Fighting and defeating 3-4 opponents per-night back in the early days of UFC. With notable wins over bigger fighters such as Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, and Akebono Taro to name a few.
His book, Superfit, written together with James Strom and Kid Peligro attracted my attention.
It's stated "Royce Gracie's Ultimate Martial Arts Fitness and Nutrition Guide". I got my copy from Borders for RM119.90, the usual price for Gracie's series of books.
It's separated into Four parts;
Starts off with brief introduction and then was introduced to the most important part any sports, Warming Up and Stretching. The Gracie family actually uses a refined stretching routine called "The Gracie Stretching Routine". That's for Part One. Personally, I don't see why is it being called GSR, they stretches are pretty much standard stretches and nothing special.
Part Two: The Exercises
Consist of Abdominals, Cardio, Free Weights, Isolaterals, Plyometrics and the Power Series.
Good photos are provided, but lack of important details. Deadlifts for instance, details on keeping the back stabilized and keeping the back from rounding.
Part Three: Putting It All Together
Pretty much of teaching you on developing your programmes and how to adjust them and all from time to time. Royce Gracie also talks about his fights and mental preparation. Some sample workouts for beginners, intermediate and advanced level are included as well.
Part Four: Royce's Family Diet
Food area broken down into categories, A,B,C and D group, with rules on how to and not to combine them in a meal. And of course, a sample of Royce's diet.
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Conclusion
There's nothing much to shout about on this book. Just like any other most strength and conditioning books available in the book store. Most of the informations on the trainings could be found in the internet as well. Even that, the author failed to include safety details in their training explanation. (Eg: Keeping the back from rounding during deadlifts.)
However, their Plyometrics and the Power Series are good training informations, which I personally hardly seen any such training being done in most commercial gyms in Malaysia. It's better known as CrossFit workout.
A good book for beginners who wants to start off with a training programme, but for advanced users, this book wont be expanding your knowledge much. So if you really want to know the secret of Royce training that makes him so tough, forget it.
There isn't any secret, but its rather more of a branding using the name "Gracie".
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