Customer Reviews

Karate, Beginner to Black Belt: Beginner to Black Belt

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This particular text is geared primarily toward younger karate students which really comes as no surprise as the majority of Tegner's books have been staples of school and public libraries for years.Covers the basic techniques in clear, easy to understand language.Readers looking for more spectacular displays of footwork and sparring are best advised to go to Jordan Roth's Black Belt Karate where individual techniques are covered in far greater detail.Still, in fairness to Bruce he did make karate (and judo) accessible to a great number of people through his work and deserves a great deal of credit for such even though his name barely seems to rate a mention in martial arts circles these days.

I credit Tegner with making a great deal of good martial arts information available at reasonable prices, starting in 1959 I remember right, with his book, "Karate, The Open Hand and Foot Fighting." At the time there wasn't much out there on most of these subjects--for example, his book on Savate--not to mention all the books he did on the Asian martial arts. Also, the books always came out in soft cover and were very reasonably priced. You could find them in public libraries and bookstores all over the country. I once found several at a country bookstore in South Dakota back in the late 60's.

The importance of this book for me is the presentation of the Shukokai style forms. You'll see these have significant stylistic differences from the well-known Shotokan and Goju-Kai forms. Also, the 90-move brown belt form is extremely long for a karate form--another interesting aspect of the book. The Shotokan Kwanku Dai form at 68 moves isn't nearly as long, although Goju-Kai has the Suparinpei form at 108 moves, which, of the 80 or so karate forms I learned at one time or another, is the longest I'm aware of.

I'd like to know more about the origin of these, as the Shukohkai school has a reputation for being quite conservative and sticking to their tradition. Another characteristic of Shukohkai stylists is their preference for free-fighting from the front stance. Technically, if I recall correctly, the Shukohkai school is basically the Tani-ha Shorin-Ryu style, one of a number of Shorin-Ryu substyles. My main exposure to Shorin-Ryu has been to the Kobayashi and Matsubayashi-Ryu substyles, as well as Isshin-Ryu. (I am primarily Shotokan, and Taekwondo myself).

Anyway, as someone interested in the history and evolution of the different styles and especially the forms, this is the only book I know of that presents these interesting forms. The book would be important and interesting if only for that, in addition to the presention of the basic karate techniques.

This book teaches the old form of Karate which is much better than modern Karate. For info on modern Karate, buy Teach Yourself Karate by Steve Arneil and Liam Keaveney.