create. That was huge for me. Understanding of how one principle can work throughout all of these different situations proves that principle works. That’s an amazing, amazing thing. It has some great examples of strategy and some inspiring stories as well.
Those are the three books for me. The stratagems books are really good – 33 Strategies of War, those are good, they have maxims of war you should follow but they don’t have the depth that these books have so that is why I picked these three.