Black Belt Karate: The Intensive Course By Hirokazu Kanazawa

Black Belt Karate: The Intensive Course by Hirokazu Kanazawa is a Shotokan style of karate, developed from several martial arts by Gichin Funakoshi (1868-1957) and his son Gigo Funakoshi (1906-1945).

Gichin has popularized karate through numerous public demonstrations and supporting the development of university karate clubs. Shotokan, being among the first and biggest styles, is rated as a conventional and powerful form of karate.

Whether one can merely study books and develop adequate skills of karate to attain "Black Belt" level of proficiency is a debatable point. The success of achieving higher levels of expertise in karate depend on the person, his ability to grasp various skills, the extent of earlier training or experience in martial arts.

Even the quality of training for achieving black belt level varies from school to school. The books on karate are useful as a reference point to those who are already attending karate training classes. Those looking for an overview of Shotokan Karate, ‘Black Belt Karate: An Intensive Course’ will serve as a reliable illustration of all the individual steps in this style of karate.

For example, it explains that ‘kihon’ is an individual technique of Shotokan such as punches, kicks, and blocks and so on. The book also illustrates some ‘kata’ or forms, an introduction to basic ‘kumite’ (sparring) and a general idea of a few training techniques.

In other words, this book will not as such furnish all the information required by those who wish to qualify as black belt practitioner. One requires a lot more understanding on ‘kata’ and ‘kumite’. They will be able to get sufficient information on these two techniques from Kanazawa’ s other two books: “Karate: The Complete Kata” and “Karate Fighting Techniques.”

It is very essential to watch someone actually demonstrating these two techniques or see videos on YouTube in order to get an exact idea of how these techniques work in practice. It is virtually impractical to acquire the skills of karate from a book.

Nevertheless, it is much simpler to follow the minute details of basic techniques not when one is training in a karate class, but carefully going through photographs of brilliant ‘karateka’ performing these techniques.

Apart from photographs, various diagrams of the position of hips and how they should be rotated while implementing these techniques will help in better understanding the techniques. “Black Belt Karate: The Intensive Course” is a reprint of an earlier book that was published in 1978.

This clarifies how the prologue could be written by late Masatoshi Nakayama, who expired many years ago. The best way one can make use of the book is to take note of all the information from it and rigorously practice earnestly till the requisite expertise has been acquired.

A tutor will be very useful to offer impartial feedback; nevertheless, whether someone engages a teacher to learn karate or not, there is no shortcut to paying attention to minutest details of the techniques and rigorous practice. In order to derive maximum benefit from the book, ‘Black Belt Karate: The Intensive Course’ , one should not rush through the techniques explained in the book too fast and instead exercise patience and acquire the skills step by step, devoting sufficient time for each technique.

If not, there is a likelihood of suffering injuries or developing poor quality of techniques. This book should not be considered as a do-it-yourself (DIY) guide to achieve ‘black belt’ skills in karate within a year.

However, this book is very handy to get an idea of karate and an aid in one’s effort to develop expertise in ‘Karate-do’, if he does not depend exclusively on it. It gives great satisfaction to practice Shotokan Karate or Karate-do in the tradition of such giants as Gichin Funakoshi, Masatoshi Nakayama and Hirokazu Kanazawa.

If you are thinking of getting a copy of Black Belt Karate: The Intensive Course, click on the link below to make your purchase from Amazon.com and have it delivered to your home.

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