Charm City Karate

When I see a lack of power in certain techniques, it’s almost always due to a lack of understanding of this Principal. It’s also been referred to as Path of Motion, changing the name doesn’t change the principal.

Ed Parker created Kenpo to be a scientific martial science, not an “art”, but a way. One that could be tested, proved, and demonstrated. Science relies on Principals, Rules if you will, that need to be followed (like Gravity), and all you to predict outcomes (ie, if I drop this, it will fall). The Principals of Kenpo are designed in much the same way – and when followed, will yield predictable, reproduceable results.

Often people who practice ‘arts’ make up excuses when things don’t work, like “your chi isn’t aligned properly” or (and this is one I heard at a seminar by a “reputable” practitioner) “you must have had your toes curled, that changes the energy paths and blocks my knock out”. Meh. That’s not science, that’s voodoo. With a science, if you do it the same way every time, you get the same result; and if you don’t do it the right way, you won’t get the desired result. You can’t shift your chi and cause a firearm NOT to discharge…if you could, the Boxer Rebellion likely would have turned out quite differently.

Okay, enough rant. On to the real reason you’re here. Path of Action.

The easiest way I’ve heard to explain this Principal is UPPER CASE MOVEMENT vs lower case movement. A line of action is generally created when a weapon moves by itself, carrying little mass and generating little Force. A Path is generally created when the body moves with the weapon, adding it’s mass and generating significant Force. The easiest way to get this Principal is on the mat, but I’ll try to give it to you virtually.

Take, say, Thundering Hammer. A technique created, according to legend, when Ed Parker found someone stalking his (then) girlfriend. You step in and block – but what if you didn’t step? What if you just blocked? Would that stop a larger, stronger opponent’s strike? Nah. You have a little sissy Line of Action (notable only, I should mention, for comparison). So, you step, arm, hip, shoulder, body into the Block. BANG – Path of Action!

Now, you could pivot weakly from the hips and slap your forearm into his stomach, causing him to crush you with his follow-up left punch. OR. Or you could pivot your hips, and shuffle forward, moving your whole body into the Path of the strike, doubling the BG over, canceling his left.

At this point, you could turn again and hammerfist his kidney…”<yawn> oh, were you striking me?”. Or you could pivot your body and drop your weight (Marriage of Gravity anyone?), creating another Path of Action, and buckling your BG’s knees. You could follow this up with another hammer slap to the top of the spine, boring your BG into submission. But you’d much rather pivot again (Rotation), drop your weight, Anchor your elbow, and drive through him with a Hammerfist on a Path to the ground.

Okay, so I’m sure you get the idea now.

Your stances, footwork, timing (yeah, that’s what the “slapping” is for), all are there to help you generate a Path of Action. It’s like getting to take a tire iron into a fight, almost make things unfair. But if people are determined to practice inferior martial arts, or practice good martial arts poorly, that’s not our problem. Learn to move, learn to hit, practice, and study your Principals.

Joe Palanzo told me once “Follow Path of Action in your life, it will lead to Path of Success!”

Mr J

What people call Power in martial arts is actually Force in physics, and it has a simple formula (which I may have discussed before). Force is Mass times Acceleration. Alot of people short-hand it down to Mass x Speed, but that’s not exactly accurate, nor would Weight x Acceleration be right. Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity as a function of time; speed is distance traveled per unit of time. Mass is the quantity of inertia possessed by an object. Weight, on the other hand is a measure of the heaviness of an object.

If that doesn’t really help you, it’s okay. They have whole degrees in college devoted to the stuff. Come in and ask one of our resident scientists to help (odd, isn’t it, how many science types end up in Kenpo as opposed to other martial arts?).’

Okay, so we’re going to be lazy and call it power as well, because it’s easy…and if you tell someone you’ll help them generate Force, they don’t seem to care as much as when you tell them you’ll help them generate more power. So.

In a scientific martial art like Kenpo, everything is systematized, and there are several ways to generate power. Speed (acceleration) is actually the most valuable (when you double the acceleration, you quadruple the force!), though I have no idea why…maybe someone can explain it to me. Rotation, or Torque, Back-up Mass, Body Alignment, Marriage of Gravity…Some of these are scientific terms, some are Kenpo terms created, to the best of my knowledge, by Ed Parker Sr (not to be confused with Jr). What I’ll try to do is break each one out a little and explain, and make it, hopefully, more accessible to you in your Kenpo.

The thing to remember is you want Force delivered, not Force generated. The difference is signifigant. If you generate 1000 psi, but your poor technique makes you eat 800 of it, and I only generate 600 psi, but it all gets delivered, I’m hitting harder. You gots a leaky hose. Force delivered is what you want. Not something sitting on a truck at the wharehouse.

Rotation - Torque, power generated by turning…if it drives your car, it should be able to move a BG, right? Most of your torque is going to come from your hips: think roundhouse kicks, hook punches, etc. You get a little bit when you shift stances from Forward to Neutral and so forth. You get a tiny bit turning your fist on a punch.

Techniques with Rotational Keys:

• Triggered Salute
• Snapping Twig
• Flashing Wing
• Thundering Hammer
• Twirling Hammer

Back-up Mass – a Parkerism for sure, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a quantifiable aspect. Basically, it’s getting your body behind your strikes. It’s what a Forward Bow is all about. In my experience, people get the Forward Bow around brown belt. They do the torque part okay before that, but the Back-up Mass and Marriage of Gravity involved don’t “click” until much later. For Back-up Mass to really work, you also need Body Alignment: think cross punch, drag up side kick, inward elbow, etc. You have to get your whole body moving (skip to about 1:30).

Techniques with Back-up Mass Keys:

• Thrusting Salute
• Parting Wings
• Begging Hands

Body Alignment – getting the skeletal system to reinforce the strike, proper Body Alignment will also contribute to Back-up Mass. Body Alignment doesn’t really help you to generate power, so much as it keeps you from wasting it…but, as the man said, “a penny saved is a penny earned”, so Force saved is Force earned. Think stiff jab, stopping kick, etc. Poor Body Alignment can be having your wrist bent when you punch, or your foot not extended on a front kick. It can be having a trailing shoulder on Thundering Hammer. The rub is that the Force you’ve been generating has to go somewhere – and if you don’t put it in the BG because of poor Body Alignment, it’s going into you. Where-ever you had poor alignment is going to take that extra force.

Techniques with Body Alignment Keys:

• All

Marriage of Gravity – another Parkerism. The idea here is that if were to step and hit something, the amount of Force delivered (see above) would be altered dramatically by the timing between your foot and the hit. If you hit while your foot was still in the air, you’re limited to what your arm can generate. If you hit after your foot lands, you get a bit more, say from Torque (or anchoring, etc). If, however, you hit when your foot hits, it allows you to put all of your weight into the shot PLUS the pull of gravity. Think about stepping with a jab, or Jack Dempsey’s “drop hit”, or Chuck Liddell’s overhead “bolo” punch.

Techniques with Marriage of Gravity Keys:

• Grip of Death
• Defying the Storm
• Deceptive Panther

Hope that is enough to get you all started. Let me know if you have any questions!

Mr J

Why does Kenpo karate flow so much better than traditional forms like Shotokan, Tae Kwon Do, etc?

How does Kenpo allow for so much more speed?

Major and Minor moves, that’s how.

Put simply, you can’t always be hitting as hard as you can…unless you want to move stiffly and slowly. But you don’t want to move like that, and you don’t want to gas out in the middle of the fight – whether it’s your pro debut, or a parking lot scuffle. You want to be sure that you continue to breath properly (a topic Ed Parker spent some time on in his excellent series “Infinite Insights Into Kenpo”), conserve your energy for strikes that count, and flow so that your opponent feels like he’s trying to keep dry under a fire hose.

When a student’s timing is off during techniques, it’s usually a lack of understanding of this Principal. So, let’s fix it, eh?

Simply put, Major moves are finishers – powerful strikes using multiple Power Principals (more on these later), to targets that can’t be “armored”, or defensive movements that can’t fail (that is, “can’t” as in  you’ll be crushed if they do). Your initial block in any technique is a Major move, as is the final strike. The reasoning is simple really – if you blow the first block, you get trucked and lose the fight; at the end, there is no need to conserve energy or preserve timing…it’s The End.

When you perform Major moves, you exhale. Major moves are generally, but not always performed with the strong hand.

Minor moves, on the other hand, and set-ups for Major moves. This can be jab-type strike, or a strike that doesn’t take power to work, like a finger to the eye. This isn’t to say that a Minor move can’t end a fight (ever been poked in the eye? sheesh), but that they aren’t meant to. Reactionary defensive moves are generally NOT Minor, but pre-emptive ones can be, like checks.

When you perform Minor moves, you inhale. Minor moves are generally, but not always performed with the weak hand.

All right, there you go, see you next…what? Examples? Oh. Sure. Wouldn’t really be much of a training tip if I just left it there, huh? All right. hmm. I’ll give you two – one that just about everyone should have, and one that just about everyone will practice.

Grip of Death

If you don’t know this technique, go to your local quality Kenpo school (yes, there are ones that suck. You get what you pay for), sign up, and you’ll get this one in the first few weeks. Onward:

1. Stepping in with double hammer fists – Major move, exhale.
2. Reaching up and levering BG’s head – Minor move, inhale.
3. Heel palm to chin of BG – Major move, exhale.

Move 1 HAS to be Major, so you can get Boy Genius to loosen up enough to take the rest of the beating. Of course, you could always pre-empt his grab, but legally…Move 2 is Minor because, well, really, you’re using leverage, not muscle, and pulling his head back isn’t going to end anything except, maybe, his snoring. Oh, and you want to have plenty of O2 for Move 3. Move 3 is Major – this is a serious fight ender. Not only are you using Torque, Marriage of Gravity, and Back-Up Mass, you’re striking to a very vulnerable target; no, not the chin, the chin is just a transmitter of force. You’re really attacking his neck and spine. See, all his vertebrae are flexed, so there’s no real slack, and you’re gonna slam into them like a train wreck.

Five Swords

Told you there’d be one that everyone would practice. I don’t know what it is about this technique, but all the Kenpoists I’ve met like it and practice it. Cool.

1. Right block & chop to neck – Major move, exhale.
2. Palm/ finger strike to head – Minor move, inhale.
3. Uppercut to Solar Plexus – Major move, exhale.
4. Chop to Vagus Nerve – Minor move, inhale.
5. Chop to base of skull – Major move, exhale.

This one is really cool. Someone, might have been Joe Palanzo, or Frank Trejo, or even Huk Planas, I don’t remember which, showed this to me at a Camp. The idea is that you want to really beat on this guy with your right hand, so originally it was block, uppercut, chop. When you really speed it up, and let your arms windmill a bit, you see where the other moves work themselves in. As you probably already know, in Kenpo you don’t cock a weapon unless you have something else going on…like a poke to the eyes.

Okay, so the block in move 1 is Major for all the previous reasons, but the chop isn’t. Move 2 could be Major, but you need to catch your breath, and the Forward Bow isn’t really used to generate power here…at least on this strike.Move 3 is Major, using the Torque and weight transfer from the stance shift; I’ve seen someone get punched in the Solar Plexus hard enough to induce vomiting. Blech. Move 4 is Minor because it dosen’t need any oomph to work, the nerve controls your blood pressure, striking it disrupts it’s work day pretty badly. If you don’t believe, come on over and I’ll knock you out – it doesn’t even hurt. Oh, and again, you want to get some air in! Move 5 is a huge finish – the chop is actually targeting the brain stem, which protrudes slightly at the base of  the skull; a hard shot here can disconnect the wiring, or make the stem swell, causing temporary paralysis. Bad Juju either way.

Okay, so that should be enough for you to get the idea of Major and Minor, and start practicing on your own. If you need help, drop me a line!

Mr J

Well, yes, you do really. There is a line I think I got from one of Tom Patire’s guys when I was learning CDT and LRT – “Be a surgeon, not a butcher”. The point, of course, being that while they both cut “meat”, one does large, (rather) inaccurate work; they other makes much smaller, more precise cuts. To me, really, it’s about the right tool for the job – if I’m sectioning some beef, I want a butcher because a surgeon with his little scalpel is gonna take WAY too long. On the other hand, if I need eye surgery…

The examples of accuracy saving the day are legion – if you read Marc “Animal” MacYoung’s early books ( I don’t remember which one), he talks about a fight he was in during his youth that lasted just two hits – the BG (bad guy) hit him in face (an untargeted shot, catching his cheekbone), and Animal’s shot, a middle knuckle to the sternomastoid joint (that little hollow spot behind your jaw), that made the BG’s eyes water. The BG in question, if I recall correctly, was larger, stronger, and uglier that MacYoung. This size differential made targeting all the more relevant – when you are bigger than your opponent, you can afford to wail a bit, and to soak up some generic hits; when you’re smaller though, you don’t want to take any hits…especially ones you don’t have to.

Let me delve just a bit more, with a story about Matt Thomas (founder of the Padded Assailant courses, father to Model Mugging and FAST Defesene). In the early days of his developing “a new approach to self defense”, Thomas wanted to find out what the most vulnerable targets on the human body were. Target that would work no matter what the size difference was. His methodology? Figuring that even the most feeble human being could generate a foot pound of force, he laid on the floor, held a 1 pound weight 1 foot from his body (incurring a foot pound) and dropped it onto different areas, judging the pain of impact. I’ll spare you the results of most of the test (like the ribs and legs), and get to the good stuff – dropping the weight onto his groin hurt. He was unable to release the weight onto his eye, the anticipation of the result kept his brain from releasing it.

Okay, so that’s a bit extreme, cutting the body down to two targets, but it did give a starting point. I can also tell you from some of my own more extreme training that the difference of ONE INCH can be the difference between a knockout and an angry BG.

You must practice accuracy to have it. It’s not something you can read about and they just “have”. Your instructor should, and ours do, tell you the target for each strike in your techniques – and I don’t mean “hit his head, then his chest”; I mean “hit him in the temple, then the bladder”. Physiology plays such a huge part in winning. Why do you think that NO professional fighting sport allows strikes to the back of the head, eyes, groin, throat, kicks to the knee, etc.? Because they work TOO WELL. They would reduce an athletic contest to a race to deliver a crippling or fatal blow. You need to know where you are supposed to be hitting, and very often with which weapon. In MacYoung’s tale above, a regular punch would have failed miserably, because it would not have penetrated to the nerves lying behind the bone.

No strike in Kenpo is delivered just to be hitting. They all are intended to either set up the next shot, ie create an opening, or to end the fight. All. No, really. All of them.

Okay, so now I’ve bored you to death with why, now how about I give some useful info on the how? That’s probably why you read this anyway…well, that and my scintillating wit. I’ll give you two very good ways to work accuracy, one that you can work in class, and one to work on your own time.

First, in class, with a body…uh, partner. This one is really easy, and I’m not sure why people skip it. Every time you do a technique, not some times, not mostly, but every time, be sure to touch the actual target of the strike, and focus on it in your mind. Okay, you can’t really touch people’s eyes, but get as close as you can without making your partner upset. For accuracy you don’t have to hit hard, you just have to be on target.

Second, at home. How far you can go with this one will depend alot on how understanding your spouse/ room mate is. Basically, what you want to do is get some paper and some string, and hang the paper from the string at different heights. Hang them all over if you can, in a place that you have to go through alot. The hall to the bathroom is usually good. Every time you walk through, strike at the paper – try to use different strikes, and to not break stride. When you get a good “pop” each time, make the paper smaller (I mean, how much of a challenge is 8.5″ x 11″?). Post its are really good for this. You can even draw little eyes or targets on them if you want.

If you have a heavy bag, you can use colored tape to make different striking areas on the bag to aim at.

One more story – when I was coming up, there was this big guy, we’ll call him Umpo. Umpo was a real pain to work out with, he was 6’3″ or so, probably 250#, and worked as a Corrections Officer in Baltimore City. He felt that everything he did in class, whether he was working with people his size, or housewives that could fit into one of his pant’s legs, should be done the same way he would do it at work. Umpo didn’t really care about his training partners (which is a good way to end up with none, which he did), he only cared about Umpo. As you know, I’m about average size, 5’10″ ish, back then 150#, but I like contact. So one day I find myself working out with Umpo, on Begging Hands, and we get into a dispute about the final strike. Umpo insists that it’s a double palm strike to the pectorals; I assert that it’s a strike to the floating ribs on either side. So, to settle it, I tell Umpo to try it on me his way, and I’ll do it on him my way, and we’ll see. So Umpo does his, and BLASTS your poor instructor back about 10-12 feet. I bounce back over to him, glint in my eye (nobody ever said we Irish were smart, just scrappy) and extend my hands to take my turn. Umpo no grab. In fact, something has convinced him that he doesn’t want to let me do it on him. Umpo then left! I can only surmise that Umpo gleaned his impending doom from my face. I’m pretty sure if he’d have let me, I’d have lacerated his liver at the least. Ah well.

Well, that’s about it for now. The next one is up to you: Path of Action, or Involuntary Body Response – let me know!

Mr J

Defense is important (just look at the Raven’s SuperBowl win), but alot of people give it second fiddle. Don’t believe me? Think about how many times you’ve seen a “karate guy” demonstrate his awesomeness by breaking something. Now think about how many times you’ve seen one demonstrate how well he can avoid being hit. Hrm. Me, I like defense…I prefer to be the one doing the hitting, as opposed to being the one getting hit.

Boxing has three important defensive skills that can seriously bolster karate skills (I use karate in the generic sense of “striking arts”, not any specific system, ‘kay?). Slipping, clinching, and counter punching. They are also pretty strict about the whole “don’t reach across your body to block/ parry” thing, which is good. I mean, it’s one thing to reach across yourself when you’re caught flatfooted, it’s another thing entirely to do so from a ready position. Why check your own weapons? duh.

Okay, so now let’s revisit each one a bit, and expand on them and how they can help. Assume a L2L stance for the examples.

Slipping

Karate guys call this moving out of the way, but proper Slipping is really much more. Slipping is used to move the target (typically the head) just out of the way. Notice, I did NOT say “way over there!”; just out of the way. To Slip a jab, you shift your weight (slightly) to the outside of the arm, allowing it to pass over your left shoulder. To Slip a cross, pivot to an almost forward bow, allowing it to pass over your right shoulder. A proper Slip will leave the breeze in your hair as the punch goes by. Why? Because the closer you are when you start to hit back, the better your position is. We’ve all seen the MMA guy who backpedals away from a punch in the ring…what happens to him next? He either gets tagged by the second shot (meh!) or has to stop, reset, and then counter. That’s, what, three moves just to hit back?

Slipping leaves you in the perfect spot to hit back, you are out of the way, and he is exposed. Slipping also allows you to hit back while you do it; no need for any of that silly taking turns stuff. Did you notice the openings when you practiced the jab and cross Slips above? Good.

Another neat thing is that when you Slip, you will be presenting hard, rounded surfaces to your opponent’s attacks. Ever notice that old castle towers were round? That’s so the catapult rocks and stuff would glance off. A solid hit would transfer loads of kinetic energy to the structure, ruining it; but a glancing shot only transfers some of the energy. Getting punched in the face sucks, I know, but getting punched in the flat side of your head, where you take all of the juice, is much worse. The idea is not necessarily to avoid being hit, but to make the hits not matter so much.

In my opinion, the best ever at slipping was Roy Jones Jr.

Clinching

Clinching is basically just grabbing the dude that’s hitting you. A defensive Clinch is good to practice because you can use it when you get rattled or overwhelmed. To execute a defensive Clinch, wrap your right arm around the back of his neck, and your left arm around his right. Pull him in close, head to your shoulder, arm past your hip, and put your head against his chest. The right arm wrap keeps him from unloading on you; the head wrap keeps him from getting away (and with a little down pull to it, keeps the evil knees away); and putting your head on his chest beats the uppercut. Stay here until you’ve recovered or the ref stops it.

The offensive Clinch, also known as the Thai Clinch, is a good way to keep the opponent in a defensive mode. Grab him by the back of his neck with both hands, put your forearms along his collarbones, and anchor your elbows. You can now pull him down into knee strikes, side to side to defeat his offense, and occasionally let go on one side to sneak a hook or elbow into his head. Best example: Silva v Franklin

Karate guys like to pretend that they will never be in a position where they need the Clinch; I like to pretend I’ll never need my seat belts. But does my car have them? Yes. If you get good at it and never need it, where’s the harm? If you should need it one day, and don’t have it…

Counter Punching

Counter Punching is the hardest, in my opinion, to learn. It can also be the most destructive to your opponent, and the least defensive in appearance. I list this as a defensive skill because if you have two Counter Punchers, you generally don’t have much of a fight. Counter Punching only works when your opponent is trying to hit you – thus leaving room for the Counter.

The basic premise is what it sounds like: you wait until he tries to hit you, then you hit him. The key though is that you are hitting him either on his preparation to hit you, or during his action. If he hits you, then you hit him, you’re really just trading, and that sucks. Sorry. Counter Punching requires either great speed, or excellent timing, or both. Just hitting the other guy doesn’t counter either. A good example would be your opponent starting a right cross, and you hitting him in the nose with a jab before he can rotate into it. Every time he tries to fire, you disrupt his attacks with yours. See why you need speed and timing?

If you are good at Slipping, you can use it AND Counter Punching together. Very frustrating.

Work on it. Practice. If you are unsure how to do any of this, seek competent instruction. Preferably at Charm City Karate, but anywhere good will do. Unless, of course, you like spending months re-inventing the wheel.

Till next time!

Mr J

When I was just a wee Kenpo laddie, I got to take a seminar or two with Frank Trejo (http://www.franktrejokarate.com). If you’ve never trained with Frank Trejo, you are missing out, and should do whatever it takes to train with the man. If you have trained with Mr Trejo, you know what a knowledgeable and entertaining Instructor he can be.

The first seminar was about Sticky Hands, and I’ll get into that more in another post.

The second seminar, I was somewhere around Green I think, and Mr Trejo started talking about boxing. Boxing? I thought. What does boxing have to do with Kenpo? Alot as it turns out. According to Mr Trejo, boxing formed much of the foundation of Kenpo. In fact, all of the Kenpo techniques can be broken down into boxing movements and combinations. And if you look at the Neutral Bow, you might even see a traditional boxing stance.

Frank Trejo’s boxing experience is exhaustive; his ability to not only teach it, but to relate it directly to Kenpo is second to none. Again, do not miss training with Frank Trejo!

Well, why do you want to turn your cool Kenpo techniques into mere boxing? Translating your Kenpo into boxing allows you to practice on the heavy bag, the double end bag (you do have access to those, right?), and use them in sparring. Boxing uses four strikes (jab, cross, uppercut, hook), all thrown with a fist. Not having to worry about proper hand position for the chop/ palm/ spear means you can focus on other things like proper footwork, power, and timing. Ever tried to hand spear a heavy bag? Don’t.

You also won’t get many volunteers to let you throw Snapping Twig on them full tilt. Dislocated elbows tend to dampen peoples philanthropic spirit.

Ah, but you can throw it full tilt on your heavy bag. There is a reason that boxers and MMA guys have knockout power that most pure-karate types don’t – the heavy bag. True, we practice ALOT on bags, pads, and shields, but many karate schools practice in the air, developing “technique”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for technique, but if you watch, say, Chuck Liddell KO somebody, his punching technique is anything but perfect. It is, however, incredibly powerful.

Working your Kenpo (self defense) techniques on a heavy bag allows you to build power, speed, and timing that you need for proper execution. I’ll break down two techniques here for you to get started with, and you can figure out the others on your own (or ask, that works too…). Let’s go with Snapping Twigs (since I mentioned it earlier) and Five Swords (since everybody loves that one anyway).

Snapping Twig Boxing

Okay, this is a cool technique that you can develop alot of speed with in the air, but the timing and power tend to leave a little to be desired. Dislocating someones elbow, while far from impossible, doesn’t happen magically when you slap at it. You need to have body position, torque, all the goodies. As I mentioned before, and Frank Trejo made quite clear in the seminar, some modifications are neccesary to make the transition, so bear with me.

First, don’t think of this as a defensive technique, think of it as triggered offense (an Idea I unabashedly stole from Dr. Bob Sprando, that will be addressed further in a later post). This means you go first, so we’ll swap a trap and break for a lead hand hook (I prefer a jab, but the mechanics are better from a hook). For the best development, you should start this from an “Idiot Stance”. For those of you that aren’t students at Charm City Karate, the idiot stance is the one most people begin a SD technique from – standing with feet together, hands down, balance shot. We call it an idiot stance because if you are that close to getting assaulated, you should have your blanking hands up, and your feet set. But you train from the stance so that IF you get caught off guard, you can still do something other than catch punches with your head. The bonus to starting from this stance for this training is that you will get a better feel for the torque generation on the initial move. Practice this for a bit, half power, until it feels good. Never work a heavy bag full power. Don’t.

Next, lets trade a crane and chop for a left cross (did I mention that you would be in a southpaw stance?), bringing your right up to protect your head. Good, now lets work that two hit combo on the bag until it feels solid.

Finally, let’s trade a hammerfist and an elbow for two lead hand hooks. I would alter the height of these (body/ head), but you can stay with the original intent and throw head/ head. Step in with the second hook, just like you would with the elbow.

Five Swords Boxing

Again, triggered offense; again southpaw stance (Right Neutral Bow to youse).

First, trade in your block and chop for a front hand lead (step with it). Really work the hard jab with the step until you feel solid and make the bag bounce a bit when you hit it (bag bounce is a reliable indicator of proper power and execution – bag swing means you’re pushing instead of hitting). Seriously, don’t fast forward this move. You want it solid.

Second, let’s trade that heel palm for a cross ( you could leave it as a palm, but stay focused here). Don’t try to use a full Forward Bow, pivot and weight change are what it’s all about, and you want enough of that to generate power – locking your knee in a stance doesn’t do anything positive. The bag should jump a second time here.

Third, we’ll trade a chop (left hand) for a cross…what? No, I didn’t skip the uppercut. As one of the four boxing strikes, it stays the way it is. Work on your stance and be stable when you hit. If an 80# bag is pushing you around, how are you going to beat up a 200# meth head? LOL. Okay, on to that cross, be sure to use your footwork and change angles, it’s important to not neglect your feet when you’re translating techniques. Bag work will help solidify your stances and footwork, if you let it.

Last, trade the final chop (right hand) for a hook. Stick with the foot work and good mechanics of your hook. If you don’t know, ask your instructor. If he (or she) doesn’t know…well, you must be at a different school.

Play with it, and let me know what you think.

Mr J

Everybody wants to be fast, and the top two questions I get are always about developing speed and power. Rarely does a student want to get cleaner, or more precise (though these do happen). Speed and Power, it seems, are the Holy Grail of martial arts training. Not that it’s unwarranted – speed and power are immediate (one hopes), tangible gains that have a visceral impact on the ability to defend oneself and increase confidence.

In fact, much of Kenpo is based on the value of speed. Speed (Acceleration) is half the formula for Force (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080427162718AAQ6oBm). And, if I remember my physics correctly, if you double the acceleration you quadruple the Force. So, it’s an important part of Force.

The old mantra you should try to remember is “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. When you practice something properly, you get better, and as you get better, you get faster; remember when you learned to tie your shoes? It probably took you several minutes of trying…maybe you even recited that rhyme (I never remembered it, so it was no help to me). But you kept doing it, everyday. Maybe more than once a day. And you got – FASTER!  Not because you were trying to be fast, but because you got good at it, and then you relaxed about it. Alot of speed will be eaten up by muscle tension when you try to go fast. If you don’t believe me, time yourself tieing your shoes (or something else you do alot), then time yourself when everyone is waiting and you’re in a hurry; the stress will tighten you up and slow you down. So you need to forget about speed for a bit while you build it up, then when you start to feel faster, you’ll relax (because you feel faster), and you’ll get faster still.

Okay, so how does this help your Kenpo? Here’s how. Pick something you want to practice – a technique, a piece of a form, a sparring combination, whatever. Got it? Good, here we go (for the sake of being able to play along, I’ll do Five Swords – is that what you picked?). We’re going to practice making this smooooooooooth, so you don’t have any hard start and stops, no sharp turns, no jerky motions. The trick is to think about the next move while you’re doing the current one.

Ex.: (remember, I’m doing Five Swords) Step in and block with the right hand – do the step and block slowly and smoothly, try half speed to start, and BEFORE the block lands, start thinking about the right hand chop. If you’re doing it right, you probably just transitioned into the chop without finishing the block. This is good, we’re working on smooth, not precise, so skipping some stuff and being a little sloppy is ok. If you’re one of our many students that started off in a traditional style, this will be very hard for you to accept, but it is okay. Trust me.

Now, before that chop lands, start thinking about the heel palm – good! I see your left hand started to move before your right stopped! You’re getting it! But don’t lock in that forward bow. That’s a Bozo Nono. You don’t need to camp out in a stance that leaves your balance directionalized and your center line exposed any more than you need to take a monster truck into a parking garage (is that too obscure an analogy?). No, in fact you will…

Be thinking of the uppercut and smoooooothly moving into it before you have any chance of ruining that nice light rack…uh, locking in that Forward Bow. Then, off into the first chop (left), and sliding, not pivoting, into the final chop. If you made ANY cool smacking sounds or breathed hard anywhere in this, you screwed up. It’s okay, nobody saw you, so try it again without all the cool stuff. Keep on working it, in fact, if you did one technique (or whatever you were working on) for the entire five minutes that you practice today, you should start to see some improvement.

Why is smooth fast? Same reason the beltway is (generally) faster than driving through the city. You don’t have to stop and start and stop. All that stop start stuff takes alot of energy…in fact, I think that’s physics too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion)! So, by keeping constantly in motion, rounding off your corners, and staying smooth, you will improve your overall speed.

Practice diligently, and you will be as fast as Mr James or even Joe Palanzo himself!

Mr J

Another solid reason to practice improvising is the mental repetitions it gives you, and the shortening of the Decision Tree.

Whenever you are presented with a choice, your brain embarks on a decision tree – kind of like those funky old flow charts they made you draw up in school. Sometimes these Trees can be quite long, involving LOTS of factors and branches. If it is something you have encountered before, the tree shortens. If it’s something you handled successfully (you and your brain won’t neccessarily agree on “success”), it gets even shorter. If it’s something you’ve done enough times, the Tree can seem to be non-existent (like which hand to hold the fork in). It’s still there, but your brain skips to the end – it knows which branches to take. Think about how long it takes you to drive to somewhere new, especially without good directions; now compare that to how long that same trip takes when you have been doing it for a year or so.

This is part of the reason I HATE when people do something new twice and say “I got it”. No, you don’t. It’s sitting there in your fore brain, locked in short-term memory, or RAM, or whatever you want to call it, just waiting to be deleted or saved to disk. You’ve only been down the Tree twice – how are you going to remember which branches to take? When no one is around to help? Under adrenal stress? You gotta practice. I heard somewhere once, and this struck me as one of the Truths “An amateur practices until he’s got it right. A professional practices until he can’t do it wrong.”

“But Sifu” I hear you say “what does all that have to do with improvising?”. Ah. I applaud your focus grasshopper. It’s like this – if the choice you are presented with is new, there isn’t even really a Tree for it. Your brain will hunt around to find a similar choice in the past, then try to adapt that Tree to the new choice. Sometimes this works fine (like which hand to hold the spoon in); sometimes it’s a disaster (like which hand to hold the TNT with). If there is nothing that your brain thinks is close enough, there will be a pause while it builds a new Tree.

Where do you want to be when your brain stops all activity to build a new Tree – in the safe, warm studio, or on a dark street corner with a crowbar on a tanget course with your head?

Improvisation spawns a forest of Trees. Every time you do it, there are new choices, from the type of attack, to the way you are standing, to how the bad guy reacts. Every rep helps your brain to at least have a starter Tree, much like visualizing helps pro atheletes perform. Then when (god forbid) you are attacked, your brain says “aha! I’ve done this before” instead of “uhhh…<crunch!>”.

Try small steps at first, improvise against static attacks like grabs, then move on to pushes, then kicks and punches, then weapons. Start with a small number of limited moves (like 3), then move up to more slowly. A good initial reaction is way more valuable than a whole lot of mediocre ones. If you want more, on this topic, let me know. Other wise, it’s on to something else.

You don’t have to be good to start, but you have to start to be good.

Mr J

Improvising is an integral part of Kenpo training, and is one of the things that sets it apart from other martial arts. According to Joe Palanzo, Ed Parker’s feeling was that you had to have skill in several different aspects of Kenpo – Techniques, Forms, Sparring, and Improvising. Each one worked a different part of the whole, much like MMA fighters do when they run/ skip rope, work the heavy bag, grapple, and spar. Each one teaches us an important piece of the puzzle.

So what does Improvising give us? It gives us the ability to think freely and fluidly in the nano-seconds between events in a real fight. Expecting a technique to work exactly as it is learned in class is alot like expecting to drive to work with no traffic, and only green lights…could it happen? Sure. Would you bet on it? No way. If you hit traffic on the way to work, though, you don’t stop the car, drive back home and try again – you turn down a different street, or get off at a different exit, and continue on to work.

Simply put, improvising is making something up as you go along. The tv show ‘Whose line is it anyway?’ is a great example of improvisation. (it’s a funny show – watch it!).

Improvising teaches us to do the same thing (make stuff up) when things change during a technique instead of stopping, saying “lemme try that again” and starting over. For example, let’s say you wanted to practice Five Swords (everyone’s favorite). Things are going fine, until you get to the part where you are supposed to deliver a left chop – your partner’s hand is up by his head. You could just throw the chop (a waste of a perfectly good chop) and try to finish OR you could use your left hand to grab his left, and go into a reverse “Crossing Talon” style arm-bar. You could also bring your right hand up inside his left arm, and apply “Shielding Hammer”. Or…you get the idea. But it has to happen THEN, not on the ride home running through it in your head “oh! I should have…”.

How do you get to this mystical level? Practice. Here are two easy ways, both work better with multiple partners:

1. Have each partner take a turn throwing a right punch at you. Do something, anything, as long as it’s Kenpo and not a technique (pieces of techniques are okay). Eventually it will get easy, and combinations will flow.
2. Pick a technique, and do it over and over again on your partners, until something goes different. Eventually your brain will go on autopilot and start doing cool things.

With either of these methods, you should gradually increase the speed of the attacks, and responses, as you go.

Play with this and let me know what you think!

Mr James

PS There is a video (I got mine from Mr Palanzo) of Ed Parker doing a technique on a talk show in Chile that required some improvising.