Company: E/B Productions
Tape Name: Advanced Shotokan Kata, Volume 1
Tape
Cost: $39.95
Length of Tape/Time: 90 minutes
Number of Moves/Techniques: approximately
100
Return Policy: 10 Day Money Back Guarantee
Experiences in dealing with
this company:
The Instructor: Joel Ertl and Anita Bendickson
Company's Address:
762 E. 7th St., St. Paul, MN., 55106
Company's Phone Number: 800-772-7912
Web
Page: http://www.karatevid.com
E-Mail: ebprod@skypoint.com
Primary Grading Criteria:
1. Production/Tape
Quality: 9
2. Instructors demonstrated skill level: 10
3. Comprehension Score/Immediate
Understanding: 9
4. Degree to which this will make someone a better Martial Artist:
8
5. Score on delivery vs hype: 10
6. Degree to which we would recommend
this product: 9
7. Wasted Time ( The higher the number, the less " fluff"
/repetition ): 8
8. Playback Score/Watching if over-and-over again: 9
9.
Would I purchase more of this company's products:9
10. Overall grade based on
cost vs. Value: 9
Grand Total: 90 %
Secondary Grading Criteria:
1. Beginners
benefit: Good
2. Intermediate benefit: Good
3. Advanced benefit: Good
4.
Time to benefit: Immediate for most of the material
5. The need to buy additional
tapes to understand this one: None
Written Summary:
If you are a martial
artist who loves to learn and practice kata, then this video is definitely for you.
On this video, there are five very difficult kata from Shotokan karate and the instructors
(Mr. Ertl and Ms. Bendickson) are extremely good at performing the respective kata.
We are shown each kata at least 4 times. The first time is at normal speed with
a voice over explaining what the kata is trying to teach the student as well as some
historical comments about that particular kata. We are then shown each kata along
a "performance line", which is very helpful when trying to learn a kata
from a video because of problems with depth perception on a video terminal. We
are then shown each kata very slowly with an in depth explanation of each move. Then
we are shown breakdowns of the more difficult segments of each kata, and finally
each kata is shown at the correct speed. The kata demonstrated on this video are
Tekki Shodan, Kanku-Dai, Bassai-Dai, Empi, and Jion.
As I said earlier, this
video is great if you want to learn some very difficult kata. It would also be a
very good video if you already know these particular kata but want more detailed
explanation of the various moves. It is not the purpose of this review to add to
the controversy about the effectiveness of kata in learning how to defend oneself.
But this is an excellent video and the material is throughly explained and the instructors
are of the highest quality.
