Q. Professor Moclair, when did your book become available?
A. The “official launch” was at my book signing ceremony on the twenty sixth of September at my Dojo building in Dudley, West Midlands, England. I also did a prepress release to the martial arts community by sending out three hundred and thirty email poster’s to various martial arts associations’ and clubs around the world and then a further hundred plus to various martial arts media and press around the world.
Q. How is the initial response to the book release?
A. I can only describe it as fantastic; the prepress release’s initial response was excellent, some of my colleagues from the UK, USA. CanadA. Australia and New Zealand are extremely enthusiastic about the book and are placing lots of order’s via the internet. At this point of time there are over 25,000 outlets around the world that you can get the book from and it is even on sale in France, Germany, Switzerland and South Africa. At the official launch book signing we had the local press and representatives from various martial arts magazines. I also had tremendous support from my own students and from the local martial arts community.
Q. You mentioned that you can buy the book over the internet, at what internet sites is the book available?
A. All the normal ones like; Amazon, Barnes & Noble, W H smiths, Tesco and if you do a search on google or book butler or one of the other search engines there are hundreds more site where you can get the book. You can also buy the book direct from my publisher’s at Authorhouse.com.
I would also like to add that you can also buy the book from any bookstore and if they don’t it in stock you can place an order for it by quoting the ISBN number 1425930298 or just the title.
Q. For our reader’s who are not familiar with what your book is about, would you please enlighten us to it’s objectives and goals?
A. The easy answer is to say “go buy the book” as the two hundred fifty odd pages will unquestionably enlighten you as to my objectives and goals. But this is the sales man in me answering you and this does not give your reader’s an insight into the books contents, so here is a compressed version of what the aims of the book are;
Over the forty years plus that I have been in martial arts it has become apparent that thousands of potentially new people both young and old, boys, girls, men and women want to start some kind of martial art and with the best intentions in the world do start what they believe to be is a martial art. There goal is to learn a martial discipline, that will through time teach them how to defend themselves from the all too familiar attacks that we see happening in our society, every second of every day.
Now comes the really sad part and the part that old timer’s like myself will never come to terms with, all of these good people are being herded into classes that are not even close to what I would describe any form of martial art.
Q. Professor, may I jump in there and ask for some clarification on what you mean by people being herded into classes that as you describe not even close to any form of martial art?
A. Yes, you have asked a question that does indeed need clarification.
I would say from my own experience and years of research that at least seventy percent of so called “martial arts classes” are no more than a physical work out with a few extremely poor punches and kicks thrown in along with a few “tricks” or what they call “self defence moves” that I personally would add, will never work from the street point of view.
I have to take my hat off to the so called “instructors” as they are indeed ingenious in the ways they entice the would-be student through there doors with lots of gimmicks and sales baloney that the unsuspecting new student often falls for and then parts with “lots of hard earned” “cash” and that’s what it is all about, “money”, forget ethics, forget morals, forget high technical standards and really forget the most important part “martial arts”, just get what they class as these “suckers” to part with plenty of money and believe me it is easy money, all they do is blind the uninitiated with a few poor quality punches and kicks and get them to perspire a little and you have a winning business that will make some of these unscrupulous individuals lots of “tax free cash”.
These clubs go under various heading, “free style this”, “kick that”, “box this” and so on and claim to be the best in martial arts and self defence system in a particular area. They cover there backsides by adding the word “sport” into the title and the student is encouraged to gently tap his or her competitive partner into winning a mock contest that has no more meaning then a game of tag. They even produce “champions” with flash titles like “world champion.” At this point of time there are more world champions then there are stars in the sky. These so called “champions” would In my opinion never stand a chance in a real fight out in the street.
Let’s face reality; it all comes down to how you train to start with, if you train in a realistic martial arts environment you will fight in a realistic way but if are unfortunate to belong to a club as I have described, then you will find out the hard way that you have wasted your money and you may have to spend some considerable time recovering in a hospital bed.
So the objective of my book is to try to guide new students into “proper martial arts classes” and “clubs.” And my goal is to give the person off the street an insight into the concept of good basic karate techniques through the numerous easy to follow photographic illustrations. After the basics I have also included some rudimentary but very practical self defence routines that will help anyone who wants to learn how to defend themselves and that what all martial arts should be about.
Q. So Professor, is the book just for new comers to the martial arts?
A. Yes and no, as I have said I want to guide new people into good clubs and there are plenty of good clubs out there but I also want to break the stigma that surrounds Karate. Many people including lots of practising martial artists are under the false illusion that karate is only for the super supple people of this world and this stigma is fired through Hollywood with the big flash kicks that look good on the big screen.
The truth is you do not have to be able to do the splits or do a back flip in order to be able to do Karate and in my book the kicks are definitely not high and easily within the realms of most people. My philosophy is if you can kick them in the shin then that’s great but if you can kick them in the “family jewels” then you are a “five star karate person”.
Age is also another stigma that keeps people away from karate classes, most adults who are thirty plus feel that they are too old to start karate and indeed another martial art. This should not be the case; martial arts should be for all ages and my book shows me as a middle aged person, with few more years added on, still being able to do karate to its full potential.
I also feel another stigma karate has, is that most karate styles are viewed by fellow martial artist’s as very rigid in its approach to the fundamentals, this is not so, with most kempo system’s and in particular my own kempo karate system the system is very fluid and if the general martial arts community reads my book they will be pleasantly surprised by the flowing but extremely powerful techniques the kempo karate systems have. I would go as far to say that they may even learn some new ideas and techniques from the book especially from the attack and defence routines.
Q. I have had a chance to read the book Professor Moclair and I was very impressed with both the clarity of written explanations and easy to follow photographic illustrations, who was responsible for all this?
A. Well first of all thank you for your kind comments, I wrote the book over a two and a half year period, so it was not something that was just thrown together and to get the final draft together I along with my good friend and student Lee Hemmings, took over fifteen thousand photographs of which three hundred and fifty plus were chosen for the book, I then personally edited every photo until I was happy with way they looked and then added the various arrows and text so that the reader could follow them more easily. All in al I am very pleased with the outcome.
Professor Moclair, thank you for this interview and good luck with your book.
A. No I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak about the book and to pass on some of my views to your readers. I know that some people will not share my views and may take offence at some of the comments I have made, but at the end of the day all martial arts instructors should have one common goal and that is to make sure that they offer the best instruction possible to there students and if my book just gives them a small push in the right direction then the title of the book, “A breath of fresh air” has done its job.
