Rick Clark

from cover (It doesn't matter why it works. It only matters that it works!)

'In my fifteen years as a martial arts jounalist, I have seldom seen a martial artist with the ability and knowledge of Rick Clark, a person who not only knows several martial arts from all angles, but who can write about them in a manner anyone can easily understand...Pressure Point Fightnng is a book for all martial arts styles...a must-read for students, teachers, and those interested in learning more about common-sense martial arts and self-defense.'-Jane Hallander, from the Foreword

Western students of Asian marital arts have long been haunted by the aching suspicion that something is missing form the arts they love and practice wholeheartedly-something intangible, but something so essential that its absence leaves an unbridgeable void. For many, that missing ingredient is a true and thorough knowledge of the body's vital points: what they are, where they are, how to quickly find them under duress, how to use them, constructively or for destruction-and how to recognize them in the kata, hyung, or forms they thought they knew so well. In Pressure Pont Fighting, Rick Clark offers a systematic introduction to this knowledge and to the tools needed to ferret out more of this information from forms and techniques already in place-knowledge and tools that are not dependent upon acceptance of the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine, or modern Western medicine, for that matter, but which are based solely upon open-minded observation and willingness to try new, or old, approaches to martial arts training.

Rick Clark began studying martial arts in 1962, at the age of fourteen, and has been an enthusiastic student ever since. With ample experience in arts including judo, jujutsu, karate, and Korean systems, a thorough understanding of physiology, and a knack for digging out gems from obscure sources, he has helped to bring about a quiet revolution in the training regimen of martial artist around the world. When he's not traveling throughout North America and Europe to conduct vital-point and applications seminars, he continues to research diligently at home in Indiana.

Book Description
Pressure-point fighting-the practice of manipulating the body's vital nerve and reflex points for self-defense-offers the unique ability to neutralize attackers without causing any permanent harm. This intricate and temporarily devastating self-defense system has obvious advantages. What it hasn't had is a comprehensive guidebook from the Western perspective. Now martial arts expert Rick Clark offers all the fundamental pressure-point techniques-illustrated with hundreds of photographs and twenty-five detailed pressure-point charts-melding the ancient Asian knowledge with modern Western medicine and science. Here, at last, contemporary readers can learn to utilize this effective, reliable defensive art on their own terms.

About the Author
Rick Clark has nearly forty years of martial arts training and teaching experience. He has conducted seminars all over the world, is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost experts on vital-point techniques, and has been a pioneer in bringing this knowledge to martial artists all over the globe.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

Insightful and Introspective look at the arts, April 19, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from Edinburgh, Scotland
Rick Clark has taught seminars worldwide, and is in greatest demand for his knowledge of attacking kyusho, or vital points, of the human body. Though many instructors now teach, or claim to teach this information (and some of these instructor's students seems to have given this book a poor review above !), many present this information as if some magic bullet - learn vital points and there is no need for anything else. Anyone who has known Rick Clark, and studied for more than a simple seminar with Rick Clark, will have learned that his art does not rest on vital points, but utilises vital points to make it simpler, and more effective. With a broad range of martial arts experience, Sensei Clark is able to make sense of the nonsencical movements in martial arts, extracting not the differences, but the similarities.
Though the title of this book perhaps implies 'everything you need to know about pressure points', it would be fairer to advise the potential buyer that you are in fact buying a whole lot more. Only those students fortunate enough to train regularly with Rick Clark have been able to extract not only the techniques, but the philosophies, the mindsets, the principles and the understanding which Sensei Clark has extracted from his numerous years studying martial arts, which lead him to teach simple, brutal and effective enhancements to participants core martial art. For those students who have piqued interest in learning vital point methods, this book will do well to present a sensible framework in which these points should be used. You will not become a master of pressure points, but then any book that claims to make you so, should be avoided at all costs. The book will simply open your eyes in such a manner that you will be encouraged to seek instruction. For those martial artists however, who are tired of the hyperbole, tired of the bullish claims about vital points, knockouts, and unlocking the hidden secrets.....buy this book. Perhaps the simple, honest and pragmatic approach presented by Rick Clark will be enough to convince you that vital points, and the associated introspection of the subtleties of your own art, ARE worth further consideration, and need not require box sets of videos, giving up your old art, and studying the latest scientific method of fighting.
Sensei Rick Clark has picked up a following of serious, pragmatic martial artists of the highest calibre, who question everything, and take nothing at face value. This calibre is testament to the way in which Sensei Clark teaches people; his book may just be the shove along the path that senior martial artists questioning where the road ahead goes require.

Contents

Foreword by Jane Hallander
Foreword by Vince Morris
Preface
Chapter 1: Core Principles
Chapter 2: The Paradigms: Modern and Traditional Chinese Medicine
Chapter 3: Analysis
Chapter 4: Kata Applications-Kusanku-Kanku-Kung San Gun; Pinan-Heian-Pyung Ahn 4; Naihanchi 2 (Tekki/Chulgi); Throwing to Grappling; Pinan-Heian-Pyung Ahn 5
Chapter 5: The Points-Lung; Large Intestine; Stomach; Spleen; Heart; Small Intestine; Bladder; Kidney; Pericardium; Triple Warmer; Gallbladder; Liver; Conception Vessel
Appendix A: Vital Points Lists
Appendix B: Bibliography… (more)