The newly released Filipino Martial Arts: The Core Basics, Structure & Essentials addresses the need for a book that explains fundamental ideas in a way that both the beginning student and the experienced teacher can use. Although written for the Filipino Martial Arts (FMA), this book transcends systems and styles and goes to the heart of what makes martial arts work. A quick glance at some of the topics covered: Monitoring, Structure, Timing, Alignment, Movement, Leveraging, Ambidexterity, and Spontaneity; tells you there’s something different going on here. These are not the province of FMA alone, these are Universal concepts. These are topics to be studied again and again, gleaning deeper insight every time you do. This book gives you a path to follow.

This is a big book at 328 pages. It contains literally thousands of photos demonstrating in detail each concept or idea Dan is trying to get across. If it stopped there, this would still be a tremendous tool. But Dan has included two DVDs with 3 ½ hours of video footage to go along with the book. Every concept you see in the still pictures you also see in live action video. This gives you the best of both worlds, a detailed photograph you can use to compare your own posture to, and the action video to see how a sequence flows. Dan has raised the bar on what to expect from a martial arts book in future.

Professor Presas was well known for describing Modern Arnis as “The Art Within Your Art.” What Dan has done is show you exactly what he meant. This book belongs in the critical essentials library of every martial artist.