Customer Reviews

Nunchaku: The Complete Training Guide

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has no merit as an insructional guide. The photos many times make no sense to the description given. There is no succession from basic to advanced techniques.

Beginners will find this book very hard to follow. Mostly basic techniques. Pictures are not the best but experienced people won't have much difficulty in following.

This book is one of the most advanced of it's kind. Some people may disagree. If you do not pick up your nunchaku and read this book from cover to cover first and try to understand the techniques fully before you attempt. You will value this book greatly.

It doesn't tell you what each move is used for. Sometimes the pictures don't correlate, making it hard to follow. I suggest "The Basic Training Guide".

I utilize various exercise methods to prevent becoming stale.
The Nunchaka training guide is informative and has pictures
demonstrating the routines for this weapon to facilitate
the learning and procedures.

ddb1384

Nunchaku: The Complete Training Guide is one of the best books out there dealing with the combative application of the nunchaku. I've been using the nunchaku since about the age of seven and this book vastly improved my knowledge. It is well written and has clear photographs of the techniques. I would say they are fairly advanced as far as the combative aspect is concerned, but if you're looking for a lot of flashy tournament techniques you won't find them here.

The book begins with a brief introduction about the history of the nunchaku and about how it was originally a farm tool that was pressed into service because the occupying Japanese took away all of the weapons of the Okinawan people. The book progressively goes from some basic strikes and advances to more advanced strikes, while giving some examples of close range fighting, and closing with examples of using the nunchaku against various martial arts weapons and unarmed attackers. Throughout the book different levels of kata are demonstrated that are helpful to increase your skill and dexterity with the weapon.

I've had this book on my shelf for many years and I highly recommend it.

this book is very clearly written and i could not think of any one better then jiro shiroma the best when it comes to nunchaku thats why i give it a 5 out of 5 stars because it has so many techniques. i cant stress it enough about how great this book is.

There are a great amount of techniques in this book. There are even some rare joint lock techniques I hadn't seen anywhere else; however, they are not well organized. The techniques are scattered all over the place and one must hunt each one down through the pages in order to find them. If the material was separeted into more specific sections, I would have given it five stars. I don't think that the guide is incomplete as far as the techniques it contains but in its organization.

It would have been better if they showed what each move could be used for. And it wasn't very complete

Not only the presentation of the art is not consistent, but also the techniques are not well-designed. About a half of the techniques are not actually usable in real defending purposes. The problem is that they will make you lose balance when using them. I bet the author has not tested those skills he explained yet. The author tried to be different from Bruce Lee, but that also introduced many difficulties. And that is absolutely not necessary!

The history presented by Jiro Shiroma is actually wrong. It was a Chinese weapon -- a real weapon used by martial artists during the Song Dynasty in China -- A.D. 960+. This is the earliest period when people actually used it as weapon. Nunchaku is an Okinawan name of the same thing invented by Chinese, whose name was Da Sau Zu meaning "swinging sticks."

Before Bruce Lee popularized on the films such a powerful weapon, the so-called Japanese Nunchaku, as weapon, did not exist at all. After his movies, Japanese started "reinventing" nunchaku for their own martial arts, especially Ninjutsu. However, today's Ninjas are only useful in movies! Bruce Lee's nunchaku was actually an Indian farming tool, introduced to him by his student Dan Inosanto. Bruce Lee simply called it "double sticks."

I learned "double sticks" from the book written and drawn by Bruce Lee, and it was well-designed, poweful, straightforward, and economical. The techniques are very easy to follow and no redundency at all! Actually, I learned it from the pictures only, but after that I started reading the descriptions. It helped me to understand the philosophy of his ideas about the art. His method are beautiful!

I think the best way to describe it is that it's an American-martial-art weapon invented by a Chinese American -- Bruse Lee. The origin of the sticks is India, or China as you please, and the techniques are the invention of Bruce Lee.

If you want to learn double sticks as a useful martial art, watch Bruce Lee's movies and you will learn most of the skills actually required for defending or fighting