Bart Martin

This book is about fighting, learning and studying people.
It’s sports psychology applied. It's about personal growth through sports, based on my training in different striking and grappling disciplines for 30 years.

Some say you can learn more life lessons from martial arts than from documentaries and journalists’ reports.

 • Why fight and what can I get from it? How much effort is it worth?
 • Can I become better and fulfilled through fighting?
 • How to learn combat efficiently? Which martial arts are currently martial and which have become just an art?
 • How can my insecurities be related to my need to fight? How being an adrenaline junkie and my ego can harm me and others?
 • Why are there so many weird guys in the gyms? Where are the true sensei?
 • What can meditation techniques have to do with all this?

It’s for people looking in martial arts for something more than the primitive pounding, who feel that they should be about something other than “ripping the opponent's head off”.

This book should serve as a shortcut for not wasting your time and health on some people. Instead, I hope you will take care of sensible self-improvement, both physically and mentally – for yourself and for others. It's about mindfulness plus willpower.

I don’t like to fight. But I dislike aggressors and abusers even more. I’ve been doing it all these years cause I wanted to learn all dimensions of combat and self-defense. I haven’t become enlightened thanks to this, and I still can’t levitate. And I don’t think just fighting people makes you much wiser. It is about mindfulness plus willpower. It is up to us to educate ourselves.