bad martial arts books

i find that terrence webster doyle's series regularly dissapoints me. it's as if doctoer spock took a sensitivity course and tried to apply it to martial arts. current educational psych theory is harming children, and mr doyle seems to be trying to take away the very things that make martial arts a powerful tool.

i also recommend taking anything published by paladin press with a grain of salt. the actual authors appear to be fairly knowledgable, but the whole line is so clearly published for the sort who subscribe to soldier of fortune magazine and spend way too much time -- ah -- 'cleaning their guns'....
 
I found Peter Ralston's Effortless Power to be pretty unreadable and devoid of any real information. I understand it was compiled from some lectures or something that he gave about internal martial arts. But it seemed to me he just sort of rambled, and talked about what he was going to talk about. I kept waiting for him to get to the information, but it just never came.
 
Anything "translated" by Stephan F. Kaufman. Bad, really bad, and very possibly completely made up.

Lamont
 
I've read a fair number of MA books that seem to me to be mostly compendia of basic techniques, fancified up as `secrets of [insert MA style here]'. I won't go so far as to say these are bad; they're just overblown in their come-on, promising things that they don't deliver. But I was stumped, literally, by Darell Craig and Paul Anderson's Shihan-Te: the Bunkai of Karate Kata. I found the terminological hairsplitting both tedious and opaque (I eventually caved in and read some of the Amazon.com reviews of the book, which suggest that Craig & Anderson's use of technical vocabulary is pretty idiosyncratic). And I had almost no success in linking the discussion in the text to the illustrations that are supposed to make clear both the kata movements and the deep bunkai that C&A say they are presenting, but which they seem to take forever to actually lay out for the increasingly perplexed reader.

One of these days, if I have the time sometime, lol, I'm going to go back to the book and see if it really is as baffling as I found it the first two times I read it (this was before I discovered Rick Clark, Iain Abernethy and that whole luminous approach to kata decoding). But I'd have to say, at this point, that Shihan-Te something to stay away from, unless you actually enjoy getting exasperated by impenetrable discussions of important topics...
 
ArmorOfGod said:
Anything by Ashida Kim.
;-)

AoG
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Or or anything by "Ha Ha Lung" should be avoided.

I disagree with a previous poster regarding Paladin Press, however. They have published some really good stuff overall. If you let the "image" that they present and market disuade you, then I think you are doing yourself a disservice.
 
Blindside said:
Anything "translated" by Stephan F. Kaufman. Bad, really bad, and very possibly completely made up.

Lamont
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really?

i found his gorin-no-sho and art of war really very wonderful. i'll admit he plays very fast and loose with the direct translation...it's hard to even find the structure of the original art of war in his version...but i did a pretty close parallel read of both those and had no major complaints.

could you give me some examples? i would love to learn more.
 
bushidomartialarts said:
really?

i found his gorin-no-sho and art of war really very wonderful. i'll admit he plays very fast and loose with the direct translation...it's hard to even find the structure of the original art of war in his version...but i did a pretty close parallel read of both those and had no major complaints.

could you give me some examples? i would love to learn more.
Click to expand...

Well, to start off with he isn't a translator, he can't translate, he doesn't speak Japanese (or Chinese). His books are essentially his interpretation of what Musashi/Sun Tzu meant after reading the books translated by other people. I want to read what Musashi said, not somebodies else's thirdhand interpretation. Also interestng is that nobody in Japan has ever heard about the purported source document for "The Shogun Scrolls" so it seems a bit suspicious that some random American who doesn't speak Japanese is the first to publish a translated version. It just screams "FAKE!"

Lamont
 
you know, i hadn't ever gotten around to buying his 'shogun scrolls'. i had heard there was some controversy over that.

does he make strong claims to having been the translator? as a martial artist, i find the ideas he expresses quite valuable. if i wanted to read what musashi thought, i'd go back and finish learning japanese.

now i find it funny as hell that the guy calls his school 'dojo no hebe', when any first year student knows it would be 'hebe no dojo'. but still, his 'interpretation' seems valuable.
 
My dad had one of Bruce Tegner's paperback books on ju-jutsu I'd like to find and re-read, now that I have had some formal training.

Until then, I'll take his inclusion on this list with a grain of salt as I've heard they are actually OK.
 
mcmillintkd said:
http://bestjudo.com/article13.shtml

I found this site while surfing for TKD books. I was wondering what books (video/dvds) that you would recommend against. What would you suggest that no one invest in? I have some that Iwill add later.
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no offence intended to bruce lee but "bruce lee's fighting method - self defence techniques" is pretty rubbish , some guy just got a load of pictures of him beating people up when they attack him and put a sentance desribing everything that happens over the course of about 10 techniques (over each 2 pages) pages , not very informative and i wouldnt do any of the stuff lee did in those situations , but i like the pictures :)
 
Secrets of the Samurai is terrible. It sounds great if you don't know the subject matter very well. But it really is very, very bad. Entertaining, yes. But not informative and accurate.

As a rule of thumb, take a look at the sources an author uses. If they want to write an epic book about another country and yet can't read the language of that country, it is not worth getting.
 
Atemi Cobra-jitsu by Dr. Professor Grandmaster Soke Irving Soto.
Not kidding about the "Dr. Professor Grandmaster Soke" part.
 
Xue Sheng said:
At least he didn't add his Royal Highness and Grand boo-ba
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I thought it was "Grand Poobah."

I kind of always wanted to join the Elks and rise to the top so I could get the title "Exalted Ruler." :) Would look great on the ol' resume :D
 
zDom said:
I thought it was "Grand Poobah."

I kind of always wanted to join the Elks and rise to the top so I could get the title "Exalted Ruler." :) Would look great on the ol' resume :D
Click to expand...

Sorry your right... it is Grand Poobah..

And if you don't make it to exalted ruler you could always be the Director General of the moose lodge
 
Don Roley said:
And if anyone does not believe the above, check out the man's site for yourself.

http://members.aol.com/mastersoto/sotobio.htm
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Wow. what an amazing resume, or I guess as really important people call it (which he clearly must be), a "curriculum vitae".

I was especially glad to see that he knows "grippling" techniques, as well as grappling techniques...
 
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