Customer Rating: Summary: A valuable find Comment: Rather than presenting a book worth of random applications or cool looking sequences, the authors go much deeper and present you with a methodology for actually understanding kata application.
I have found this book to be very valuable, i've owned it for something like two years and I still open it up regularly, it is defnitely a book that you will use frequently.
Customer Rating: Summary: Excellent, must have for serious martial artist Comment: Perhaps the best book on the martial arts I have read. The authors help remind us that forms are not a dance, they are deadly techniques in a transmittable form. The book helps you achieve the right mindset for analyzing kata of any style (though the authors are based in Goju-Ryu) to uncover the practical, dangerous moves that have been hidden. A wonderful tool for those looking to develop fighting skill from their chosen art.
Customer Rating: Summary: Extremely good Comment: I would recommend this book to any serious martial artist, regardless of their style. I have read plenty of books that discuss interpreting kata moves, and at first glance this would appear to be "just another kata book." However, this book goes a step further and discusses determining the strategy of a particular style, and concentrating on finding kata interpretations that fit that strategy.
The only reason I did not give it a 5-star rating comes from some of the "optimized" versions of kata interpretations contained in one of the later chapters of the book. Most of them are quite good, but I was disappointed to see a "2-hand press block" being used to deflect an incoming punch. As one of my old teachers put it, "If you need two hands to block one punch, you're in the wrong fight!"
Customer Rating: Summary: Must have for advanced Martial Artists Comment: This is a must have for any Martial Artist. Having trained in Martial Arts for 20 years I feal that this book will help any student in any style look more deeply at the style they are studying. This is not a beginners book. This is for people who have trained for 3 or 4 years or Brown belt level and up.
Customer Rating: Summary: An uncannily close reflection... Comment: Lawrence Kane lives and trains on a different continent to me, and although his style is much the same as the one that I train in, I would have expected to see differences in small particulars of dojo ettiquette, training conventions, kata interpretations and the like.
In reading his book, I felt that he had been watching our school for years and almost every fine nuance in ethos, discipline, terminology and so many other aspects reflected in his book could have been taken from where I learn.
Kane seems to have retained the traditional aspects of Goju training in a world where professional dojo's easily lose the essence of their roots in order to be more commercially acceptable and/or sport orientated. On almost every page I smiled with a mixture of incredulity (is that a word?) and satisfaction as he managed to both confirm the direction of my teachers, and at the same time, offer so much further insight that has given me material for my class planning and personal growth.
I recommend this book without hesitation.
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