Explosive Karate

by Arthur Rabesa, George E. Mattson (Editor), Peter Blackman (Illustrator)

". . . I am not invested in sparring. For one thing, I discovered karate when I was well into my thirties, just about the time that I became invisible to women. For another, I have never had a very good kinesthetic sense. I have to work unfairly hard to make my body do what everyone else's seems to do naturally. So I never expected to be interested in Arthur Rabesa's book. It is surprisingly good. For the likes of me, it offers "how to do it" basic repair advice that is indispensable for the karate workshop. For karate instructors, it is a terrific textbook to assign to students. Whether they agree or disagree with his solutions, they will find that Rabesa raises problems systematically, in a way that makes them easy to discuss. As a personality, Rabesa is about as blunt as they come, and he writes the same way. Like the bridge and chess columnists who take one through sample games, Rabesa reconstructs varying sets of circumstances so that the reader feels that he is there. And then he lets the reader in on plans. Rabesa was a good world class fighter, but sometimes he lost. That is helpful to his readers, because he discusses his mistakes and tells what he learned from them. One cannot learn karate (or ballet, the violin, etc.) from a book; it requires a teacher. But one can learn about karate from a book, and one can learn about sparring from this book." Harvey Liebergott

109 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1993