A Student's Guide to Knowing More Than Your Martial Arts Master

by Len Losik Ph D.

Description A Student's Guide to Knowing More Than Your Martial Arts Master is not a how-to martial arts book, its an academic passage through the gates of martial arts at a level beyond what today's Masters in 3 Years are taught. A Student's Guide to Knowing More Than Your Martial Arts Master is the result of the author's desire to increase all student's and Instructor's knowledge beyond their own styles information and is for those who know little about martial arts or believe they do. This book comprises previously unpublished writings together with simplified and complex explanation to expand the reader's ability to utilize new found knowledge-synthesized by the author from the traditional Korean, Okinawa, Chinese and Japanese Kata, Kuens and Hyungs. The author begins by exploding some of the myths of Karate, Taekwondo, Shaolin Fighting Art and Tang Soo Do as a noble art, and the reader can rest assured that those who take pride in breaking boards, smashing tiles or those that boast of performing outlandish feats of stripping flesh or plucking out ribs, are proving their training to create humility and humbleness did not work and are only doing carnival quality side show tricks. These individuals are playing in the leaves and branches of a great tree, without the slightest concept of the existence of a trunk. In his descriptions of Karate, Taekwondo, Chuan Fa and Tang Soo Do martial arts, the author defines the origins in the ancient methods of unarmed combat in China, Korea and Japan and their explosive growth as independent fighting methods. The author included in this book and his many others the need to formulate precisely the communications and explanations between Master and student for what is being taught and why, to establish a standard of academic knowledge of martial arts as well as the physical, kick-punch aspects. The charts and graphs are not traditional, but they serve to establish the tools for understanding many aspects of any style's Instructions, thought and actions, and to facilitate the mastery today of the academic requirements of every style of martial arts that is being ignored for the physical kick-punch aspects. All these characteristics are explained to the reader by charts and tables that allow comparisons between styles and systems never available in the past. Lastly, the author recalls the explosion in information and oral traditions as a result of his past articles published around informing students and masters alike of the post World War II and the Korean War conditions that caused the greatest spread in martial arts in recorded history. This is a book that no martial arts Master wants his students and Instructors to read because it illustrates what little is known by the Masters academically about others styles and oral traditions and how much more their is too learn.