Learning to fight and learning to defend your self are two very different things. In this book, "A beginners guide to Shikata Kai martial arts- white belt", I will attempt to inspire you to gain an interest in the martial arts. If you are already practicing the martial arts, this book will highlight your basic techniques and briefly explain, in detail, how each technique is done, what it should be used for and some secrets from the master.
"All martial arts are good and all martial arts work for what they were intended to work for". Karate for example was never intended to be used as a sport, although there are sport karate centers all over the world today. Karate was originally created as a combat art, taught to the army soldiers of Japan, and originated as an art called Yoshu kai, many decades ago. So the techniques here, have a strong base in Yoshu Kai and Tae Kwon Do, as these are two of the arts I chose to master over my lifetime.
Today, the original "Karate" art is hard to find if it can be found at all. Hybrids exist, where the original techniques have been watered down so that people do not get killed in the sport rings, although this still happens. In this book we briefly explain to you how to do the beginners techniques taught in Shikata Kai. The beginners punches, blocks, strikes and kicks and stances that you will learn, can be used in just about all martial arts schools.
Although, some of these techniques will be tailored to the individual schools and instructors worldwide, they all originated from the same base technique. In this book you will learn, from a master, how to properly execute the four main beginners techniques in each of the five main areas of Shikata Kai martial arts, blocking, punching, striking, stances and of course kicking. Although, this is not all that beginners will learn in Shikata Kai as there is classroom type knowledge, commands in the arts language (for traditional purposes), and kata.
After reading this book you will have learned all of the physical techniques that you need to know in order to advance from white belt to yellow belt in Shikata Kai. Please be aware, that most martial arts schools will still have you practice their ways before being awarded any belt rank even though you may have knowledge in the arts already from reading my books. You can, however, tell your instructor, of a new school, that you have trained in the martial arts before and would like to start as close to your present belt rank as possible, be it yellow, green or what ever.
By doing that, most instructors will talk with you and ask who your instructor was, feel, free to use Master Retsuzen and Shikata Kai Martial Arts as your art title. Most instructors will then ask you to show them what you know so that they may decide for themselves where they feel comfortable placing your rank as. This you have to respect as everyone has pure confidence in THEIR art and feels that their techniques are boss.
It has been my experience that if you walk into a new facility with prior skill that even if you are not awarded your current belt color as a starting point that usually the instructors will test you and after you show them what you are made of they will still remember your training and you will advance much faster than the rest also you may find you are placed in a teachers helper position much faster than most. Either way you are winning and the information in this book as well as the whole series will benefit you for sure.
