“At the time, the injury appeared to be disastrous and left me in despair. However I looked to the future and began rebuilding,” says
The Essential Karate Book author, Graeme Lund, who is Founder and Managing Director of Port Elizabeth-based agency, Ad’Empire.
“In my frustration I started making notes of what I had learnt and found that I enjoyed writing about karate almost as much as I enjoyed practicing karate.”
His initial intention was to simply record his knowledge for future reference, but as he evaluated what he had learnt over 17 years of experience, he realized that his notes could be of use to others.
As the Founder and Managing Director of Ad’Empire, Lund understood that most karate books available in the West do not communicate effectively with their target audience.
“One of the problems that Westerners face when doing karate is that their mind is not geared to learn from acts or from instruction. Western education has been the product of books, notes and research in libraries and on the internet, all recorded neatly and future reference is easy.
“It is very common for karateka to learn incorrect pronunciation, interpretation, translation, technique and sequence simply because they have no written point of reference.
“Instruction will vary from sensei to sensei from dojo to dojo and, not having any written records, many instructions are simply forgotten.
“To add fuel to the fire is the huge number of styles of karate - each with their own teaching methods and terminology,” he says. In writing
The Essential Karate Book, Lund’s intention was to overcome these problems.
“The content of this book does not favour any one style or organization but does give specific information on Goju-ryu, Shito-ryu, Shotokan, Wado-ryu and Shorin-ryu,” he says.
Port Elizabeth-based Renshi Steve Johnson and Renshi Karl von der Marwitz - both fifth Dan Karateka and international gold medallists – were used as models to show the different moves.
Having written, illustrated and designed the book with the help of his agency team, Lund sent his manuscript to the “10 biggest martial arts publishing houses around the world and, quite unexpectedly, the largest of these - Tuttle Publishing – responded,” he says.
Tuttle, which has the rights to legendary martial artist Bruce Lee’s books, is one of the biggest publishers of martial arts books in the world. Lund and his team worked with Tuttle Publishing for two years to finalise the book, and it is now being sold in the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
The Essential Karate Book is available from Exclusive Books, Fogarty’s Bookshop in Port Elizabeth, Amazon.com, and Kalahari.net. The local selling price is about R250.