Ok, I've been studying martial arts for almost 11 years now, and I've been fighting, amateur, semi-professionally and some pro fights for the last 4 years. I've read Lee's book and was very disappointed by it. From all the reviews I'd heard and read, I thought it would be truly great. I was very surprised to read it, then I did a little digging and discovered a lot of stuff I did not know before. The book is heavily Influenced by Lee's degree in philosophy, in fact, it reads like a philo book I had in college, most of it is from text books on the subject. The actual martial arts techniques in it are very simple, some very basic boxing tech's, and some of the most simple tech's from various styles. Nothing impressive to any one with any real martial arts training. What set this book apart from others When it came out that it did what the first book on Actively cross-training styles. LEe Was not the first one to do this, in fact almost all of the "original" or "classical" styles Lee did not like were and are a combination of other styles. Their founders crosstrained and melded together. HOWEVER, They did this over a period of years of training in each style, Lee spent much much less time getting techniques from individual styles Overall, this book can be summed up like this: Lee tells you to study different styles, taking what you like and what you can get to work, ignore the rest and make your own unique martial art that works best for you. Pretty simple.
