Mark Hatmaker, with Doug Werner, have simply written and masterfully produced a nice book on submission wrestling. One can get this book, practice the techniques, and have a pretty good idea on the submission wrestling sport. Of course, there are many disadvantages from not taking formal lessons, but this book tries and narrows those gaps.
The strengths of this text are the easy to understand instructions and prior advice on safety and equipment. He brings up the losing of ones "ego" and his advice is right on. Many injuries are due to someone who cannot mature and learn. Listen to his advice and learn, grow, and be a better wrestler!
The photos are nicely done and, like the written material, easy to mimic and therefore, learn from. Some of the movements are better suited for sport and some are better used for self-defense, and not explaining these differences are probably the book's only weakness; however, this great text still deserves 5 stars. It has great advice, easy to understand, and "bargined" priced (it is a steal).
Buy now!!!
I look in the martial arts section every time I go into a book store and cruise amazon.com for new books all the time. I own about 20 martial arts books. This one is by far the best, dollar for dollar. The material is familiar. It is amature and professional wrestling american style. Amature wrestling books are hard to come by. The moves demonstrated in this book would teach most amature wrestlers the basics. The submission moves are integrated effectively. No eastern mysticism to be found. As an attorny I very much appriciate the disclaimer. Legal jargon is as absent as the eastern mysticism. Most books have a legal disclaimer that isn't worth the paper it is written on. There are no magic words. The authors get the point acrossed very simply that hurting your sparring partner is a bad thing and unproductive to both your training. They actually recommend that you train with your friends. I say it beats training with a stranger in a class with an instructor trying to instill that eastern mystique garbage.