A Few Reviews Should Be in Order

[rogue]

Vash, check out the books by Javier Martinez for Isshinryu bunkai. The books by Dr Yang are really good as is Patrick McCarthy's translation of the Bubishi.

[Vash]

I've got McCarthy's Bubishi; that's what originally got me interested in both herbology as relates to martial arts, as well as technical relations.

[mickey]

Vash,

If you don't already have it, there is a very interesting article in Vol.10 #3 edition of Journal of Asian Martial Arts (2001). It was titled: Isshin Kempo, Isshin-ryu's missing link to the internal.

I think that is the food and water that you are really looking for!

mickey

[Royal Dragon]

I have the Louhan book.

I actually worked out the set, and drilled the stuffing out of it around 1995 or 96 or so. I had no teqacher, and was looking for something new to keep me motivated wile I was solo.

I used to free spar a former marine friend of mine allthe time back then. Not a teacher, just a buddy who I rolled with. HE was a Kempo Black belt, and had quite alot of boxing skills, both from the military, and prior to his service. For the life of me, I could not beat him, he was too fast, and knew how to fight too well. Well, one day, we were going at it really hard, I got over whelmed, and I did something I never did before, and quite literally stunned him so much he couldn't fight anymore.

At first I thought it was a fluke thing, and I got lucky. But upon further examination, I realised it was a move from the Louhan set in that book. I had done the form so much, and so consistantly, that it had become engrained in my subconcious, and it just came out when I needed it. After that, I started to shadow box the moves from the set, and began trying them out one by one when we free sparred. I didn't tell him what I was doing of course. By about the time I got 7-8 of them down well, he could not touch me anymore. I still couldn't really touch him, but I could get a deacent shot in once and a wile.

I swear, I got more fighting ability out of that one book, than ANYTHING I have ever learned live from a teacher up to that point. Not that I don't think a teacher is nessasary, especially with the internal arts, and since then, I have met and worked with some one live who advanced me quite a bit more, but because of that experiance, I have a MUCH greater appreciation of the manuals in the study of Kung Fu. It really is all there if you have the key to unlock it.

[Vash]

I'll have to give it a good thrice-over when it comes in.

[Vash]

I agree about the manuals being invaluable. It would be great if there were some real High-Quality Karate manuals out there.

I've seen a bunch of Good books, but nothing I'd consider Great.

[Royal Dragon]

It's not the manual, it's the reader. I have heard people say you can't get much out of the Tagou manuals, but if you study them the way I studied the Louhan one, all the secrets are in there. You may not get the sequence of the forms exactly right, because there are errors in tha Tagou's texts, but you can still have exemplery Kung Fu if you go through, work out each set one at a time, then work each techinque of that set one at a time, with a partner.Then shadow box it, and find ways to use it in your free sparring. Once done, move on to the next technique.

All you really need is someone to teach you a good Shaolin foundation heavy on the basics, the principals of Shaolin combat and training, and a couple of good partners to work with. Once you've got that, the manuals are easy. Just remeber, when you learn a set from a good teacher, you only learn a little slice at a time anyway. If you treat the book like that, you'll get it. Your testing with a partner will help you figure out the corrections and everything. If you try to just read it through, and get it all at once, you be pulling your hair out.

When you find parts that don't quite make sense, just improvise something that fits. No two Shaolin schools do the same sets exactly alike anyway. None's going to care if they see it performed when they don't know the background.

[FIRE HAWK]

Another set of good books on Wing Chun are the books called Secret Techniques of Wing Chun by K.T. Chao and John Weakland there are three books the Sil Lim Tao , Chum Kil, and Bil Jee , these books are probably the best books technically wise on Wing Chun . These books are hard to get and the are going fast here are some links on were you can get the books .
http://www.plumpub.com/sales/kungfu/bk_secretsWC1.htm
http://ryukyu.com/id60.html

[Vash]

Thanks for the links, FH. To be honest, though, not very interested in Wing Chun at this point.

RD:

I agree with you about the value of manuals. I just wish there was an actual manual out there which came a little bit closer, lineage-wise, to my instructor. So far, I've found a manual which is of the same generation of my teacher's teacher's teacher. So, some of the stuff is dead-on what we do, some of it is a little out there.

Maybe one day I'll get my sensei to go through all the basics, kata and take a shot of each of these, have him explain how we do stuff at our school, then bind it all together . . .