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The American Kenpo System
American Kenpo is a system of learning for fighting upright against a person or group without the usage of man made weapons. The system does include information concerning stick & club attacks, knife attacks and even some gun attacks but this information is included only to round out the students education with regard to situations they might find themselves in during a fight. The primary focus of American Kenpo remains learning how to fight “empty-handed”, that is, without any weapons other then those weapons that can be formed by the hands, feet and head of the human body.
The system was not and is not ever to be taught for ground fighting purposes. To teach American Kenpo as a ground fighting system is to alter the system as it was designed and set forth by the founder of the system; Edmund K. Parker. There are several techniques within the system that show the student how to defend from the ground if the student should get knocked down to it. But instructors of American Kenpo should see for themselves and understand that all these techniques show the kenpoist getting up off the ground as quickly as they can. Yes we are shown a little about defending from the ground and even how to counter-attack quickly once we are back on our feet, but do not confuse this defending knowledge as indicative that we are to deliberately fight from the ground. We do not fight from the ground.
As with any system, the information in the system must be clearly understood to be of any use to the end user. What follows is my explanation of the system as taught to me by Senior Master of the Art (SMA) Richard Planas and with continual review and updates coming from Professor Joseph P. Doyle. Each of these two men have a very complete and thorough understanding of American Kenpo. Each have added to my knowledge of American Kenpo and each have done their best to teach the system to me as they came to know it from Mr. Parker.
In addition, being intelligent men, both men have added to the basic Parker course material information from their own thoughts as well. How can they not? The ideas and logic that they have discovered on their own journey to American Kenpo professionalism has made them the great instructors that they are and so it is logical that they would have included and shared with me as with others their own personal thoughts during our training seminars and during our regularly scheduled classes. So it should come as no surprise to the reader that I too am going to add information in this essay that I feel will help you, the reader on your way to your own level of American Kenpo professionalism.
To be clear. American Kenpo was created by and is owned by Senior Grand Master of the Art (SGMA) Edmund K. Parker who is deceased as of December 1990. The system is his system. No attempt is being made to convert his system into another way. I am not changing anything, all I am doing is adding my own insights to American Kenpo system just as many men have done before me. When I say I am going to add my own information to this essay I want you to understand that I will to the best of my ability stay within the framework and logic set forth by our founding fathers. (of which SMA Planas was one of them) Everything I am about to report to you flows in and through the system as it was designed by SGMA Parker. My own contributions will simply fill in information that I have been taught or have discovered for myself and that I feel is in compliance to Mr. Parker’s way and this essay.
It is right for you to protect Mr. Parker’s legacy. If I get too far off the Parker way you should feel free to contact me and tell me where I have made a mistake in judgment. It is not my intention to alter Mr. Parker’s way and I hope you the reader will be able to see this for yourself upon the conclusion of this piece of work. I produced this essay in the hopes of furthering Mr. Parker’s work. To help keep American Kenpo alive for future generation to see and to use. It is not my intention to bring attention to myself.
Sincerely,
Larry Splain
Purpose of the Art of American Kenpo
To remain standing upright while fighting one or more people. To fight in this situation the kenpoist must remain mobile, cannot take too much time with any one individual in the group, and must end each individual battle with each individual opponent quickly. If the kenpoist gets knocked down to the ground he is to get up quickly and resume fighting upright.
Unlike in the movies or in television shows real gangs do not wait for one individual gang member to be defeated before other gang members enters into the fight. In real hand to hand combat many people can enter into the fight at the same time and they will gang up on a lone defender. This then, is the fighting situation Senior Grand Master of the Art (SGMA) Edmund K. Parker had in mind as he designed his system of fighting.
To succeed in the before mentioned scenario, the kenpoist must;
1. Keep his head up and never look down or away from his attacker, facing his work at all times. This first requirement means no looking down just using the eyes or by tilting of the complete head downward, no closing of the eyes, and no turning the head away from an incoming punch is acceptable. You must see your opponents action in order to defeat it.
Think of your head as being like a ships gyro. No matter what your body is doing try to keep the head vertical and level to the horizon.
2. Try to see everything. Try not to look directly at each individual attack put forth by your opponent (Black-dot focus) nor try not to look at the target on the opponent that you wish to strike, but rather always try to take in the whole of what is going on (White-dot focus). See things in a broad sort of way, take everything in - see everything - but look directly at nothing.
Often when people are angry, alarmed, or scared fighters they have an adrenalin dump. This chemical dump into our body is part of the body’s natural fight or flight reflex for survival. Adrenaline causes uneven and shallow breathing, an irregular heart beat and narrows the pupils of the eyes to pin point vision. We must train ourselves to minimize the Adrenaline dump and if we cannot stop it we must learn to overcome its effects through proper training. Thus you learn to see everything that is going on in battle even as the adrenaline is trying to focus your brain and eyes onto the greatest danger it sees.
3. Do not jump about unnecessarily. If it is necessary to jump, do so trying to keep the head still in the process. Fluid in the inner ear is natures way of keeping our balance. Too much shaking of the head or even tilting it side to side or up and down can cause a loss of balance and an inability to maneuver properly when the time is right to do so. Spinning about is another way to lose ones balance, keep spinning to a minimum as well. Look at your American Kenpo Foot Maneuvers and see which maneuvers you should use to allow for constant turning around the room without the need to spin. Think; “Cross-over, Step-through and Cover-out” as an example of this type of maneuvering.
4. Learn to maneuver around the fighting situation without tripping up over your own feet or by putting your own body parts in your own way. Keep the feet low to the ground, heels just barely touching the ground as we glide about the room on the “flats’ of our feet. Stay off the heels as moving about on the heels of the feet will send unwanted jarring to the human skeleton and will shake the fluids of the inner ear. See point 3 above.
The ability to set the heel down at the precise moment of executing a strike increases the power of the strike. This is why we keep our heels just barely touching the ground. It is much faster to set the heels down when the heels are closer to the floor. This methodology also makes the timing needed to “...establishing your base...” easier to achieve.
Look at Long Form 1. In this form we are exercised on the proper way of timing our heel plant with the strike and then we are shown how to maneuver out of the heel plant as we move on to our next opponent.
Setting the heel down at the right time is critical to establishing a good “base”. Setting both heels momentarily solidly down onto the ground self corrects the skeletal alignment of the kenpoist as well as gives the kenpoist maximum resistance to an incoming attack by the opponent. Setting the heels is also intimately involved with the proper execution of the “Base-pivot” foot maneuver required for all torque based power techniques in American Kenpo. As such, setting the heels down at precisely the right time and keeping the heels down just long enough to allow for the skeletal alignments to take place is exactly what the basic called “timing” is all about. Mr. Planas says that “Timing is the most difficult “Basic” to learn in American Kenpo.”
To learn how to maneuver about the battlefield properly the kenpoist must understand what it means to have a neutral stance as well as the need to not over-extend ones reach or abilities. A neutral stance means that the weight of the kenpoist is in balance and is usually - but not always - divided almost equally between both feet. If held this way the kenpoist can move easily forward, backward or side to side. Should the kenpoist over-extend himself by over-reaching to the opponent then the weight of the kenpoist will be over-burdened on one leg or the other. Should this happen at a bad moment in the fight the kenpoist will not be able to evade his opponent and may fail to win.
5. Never allow an attacker to strike, pull or push, or grab the kenpoist and force him into a compromised situation. Whenever a grabbing contacted is made either by the kenpoist onto the opponent or the opponent onto the kenpoist use the legs and throw as much power into the situation as you can manage. Go all out and push or pull violently against the opponent as you execute your technique and foot maneuvers.
Remember to reverse motion and go into something new if your first response does not work as intended. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If you start to execute a defense and it does not work do not give in to temptation and try to do it again. Reverse motion and go violently into something else. You should practice this explosive process in your studio. Learn to execute what I call the reverse technique of what you first attempted to do which failed...
Remember the unwritten rule of American Kenpo; you are to establish your base as you destabilize or disrupt your opponents base.
Do not let your opponent turn your shoulders. This could happen when the kenpoist over-turned or over-rotated his shoulder during the execution of a strike against the opponent. Using Mace of Aggression as an example, we see that if the kenpoist drops too low and twist his body with his initial strike, or if he bends over at the waistline during his strike, he risk exposing or offering his right shoulder to his opponent. The attacker could take his left hand and hit the kenpoist right shoulder turning the kenpoist into a rear military choke using his right arm to apply the actual choke. This would happen should the kenpoist make the mistake of lowering and tilting his body during the execution with his mace against the head with forearm strike and if the opponent was to release his hold on the lapels with a step reverse just as the kenpoist came in.
Once the kenpoist allows the opponent to control his shoulders the kenpoist may no longer be in control of the fight. In the above Mace of Aggression example offered it is shown that the kenpoist must remain upright with his head held up and his back kept erect. Continually facing his opponent squarely in order to remain under his own control. Stopping the downward strike against the opponent’s radial nerves of the arms without allowing the shoulders to dip or twist out of position. Failure to execute American Kenpo correctly will force the kenpoist into some other technique, if the opponent does execute a rear military choke in this new situation I would offer “Escape from Death” to be executed to continue the fight or the kenpoist may die with his personal error in judgment.
The trained kenpoist must guard against unintended exposure to the opponent’s skills by over rotating, bending over at the waistline, or dropping too low unnecessarily. In the example given above the kenpoist must constantly be on the lookout for accidental exposure of the shoulders during our strikes. Other techniques can show the overexposure of our body or body parts in other situations. Proper instruction will revealed these potential weaknesses during our American Kenpo training.
Deflecting Hammer is another technique where this shoulder exposure can easily be shown should the kenpoist decide to throw a right punch along with a right kick. Of course this education can only be understood if the kenpoist thinks there is a good chance that he would throw a right kick with a punch during his sparring sessions or as a typical defensive maneuver. If he thinks he would never throw a kick with a punch then he will not see the potential for being counter-grabbed and defeated.
So often it is the case that the kenpoist spends too much time analyzing the defensive side of our techniques without learning from the offensive side of those same techniques. The examples given above should teach you to learn from both sides of the techniques. On the defensive side of Deflecting Hammer the kenpoist again can over expose his shoulder if he does his inward horizontal elbow strike to the opponent face and over rotates the elbow to point the tip of the elbow at the opponent. In this situation it is not difficult for the opponent to reach out and grab and turn the elbow to get to the kenpoist's backside.
Whenever the opponent makes actual grab or contact with the kenpoist, notice that Mr. Parker wanted us to engage the power of our legs to escape or out maneuver our opponent. We are to move forcefully (even violently) back or forward or side to side to extend our opponents arm for a strike or to knock the opponent out of his base. At no time are we to relax and to become compliant. We must regain control quickly or fail in our challenge to win the fight. Although the movement is violent we are moving the opponent violently, we stay in complete control.
Although we are taught that a grab is somewhat less dangerous then a punch when cataloging the “Types of Natural Attacks” (Infinite Insights into Kenpo book 5 page 67.) Grabs can easily lead to Hugs & Holds and Specialized moves such as Chokes which are very serious and so we must not treat a grab as simply a “dead hand” and something we are to not worry about. We must use our legs to overpower the grab immediately or face certain doom.
6. Keep the back, including the neck, erect and the hips tucked in. When one looks at the bone structure and analyzes the way in which work is done by the body using our bones as levers and our muscles for power one should see that the system works best if the back is kept erect and the hips tucked under us.
Strong abdominal muscles will keep the hips tucked under us. Again look at the human skeleton and you will see the hip bones should be in line with the shoulders and not bulge out rearward. The back should be flat from the back of our head to the bottom of our butt. Any rounding of the back is an indication that the hips are out of alignment. Power and control by the kenpoist will suffer. Conscious pulling of the abdominal muscles inward will tilt the hips into proper alignment. (It actually feels good to the lower back when this tilt is accomplished.) But keeping the hips in this position while fighting is difficult and does require practice by the kenpoist to maintain the proper bone alignment during stance changes. Proper bone alignment will be best accomplished by an overall weight training or resistance training workouts. Strong abdominal workouts will keep the hips in proper alignment during battle.
Sometimes the kenpoist must battle to keep the back erect and the hips tucked in. If one looks at techniques called The Pincher and Grip of Death one should see where the opponent is attempting to bend the kenpoist over with his head lock. Our techniques teach us how to handle the situation but what is often left out of the training is the need for the kenpoist to fight to remain upright while executing the described material. To properly execute the material the kenpoist must use a Closed Kneel to crack into the back of the opponents knee as he fights to keep his own hips tucked in and as he struggles to keep his back erect. Looking closely at these situations the kenpoist should see where staying erect actually helps to defeat the opponents headlock. The opponent’s grip will loosen considerably. However if the kenpoist allows his back to round out during the attack the headlock is increased. Think of this when practicing your materials. The Closed Kneel also keeps the kenpoist from “straddling the paddle” if you know what I mean.
7. Keep arms bent and elbows pointed downward to protect the ribs from strikes and to lessen the opportunities your opponent might have to strike or manipulate you.
Careful examination of the arms shows the kenpoist that an straightened or extended arm as would be used to straight punch or strike also provides an entry point for the opponent to track back or guideline back down that same arm with a counter-strike of their own. A bent arm acts as a block to this entry. Learning to strike an opponent with a bent arm stops this “position recognition” situation from being used against the kenpoist.
To strike the opponent using a bent arm means the kenpoist must be “...close enough to the opponent to be able to kiss him...” as SMA Planas has often said.
Please note that many of the counter attacks used by kenpoist force the opponent’s arm straight so that we can track our own strikes back down the opponent’s arm. Most often this is accomplished using the power of our legs in grab situations; refer back to point 5 above, whether we are dong the grabbing or if the opponent is doing the grabbing once a grab is commenced the legs are put into play...
Further examination of the techniques in the American Kenpo system shows the student that the only time we are taught to use a fully straightened arm is when the opponent is “checked off” so completely that he cannot use the straight arm to track back to us.
Remember the “Inside Rule and the Outside Rule” and consider how these general rules are used to check off our opponent in our techniques so we can use a straightened arm to strike our opponent..
A fully straightened arm can provide great power to our strikes. Consider how straight a professional pitcher’s arm is when throwing a fast ball from the mound. There are times in American Kenpo when the student must use maximum power against the opponent to end the fight. The leverage and reach of a straight arm is sometimes that exact tool you must use to finish off your opponent. Simply do not use a straight arm if there is a chance the opponent can track back along its length to our body or use our straightened arm to manipulate us into some kind of counter-strike, break, hug or hold.
A downwardly bent arm generally means the hand position will be nearly vertical and the wrist is therefore in danger of being damaged when “punching” below the shoulders. Rotation of the arm as we move into a horizontal punch is necessary when striking below the shoulder line of the opponent to lessen the chance that we might injure ourselves. The rotation swings the elbow from downward to the horizon and allows the wrist to be properly aligned with the forearm when contact is made using the first two knuckles of our punching hand. Although it is possible for the kenpoist to throw a horizontal punch with the elbow pointing downward it is preferred that the kenpoist rotate the arm during the execution of the strike for proper alignment..
The rotation of the arm while throwing a punch also makes it difficult for the opponent to counter-grab and/or trap the kenpoist arm. The rotation in effect makes the arm slippery and hard to target or to get a hold of to manipulate.
8. Do not tell your opponent your intentions before you execute your material. We call this “telegraphing”. See points 1 and 2 above. Simply put; if you let your opponent see what you are going to do a moment before you do it... The opponent will take steps to avoid your defense and may even mount a successful counter to your counter.
More to come. November 18th 2010
Please remember to credit KenpoCoach.com whenever you share the above information with anyone. All copies, whether kept on your computer or handed out as paper copies must include my business name as being where the information came from. Do not cut and paste even portions of my work without giving the people you share with my business name and website address. Do not give your students the idea that you were the originator of this work. This is simply not fair to me, nor is it honest. Thank you. Larry Splain
740-390-0465
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