Just an FYI on Darrell Craig through my personal experience training at his dojo.
Thought you readers want might to know about the man behind his books. Darrell Craig does hold very high credentials and is a real martial artist. However, he is a very poor instructor. He motivates by humility, fear, and yelling. He loves to single you out and try and ridicule you. He would rather scorn you than motivate you by a positive means. He is an angry, unfriendly man with a big ego who could give 2 cents about you. I found him and his instructors to be odd and negative people. I was always told that martial arts teaches respect for self and others, humbleness, calmness, etc. and that is what I wanted to learn. I found none of those elements present in his style of teaching which led me to eventually quit and find somewhere else to train. He is an ex-cop who sometimes tells crude jail stories such as reach arounds and how big criminal anuses are. He likes to reminisce about confrontations he or someone else had and bragged and made jokes of violent situations. One time an instructor used sexual terms to describe a move we were learning, like using a little hip thrusting with insertion if you know what I mean. He tells lots of police stories, prison stories and violent stories and seems to glorify them. I wasn't impressed at all and I started to feel like I am beginning martial arts at the wrong place. I felt some of his long time students didn't know what they were doing half the time since they got belittled frequently. It seemed like according to all the instructors we couldn't do anything right. There were several times I wound up showing moves to another white belt or teaching them foot work (ashi waza) when I really don't have any credentials to teach anyone. I felt I knew what I was doing and I like working with people but I felt I shouldn't be the one teaching since we are paying him to teach us. A white belt shouldn't be teaching another white belt and from what I know this isn't usual practice. His classes are very traditional with Japanese structure however they do a very poor job of preparing you for belt tests. I will say that I did learn some good things while I was there but the overall training, atmosphere and instruction were very poor. He is not a classy person and doesn't give students the respect that they show him. He is selfish, egotistic and everything is about him when real respect is a 2 way street. The man is an expert martial artist and very knowledgeable and I respect him for his accolades but he is not a good instructor.