Product Review Gene Simco’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu The Student HandbookGene Simco’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu The Student Handbook” – some of your best fighters are unknown, winning the city tournaments in Brazil and fighting 14 times a day to do it, those kids are the future of Jiu-Jitsu and the ones who come up with all the cool moves. Then a superstar Jiu-Jitsu guy does it in a tournament, and it gets named after him.” — Gene Simco
Coming across like a dose of East Coast sanity, Gene Simco’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu The Student Handbook combines the low tech look of an auto parts manual, with the Internet, and of course, his own experience, to create a personal portrait, work of art, and interactive, question and answer Jiu-Jitsu manual all in one.
Where ever possible, a do-it-yourself approach was used in making this book. The result is both individualistic and satisfying. I especially like the knee on stomach diagram with captions rotating around, like the exploded view of a car engine. The photographs are clear without any “mystery limbs.” His use of insets and circle highlights are something some videos could use. Equally clear in the pictures is Gene Simco, before and after 30 pounds of muscle.
The idea behind the book is to chose one move at a time, try it, and if you get stuck, send your question via e-mail to Gene Simco’s address. Not only is proper question forming an important skill for beginners to learn, but your questions, and the answers to them, will serve as the basis for highly detailed works available at his website.
Without being preachy, or self-conscious Gene Simco manages to convey some of the intangibles of becoming a Blue Belt. The entire project is so well considered, so open ended, like Jiu-Jitsu, or life itself, and so obviously a labor of love that it is the martial arts experience made manifest: a man using his vitality to realize a vision with pride as a guide. Gene Simco has not only written the curriculum vitae for a blue belt , but has also recorded the transformation of a Blue Belt into Purple.
He is, after all, a real Martial Artist.