Book Review: Panduan Pukulan Tujuh Hari

In my previous posts, I highlighted some concern from two buyers who failed to receive their copies of PANDUAN PUKULAN TUJUH HARI and were quite distressed that the merchant involved did not reply to their inquiries. Today, I received a review on the title by one of the buyers. Read his comments below.

Dear Nadzrin,

After an almost 2 month wait, the book finally arrived at my mailbox, thanks to your aggressive approach of highlighting the issue on the web. You are right, poor customer service. Allow me to provide a short review of this book. I'll refer this book as PTH. Some of my personal comments about this book...

I think the publisher of PTH could have produced something better than this. I mean, the book looks like a cheap menu for some cheap restaurant. It does not follow any publication standards. No ISDN. No publisher. No company address, except for the web address. It uses thin color papers as covers. It has about 10 printed pages with no table of contents and no indexes. Small fonts were used. What an economical way to produce books. I would suggest the author to venture into the eBook business for cost savvy way to produce books.

What's interesting is that it looks like someone's printed research notes, but without the references. It's more like a collection of short 'how to' articles rather than a book. From a unique angle, looks more like a lost secret guide from warriors of gone days! ;-)

At first glance, this book reminded me of concepts I once read from Jeet Kune Do books. The book covers the topic mentioned in the advertisement in a very simple and straight manner, which adds to the concept of the author's PTH . In my opinion, most of the content and combat philosophy is of no surprise to intermediate level pesilat from 'Pukulan' aliran (Sendeng or maybe Lian as example).

Anyone familiar to Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do will straight away recognize some of these tactics from the guide. First, Progressive Indirect Attack (PIA). Attacking one part of the opponent's body followed by attacking another part as a means of creating an opening and Attack By Combinations (ABC). This is using multiple rapid attacks as a means of using volume of attack to overcoming the opponent. The author mentioned few of these examples in the PTH book step by step, which is a good point.

There's not much technique in the book. My opinion is that the author's target audience is not someone with no martial arts background. Explanations require some martial arts background (not necessarily silat) to visualize. He might want it to be as a concept to build your techniques around. The reader has to look for other techniques to fit the concept themselves.

In the book the author did not clearly explain what PTH is and where the term comes from but he briefly stressed the importance of 'simplicity'. So, my guess is the author is trying to convey PTH as simple fighting concept or tactic using simple but effective techniques.

My personal opinion is it looks more like a subset from Tao of Jeet Kune Do with better Bahasa Melayu explanation and interpretation with some street psychology plus few petua. Sendeng veterans would agree there's a lot more to Tujuh Hari than mentioned in the book.

I would say that people who are looking for basics of 'petua menyerang' might find the tips quite useful. Recommended if you don't mind paying RM 20 for this kind of knowledge.

Plus points: Good tips if you want to learn theories ot effective timing in launching attacks or intercepting them.

Minus points: The appearance, limite content, quality of visuals used and printing material. No citations to substantiate theories.

Interesting: More and more people are interested in using the term Pukulan Tujuh Hari nowadays.

Sincerely,
Peluru Perak