Product Description

A comprehensive instructional guide to the world's most popular martial art. 16-pp. photo insert. 350 illustrations. Media attention.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154832 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-13
• Released on: 1999-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

Everything I was looking for
I was looking for a book that has all the forms with pictures. I also wanted an explanation of the kicks, stances and so forth so that I could practice at home in between my TKD classes.

This book contained all this and much more. Extremely comprehensive reference book if you are serious about TKD. I am 100% satisfied with this excellent book!

I also recommend "Ultimate Flexibility" by Kim if you want to learn the proper way to stretch and extend the range of your kicks. Ki-Yup!!

Great Book!
This book is very informative and easy to use. Best Taekwondo book I've read so far. A+

Surprisingly A Very Well Done Book On Tae Kwon Do
Being a 4th Dan black belt in Tae Kwon Do, I tend to really dissect books on the subject and more than likely also tend to be more critical of the subject matter than perhaps I ought to. However, in this particular case, I feel that my very critical outlook on this book is actually a good thing, as this book far surpassed my expectations as an overall reference guide to Tae Kwon Do.

I was very impressed with the wealth of general information that was provided by the authors in this book. It was very well thought out and the organization of the material presented was exceptional. This book was so well done, that I even decided to hang onto it and keep it in my own personal library of martial arts book. It is that good!

The basic layout of the books starts with a brief but very informative look at the history and philosophy of Tae Kwon Do from ancient times to the more modern era. This is quickly followed up by a section on warming up and stretching, which brings up the one item that is usually a detractor when not used, but in this case it has been minimized by the use of well drawn human figures, and that is the lack of photographs in this book. Now I don't mean to say that there aren't enough photographs, I mean that there aren't any photographs at all in this book. Now under normal circumstances this would have been a HUGE detractor, but in this case it ends up being only a minor annoyance. At least that is how I looked at it.

The author's chose instead to provide some very well done drawings of a human figure to demonstrate the various techniques explained in this book. And though I still believe that photographs would have been helpful, the drawings themselves were done well enough that I considered them, for the most part, to be an acceptable substitute.

The next few sections cover some basic techniques in Tae Kwon Do such as; stances, footwork, blocks, strikes, and kicks. Of which, the following kicks were demonstrated:

Front Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 6)
Axe Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 3)
Crescent Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 4)
Reverse Crescent Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 5)
Roundhouse Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 9)
Side Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 10)
Back Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 1)
Hook Kick (Achieving Kicking Excellence, Vol. 7)

Now I must add a particular note here that all of these techniques came with very good explanations to their proper execution and in some cases applications against an actual opponent. A lot of good relevant information was included in this section, as well as, the rest of the book.

The second to the last section of this book was very well done concerning the use of Tae Kwon Do techniques in a sparring type situation. Although I might add that some of it is also relevant to use in a self-defense type situation with just a bit of modification.

The final section in this book is devoted to the eight basic Taegeuk poomse or forms that are required for advancement through the gup ranks and also for the rank of black belt. Now I must admit that I am not a fan of the Taegeuk forms, but they are demonstrated rather well in this book and if you are looking for good reference material to refer to, then this section will definitely be of interest to you.

Overall this is really an outstanding book and one that I highly recommend.

Shawn Kovacich
Martial Artist/Author of the Achieving Kicking Excellence series.