Rayners Lane Taekwon-do Academy

Review
- Kevin Ebbs, 2nd Degree
Spartan Taekwon-Do

Mr Anslow has yet again, [how does he find the time?], managed to achieve that most difficult of all things, in having produced yet another valuable piece of work to help the informed and enlightend Taekwon-Do practitioner in moving his Taekwon-Do journey forward towards a better and exspansive path.

Not only does Mr Anslow's willingness to delve deeper into Martial Arts history, (without staying there too long), mean that this is an insightful and practical piece of work, it shows his indomitableness in holding what must be the most cherished element of Taekwon-Do (Ch'ang Hon tul) up to what could be the extreme scrutiny of the members of the Taekwon-Do and Martial Arts world. In this alone he should be admired, but in having produced this easy to read yet learned book, for mine and my students use, he has my eternal gratitude.

What stands out for me is what is already loud and clear to Mr Anslow. We are part of the Information Super Highway: what must surely be the most informed and yet easily questionable time there has ever been. The international and gragarious nature of my own community of Facebook friends must surely testify to this! Everybody has an opinion, and yet, Mr Anslow through his experience, knowledge and his eagerness to question himself, means that we can ourselves now benefit from the qualities of the applications shown and the history and experience described in this fabulously written work.

Mr Anslow, (quite rightly I might add), questions even the value of the use of the often mis-used word, "tradional," yet at the same time he clearly holds dear to himself the truth and tenets behind "The Art"...a most tradional trait in and of itself, and one to be much admired in my opinion.

In my club, Spartan Taekwon-Do, Mr Anslow's first volume on realistic applications is a much thumbed and enjoyed read by many of my students: those students who are willing to take their patterns to that next existential level, practising what I believe, that patterns are not

learned from trying out the applications within (and now those that are not so obvious), in order to become better and more proficient martial artists and perhaps more particularly, so we add to our ever increasing and deadly armoury. This second volume, is for my part, even better and the hard-back is just a bonus!

This book doesn't think left-field of the box. It simply shows us true and realistic applications to the tul that we sometimes become all too familiar with in our training halls and never normally seek to question.

This book is an aide memoire, an encyclopedia, an atlas to the forms/patterns/hyung that is an essential path to learning "the way of" as experienced and taught by the Father and Founder and can now be found by way of insightful instruction in the bottom of mine and my of my students' sports bags, that of Mr Anslow through his works.

I have always admired Mr Anslow's vast knowledge and approach, but most of all, I admire his willingness to question and to put himself our there, where most of us are often too fearful to tread; for fear of being just simply wrong. To coin a phrase, "if you do not make mistakes, you're not experimenting enough"!

I'd like to recommend this (and other works from Mr Anslow) to you students and Instructors out there. Sometimes we hold this wonderful, but deadly Martial Art in too precious an esteem in terms of our unwillingess to question - Mr Anslow's questions for us, but the result is value added to you and to your Dojang!