Excursions in Iron Palm

Has a mix of science, pseudoscience, bro science, and eastern medicine. I can't complain, I'll got what I want from it overall. I love this guys dit da jaw products from Plum Dragon Herbs, and he seems to know what hes talking about, but train at your own risk.

Detailed info on Dit Da Jow. I use Plum Dragon Herbs Jows to assist with training. White Dragon and Advanced Ancestors. Using Iron Tao strike bag at home. At Dojo I use the sand filled strike bags.

great reference book

At $45 and only 111 pages, this book should come packed with information, crystal clear diagrams, gold plating, and some magic beans.Sadly it only comes with one of those.While it does come with a lot of information, very useful information, I am not certain I can really say it's worth $45. Let's get into the meat of the review, and get the bad stuff out of the way first.The diagrams at the beginning of the book are very rough. Very poorly compressed picture format wise. For a good example of this, look at this.[...]This is the worst on the Five Elements Chart, it is barely readable. The charts showing the Kidney and Spleen pathologies stuffer less from it, and are actually readable.The pictures of people are blurry, and pretty pixelated as well.Some sections of the book really need more detail. Why list a section on Vibrating Palm training, if the extent of the information is to just contact another group for more information.The section about Vibrating Palm is only two paragraphs. If you want to discuss other styles / schools of Iron Palm training, it would be better, in my opinion, to make a section titled Other Styles and include it as a subsection. Adding Vibrating Palm by itself to the table of contents is almost misleading in making it sound like you have a whole chapter devoted to it.Early in the book references are made to various laws, Pavlovs Dog. The only issue is there occasionally no definition of what these laws are.I am going to quote a section of the book here. "In this case, physical neural changes alter the actual structure of the brain to produce increased mental acuity. This works psychologically as well, Pavlov's Dog being the most famous example."Now, the section of the book that this is from is discussing how repeated stressed will build up a toughness or a resistance, but for the love of God, give us the description of Pavlov's Dog, even as a foot note. The way it is now just makes me wonder what Pavlov did to his poor dog, and why couldn't he name the dog.Good stuff:Chinese Herbs along with the common names for the herbs is very helpful. Descriptions of what the various herbs do is very helpful when it appears in the book, so people new to Chinese herbalism can get an idea of why this particular herb is being used. I wish the author had put more descriptions like this into the book.The book could use a couple of references to some books on Chinese Herbs, in the Other Sources of Information section.I could see this book retailing for the suggest retail price if it came with some extras, such as one or two of the Vinyl lined Iron Palm bags that Plum Dragon sells.Why not include a section on training Iron Leg or Iron Arm as well, they are equally important in martial arts, and use many of the same techniques and medicines to heal.If the price point is so high because of production costs, see about having YMAA publish the book, as it would in theory lower the cost, and make the book open to a much larger audience.The section on how to set up a break, and the various block materials is very nice, discussing in detail about how temperatures and shipping can cause even two blocks of the same stone type to have radically different strengths. Also covered are ways to work on building up to stronger breaks, such as using paper on top of the blocks to help focus your, power would be misleading word here, how about.. vibrations? The energy to break the blocks.Over all I like this book, for a first edition. It has some rough spots, that once smoothed out, will make it a valuable addition to the martial artists library. Hopefully the price can come down a bit also, as the high selling point makes it a major purchase for most martial artists I know. If it were $20 I could see it almost as an impulse buy. Or maybe my day job pays me too much for me to consider $20 an impulse buy...I know it seems like I may have nit picked a bit, and didn't point out a whole lot of flaws, but with a book that's only 100 some odd pages, a few flaws can add up quickly.Jason CookSt. Louis Martial Arts Directory[...]

Ok when I ordered this book I ordered directly from the author's site. I did not know it was a flimsy black and white paper back for over 40 bucks.The book has poorly scanned pictures that do not fit and are hard to read. The Dit Da Jow formulas are nice, but you can get similar ones just looking at Kung Fu sites and paying attention.The techniques are barely explained and don't even get me started on the vibrating palm section as the previous review stated.Decent book if it was under 10 bucks, the fact that it was 40 makes me grind me teeth every time I look at it.

Very good and honest book with some nice recipes to help your practice.