Vox recently made a couple of videos on his darkstream about fighting and the differences between that and training in a gym as well as some comments of Joe Rogan and Brazilian Jiujitsu practitioners that drew some fire by various offended parties.
This topic could go on for hours, so I tried to limit myself only to step 1, the identifying of much of the bullshit that unfortunately is present in a lot of the martial arts world and even more so in the commentary on it.
Well, as the 2 readers 16 bots and 98,765 spammers who frequent this blog have no doubt noticed, I took a long pause between posts for the last few months.
The process of starting a very demanding job again in the cubicle forest, as well as going through the process of becoming a dad for the first time and not forgetting the 41 videos we now have FINISHED and are ALL UP (see www.wayofsystema.com) for the Systema Book all took a toll. (What?!? you haven’t bought one yet? Hurry, Amazon put them on special giving $20 off for Xmas. Dunno how long they will do this for though as I have no control on their pricing and marketing strategies. So if you want one go HERE.)
Something had to give and after doing 13 hour days at work, trying to keep up training and working every week-end for the last 4 months to get the videos out despite many, many issues, the blog suffered.
But it’s all done now, and we have done some 41 videos instead of the original 30 promised, so we hope the long wait was worth it.
In other news, my little daughter is great and we could not be happier with her, she laughs already and she really is the most amazing Christmas present we could have wished for.
May you all have a loving Christmas and a very very happy New Year, and may 2012 truly be the end of all the bad worlds any of us may have carried with us for years. Redhead Girl, our Little Princess and I all wish you the very best.
Love to all,
G.
Christmas 2011
I’ve been too busy to post regularly, but the good news is that the Systema videos will be out soon. Most of the filming is now done and post production work is a third of the way there and should make a big jump by next week-end. Unless I get mugged by aliens the videos will be out soon.
I am finding it fascinating to discover how the book publishing/sales/marketing world seems to work. It is quite an unexpected set of circumstances that seems to be helping sales of my book on Systema. Shortly after it reached number 36 on Amazon’s category for martial arts (which includes a whole bunch of fitness and diet books too so it’s actually a larger category than you would think), I blogged about it as I was quite surprised it had done so well given there had been essentially no marketing other than my mentioning the book on my blog and facebook page a few times.
These sales had been achieved almost exclusively by word of mouth, and the e-mails I receive regularly seem to bear this out too as people are finding the book very useful, which is gratifying. The interesting part is what followed shortly after this. Read more »
The book is finally available on Amazon.com, HERE. Table of contents added at the end of this post. Read more »
FINALLY! It’s here! It’s been printed, and the first small shipment for the VIPs (those of you who have already paid for this book) should be sent out early next week, so the books should be with you by the end of next week or so.
You should also be able to find the book on amazon.com in the next few weeks, but for those of you who can’t wait any longer, we still have a few copies available for the VIP shipment and you can still get one here: www.systemabook.com.
I am happy with the quality of it, and I hope you will be too. My thanks to all of you who have been so supportive over the last few months. Enjoy your training!
Camouflaged Work in Progress in Brazil
Well over a 100 people have paid in advance for my soon to be released book Systema : The Russian Martial System and these kind souls have quietly waited for news of when they will finally be receiving their signed advance copy. This post if first of all a way to thank them for their patience, which has been truly humbling. I have received a grand total of only 6 very polite e-mails asking for further information from these patient souls. In contrast, I have received more than three dozen e-mails (38 if I counted correctly), of general support through this difficult time from the very same group. To every single one of you advance buyers, I want to express a truly heartfelt THANK YOU! Read more »
2009 was probably the happiest year of my life. 2010 had some challenges that were probably some of the hardest I have had to date, but also some peaks that I have never achieved before.
Both to satisfy my voyeurs as well as an aid to memory and the way forward, I thought I would amuse you by giving you a brief rundown of my year.
Well, after my first foray into BJJ, I went to another session, this time with a man that had trained with the legend Rickson Gracie himself. His name is Antonio but they refer to him as Tunicão (Not sure of the spelling) and he´s the head instructor at El Greco´s place in Campeche (Florianopolis). El Greco is actually a Greek man called Christophoros Constantinidis and the gym is located in Travessa de Benção 191 Campeche. The sexy outfit of mismatched gi trousers and top, along with the green belt was very kindly lent to me by Christophoros. Read more »
On Book Sales
This will be a pretty self-indulgent post on the nature of book sales, specifically looking at my last book, Systema: The Russian Martial System, but it might be marginally useful for any aspiring writers who are curious about book sales.
Reading time : 5 minutes
I Beat these guys!
Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method
Read more »
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By G | 30 April 2011 | Posted in Martial Arts, Social Commentary, Systema