Animal Techniques Part 3

 The Crane represents grace, balance and breathing. The Crane prefers to work at a distance from the opponent and at angle off-line from his attacks. This can involve using long range striking to keep an attacker away, short range strikes like knees and elbows to drive an attacker back, or creating space while grappling in order to set up a reversal or counter attack. Effective use of Crane requires the development of balance.  With a calm and quiet nature, its movements are soft, relaxed and circular. However, they are explosive and can be used in close or at a distance. The Crane has excellent balance and is very good at disturbing the balance of others. The Crane is very aware and evasive. Many underestimate the Crane's power. It doesn't have much body weight, but it utilizes it very well and it positions itself effectively. The Crane has excellent stances, but its understanding of being in the proper position at the proper time is probably its most valuable resource.

Animal Techniques Part 2

Leopard this time:

The Leopard represents speed and agility. The Leopard is more precise than the tiger. Leopard strategy uses speed and angulation to confuse and overwhelm an opponent. Leopard strategy uses rapid fire striking combinations to attack multiple targets from every conceivable angle. The result is an opponent who doesn’t know where to defend and is always open to attack. Training in Leopard strategy involves developing speed and agility.   The Leopard's power is primarily produced from a loose, relaxed, whip-like action generated by speed and balance as well as limber waist and hips movements. The Leopard employs many crushing techniques and a lot of Internal strikes with the hands. It gets in close to do its damage. From The Leopard, we learn speed and agility in our techniques. The Leopard is extremely fast and angular. It is noted for its sudden changes of movement and varied angles of attack.

What is Self-Defense: Kenpo Jiu-Jitsu by James Mitose

This classic is back in print. My copy was printed in the early 1980s. The original was printed back in 1953. Most of the Keno/Kempo taught in the United States traces directly back to James Mitose, and the most famous of his students, William Chow.

Animal Techniques

The branch of Shaolin Kempo I study has a lot of "kempo" techniques.  These are similar to the combinations, but are not numbered, and are not rank required techniques.

Personally, I like teaching kempos.  Plenty of interesting techniques that isn't in the forms and combinations.  I throw a lot of them at my students, with the goal of having them remember the ones that work well them.

Some are sorted by the traditional five Shaolin animals.  That method helps in remembering them as well.  If you have two of each animal, you have ten kempos right off the bat.

When the students hit the brown/black levels, I want them to start identifying the animal techniques by principle, not just because their teacher told them so. So I put together short description of the principles of each of the five animals.  Here is the description of tiger techniques.  I'm starting with Tiger, because I like Tiger techniques.

 Tiger is an offensive strategy that deals with using committed force and structural alignment to attack with maximum power. The Tiger represents courage, tenacity and power.  By learning to use their whole body as a single unit, students exposed to Tiger are able to generate the most power possible. The Tiger relies on frontal assault, aggression, and power. Ripping and tearing as it moves always pressing. The Tiger is very powerful, direct and aggressive. The Tiger commits its entire mind and body into each move. There is no hesitation in the Tigers mind.  Tiger strategy is very effective when an opponent is trying to maintain distance using Crane.

Observations on 3 Combination

I was watching YouTube videos on 3 Combination today.

There are lot of them.  Many of them want to 'fix' problems with combination.

IMO, those problems come from not executing 3 Combination correctly.

For example, the second strike is not a back fist.  It's a back two knuckle punch.  The person in the video made a good point about hurting the bones in the back of your hand if you missed the target with a back fist.  The replacement strike he offered in the place of the back fist was a hammer strike, which is the same as the back fist in gross motor skills. I still prefer the back two knuckle punch, which is a linear strike, as opposed the circular strike of the back fist or hammer.

There are also a lot of good videos that show some interesting variations of 3 combination.  I'll post links to those later.

Things I want work on in my next class

Two Man Fist Set

Wrist and other joint locks

Falling

Take down techniques 

The order of the last two is important. 

New Class

My teaching schedule has changed.

I'm now running the Adult Black Belt Classes.

I've done Black Belt only classes before and they are fun.  Especially when you have Sandan & Yondan's in the class.  

You can go deeper into concepts and principles, which is way cool.

Spend most of last class digging into Swift Tigers with the upper ranks.  

The lower ranks were analyzing each other doing Six Kata.  A good skill for them to develop.

Eight hands of the Leopard

One of the other black belts at the school (Tom) found this technique.

I like it.  Interested in your opinions.



I like that the opening block is counted in the "eight hands."  That fits with my "blocking is striking, striking is blocking" mantra.

Nothing like a nice piece of hickory...

One of the black belts at our studio found a place that makes really wooden Japanese weapons from Appalachian Hickory. It's Kingfisher Woodworks.

In addition to the really nice and appropriately priced finished weapons, they occasionally sell 1 inch diameter staffs, about 56" in length.  These staffs are not up to their high standards, so they are selling those for only $8.

The fact that these staffs are 56" long has an interesting side benefit.  Cut them in half and you have two 28" long sticks.  The standard lengths for Escrima sticks is 26" to 28".  So for $8, plus shipping, you can have some really nice solid hickory Escrima sticks.  A nice step up from rattan.

Tom, the instrutor who found them, ordered a staff for each of the other instructors at the school.  I've got mine and will be cutting it and sanding the two resulting sticks smooth.

I'll post pictures of the process.

Here is picture #1.  A 56" length of Hickory.

Picture #2.  Cut it into two 28" sticks.  One is 3-5 mm longer than the other, but I'm not sure I want to bother evening them out.  They got a light sanding with 300 grit sandpaper first and then 800.  After I took this picture, they got a light coating of lemon seed oil.

I'll give them another dose of lemon seed oil after I buy some more.

Joe Lewis, Kempo Black Belt

I have a copy of Circle of Iron on Blu-Ray, and IMHO, the best feature is a thirty minute interview with Joe Lewis.  While stationed in Okinawa during his stint in the US Marines, Joe Lewis earned three  Black Belts in three different systems, including Okinawan Kempo.

He also had some interesting statements on why he got called in to reshoot most of the fight scenes after the principle photography was shot.

I like the movie, but the Joe Lewis interview really is the best part of the Blu-Ray release.

Twin Tigers Academy

Earlier in the year, I was out on the left coast and stopped by the Shaolin Kempo school my nephew studies at.  It's the Twin Tigers Academy of Self Defense in Brentwood, CA.

I had a good chat with the head instructor.  He is an old Shaolin Kempo guy who studied with Charles Materra, so our lineage is really similar.

If you are out that way, and are looking for a good Kempo school, stop by Twin Tigers!

Good interviews for Kempo people

I've been listening some of the Martial Arts Lineage Project podcasts and there are two with Kempo instructors.

The first was with Senior Grandmaster George Pesare, the man who brought Kempo to the East Coast.  Grandmaster Pesare was Nick Cerio's Kempo instructor and the first person to promote Cerio to Black Belt. A lot of good "no shit, I was there" history in this interview.

The second was with Shihan John James. Shihan James was a personal student of the late Grandmaster Nick Cerio and was one of the people selected by Cerio to be on the Board of Directors of Cerio's Kenpo after Cerio's death in 1998.  I exchanged several emails with Shihan James around that time.  He was always polite and very much a gentleman of the old school.  That came across in this interview.

I recommend listening to them both.

MetroWest Martial Arts & Wellness Reopening!

MetroWest Martial Arts and Wellness has been closed down for several months as it moves to a much better location.

That move is almost complete! There was a delay while the local building inspectors did their work, but construction is now underway and the school will be reopening soon!

The new location is 74 Otis Street, Westborough, MA 01581.

I, for one, am looking forward to getting back to teaching and studying with the other instructors at MetroWest Martial Arts.

For more details, check out the MetroWest Martial Arts Facebook page.

Really old school Kempo

I picked up a copy of Dr. Bruce Clayton's book, Shotokan's Secret: Expanded Edition. This books dives into the roots of Japanese Karate, Okinawan Karate. This "history of Shotokan" book doesn't even mention Gichin Funakoshi until page 140!

However, this is a Kempo blog, not a Shotokan blog, so bringing things back to the topic at hand, is the short passage on Okinawan Kempo on page 136.

"For the record, we also see a fourth kind of karate in Japan and Okinawa, usually labeled kempo. "Kenpo" is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese "chuan fa' kanji. Kenpo is originally kung fu in a Japanese uniform, but in recent years it has mixed in liberal amounts of other martial arts."

This quote was in a section on the three main, distinct schools of Okinawan Karate (Naha-te, Shuri-te and the arts based on ChotokuKyan).

Personally, I like Dr. Clayton's description of Kempo, even though he gives in a fairly dismissive and offhand matter. It does actually describe the early history of Kempo in the United States, and in particular, the martial arts melting pot of Hawaii in the 1950s and 1960s.

Traditional martial arts weapons

I was giving the topic of traditional martial arts weapons some pondering, and I decided that a traditional Kempo weapon would be the machete. Your basic, traditional sugar cane cutting tool.

Shaolin Kempo technique archive

I'm remiss in plugging a very good site that has taken the great effort of collecting and publishing the techniques of Shaolin Kempo. It's the Kempo Info site.

It really is a great resource, but personally I can't watch some of the videos of the Black Belt forms. IMHO, some of the forms are being performed as hard style karate forms, instead of more flowing Kung Fu forms. They just look wrong to me.

Customizing Kempo

One of the basic principles of teaching Kempo is that Kempo changes to fit the student.

This doesn't mean you don't have to learn the basics. It means that as an instructor, you should modify techniques you teach to fit the student.

A petite female who weighs 110 pounds soaking wet is going to have a different fighting style than a 200 pound man a foot or more taller.

There are differences beyond the obvious size and weight difference. They have a very different center of balance. The man will generally have much more upper body strength. Then there is overall social conditioning that the different genders gets.

You want to successfully teach women and young girls in your school, you will need to understand these differences and be able to adjust your teaching style for each different kind of student you have.

Sixth Law of Kempo

Law of No Block

Kempo emphasizes economy of movement and economy of time. Kempo's no block principle teaches to avoid being struck by a punch or kick, you should move your body out of harm's way. As one of my old Saber coaches use to tell me, "It's all about controlling timing and distance."

In other words, a block is a wasted move because it does not stop your opponent from attacking again with their free limbs. It is much better to move out of the way and simultaneously counterattack.

This is a fairly complex concept to implement correctly. So I teach beginners to block.:-) Once they have a better understanding of the art, I introduce this concept.

Kempo has multiple systems of just blocks, but note that the more advanced onces involve traps, redirects and body movement (Next time you watch a Master do one of the blocking systems, pay attention to the movement of their spine.)

Fifth Law of Kempo

Law of Kicking

Kempo's mandate to kick low is based on logic. A roundhouse kick and spinning reverse crescent kick to the head maybe flashy and impressive, but such maneuvers take longer to execute because your legs has to travel farther. They also expose your groin to your opponent's kick.

Kicking high requires superior balance and focus, you should practice your leg techniques high, and deliver them low for self-defense. Kicking low to the legs, executing a "pillar attack" can break your opponent's balance and legs.

As I tell my students, when your opponent is on the ground is the best time to kick them in the head.

Fourth Law of Kempo

Law of Targets

You are not going to break your knuckles punching an attacker's temple. A kick to the groin will not fracture your instep. A knife hand strike to the throat will hurt the throat more than your hand.

Kempo teaches you to choose your targets in order to maximize damage to your opponent while minimizing damage to yourself.