# Techniques?



## Hand Sword (Jul 20, 2006)

Greetings and respect to all of you seniors.

I have a couple of questions concerning the Kenpo techniques. I read that some were added, or created by others, and not by Mr. Parker himself. If this is true, How many techniques were there originally? And, If possible, can they be named?

Thank you all for your time.
:asian:


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## Flying Crane (Jul 20, 2006)

Tracys claim that they have kept them all from the early days.  I think they may have come up with their own names for them, but they have a list of 381 thru fifth black belt, plus a whole pile of variations for many of them, claiming a total of 600.  It is listed as 10 for yellow, 30 each for orange thru fourth black, and 41 for fifth black. You can check their website, they list the names of all of them for each belt.  I guess this is as close as you will get to seeing what the original list was.

They also list a lot of things that they have clearly incorporated from some other sources, Chinese forms and stuff.  But the technique list is kenpo.


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## IWishToLearn (Jul 20, 2006)

That is a crapload of techniques, no doubt.


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## Flying Crane (Jul 20, 2006)

IWishToLearn said:
			
		

> That is a crapload of techniques, no doubt.


 
Yup, way too many in my opinion.


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## Hand Sword (Jul 20, 2006)

Flying Crane said:
			
		

> Tracys claim that they have kept them all from the early days. I think they may have come up with their own names for them, but they have a list of 381 thru fifth black belt, plus a whole pile of variations for many of them, claiming a total of 600. It is listed as 10 for yellow, 30 each for orange thru fourth black, and 41 for fifth black. You can check their website, they list the names of all of them for each belt. I guess this is as close as you will get to seeing what the original list was.
> 
> They also list a lot of things that they have clearly incorporated from some other sources, Chinese forms and stuff. But the technique list is kenpo.


 
600! :erg:  Was that created by Mr. Parker, or kept from training with Professor Chow? It was my understanding that they just did techniques back then, where the Professor, just kept coming up with different ones.


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## Flying Crane (Jul 21, 2006)

Hand Sword said:
			
		

> 600! :erg: Was that created by Mr. Parker, or kept from training with Professor Chow? It was my understanding that they just did techniques back then, where the Professor, just kept coming up with different ones.


 
It is my understanding that at that time, in the 1950s, Mr. Parker was teaching what he learned from Mr. Chow.  I don't know if he was also expermenting along the way, or if these were all things that he formally learned from Chow, or if Chow was making things up along the way, or if these come from an older, formalized list from Japan.

I sometimes wonder if at least some of them were simply experimentation with various ideas and concepts on a particular day and some of these were never meant to be codified.  But someone wrote it down and made it an official technique.  There is a lot of repetition in the curriculum, but these techniques that are very similar have different names and are taught as a separate technique.  I think maybe someone (Chow? Parker?  Tracy?) was playing with similar ideas on different days, and they got listed as distinct techs. There are also a lot of techs that, in my opinion are pretty unworkable.  Again, I wonder if these were originally just experimentations in ideas and movements, and were never meant to be standardized.  These points sort of support my idea that maybe not all of this stuff was originally meant to be kept.  Of course I have absolutely no proof of this, it is just my speculation.  Anyway, it is what it is.

According to some things I read on Tracys, at the time the body of techniques didn't have names and were not categorized into any particular order.  For their own use, Tracys developed names for them and listed them into a standardized belt curriculum.  I don't know if Mr. Parker ever used the same names (maybe some of them), or if he ever used the same order in the curriculum after Tracys developed this, or if he was already moving on and creating his own names and lists by then, and revamping the system.


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## Hand Sword (Dec 27, 2006)

I have another question concerning Kenpo's techniques, that was brought up in another thread. I figured the best bet for an answer would be to address it here. If Kenpo infused more of a Chinese theme in it's techniques, during the 60's, can anyone point out one of the techniques that existed in both time frames, and explain how it was, then what was added or deleted, due to the new influence?


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## Doc (Dec 28, 2006)

Mr. Parker began to put to film the bulk of what he had learned from Chow based on his notes when he came to the mainland. The claim that he somehow came over with 600 plus written standardized techniques is ludicrous. Chow really had no written techniques, and worked on responses to various attack scenarios that obvious changed all the time according to his preferences from class to class.

Parker recorded notes on 3x5 cards and worked up a series of techniques in an attempt to codify and standardize some of the material. Look in his Kenpo-Karate book published in 1961 for examples. Compared to contemporary material, it was very simplistic and direct, obviously influenced heavily by Japanese/Okinawan arts like Jiujitsu and Okinawa-te, with Chinese influence.

Many have seen the video and I have the original film. What Al took with him was the very end of the Chinese Kenpo Phase, part of the beginning of the American Kenpo Phase that was severed as Parker moved into the Ed Parker Kenpo Karate Phase..

What Al did was classify every variation as a separate technique which artificially inflates the numbers. Parker had many variations as well, but instead spoke of "what-if's," "rearrangements," and "variations" on a given theme. Al would have A, B, C, and D variations on a technique, so one technique could grow into 5 even though the change may simply be using a hammerfist instead of a handsword. 

The two methods are not that different. They just chose to go about it differently.


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## IWishToLearn (Mar 5, 2007)

So would there be a viable method of distilling from A,B,C,D which the original techniques were and by discounting the other variations, get a total original tech count?


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## Flying Crane (Mar 6, 2007)

IWishToLearn said:


> So would there be a viable method of distilling from A,B,C,D which the original techniques were and by discounting the other variations, get a total original tech count?


 

Sigung89 posted once somewhere here on MT that there was an old video of Mr. Parker and Chuck Sullivan performing all the techs in the system at that time (1950s).  He indicated there were only 30 or 40 on that video.  It would be interesting to know what those were.


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## Doc (Mar 8, 2007)

Flying Crane said:


> Sigung89 posted once somewhere here on MT that there was an old video of Mr. Parker and Chuck Sullivan performing all the techs in the system at that time (1950s).  He indicated there were only 30 or 40 on that video.  It would be interesting to know what those were.



They never got that many on film, and I have an original 16mm print. Most have seen the bulk of them in the video Chuck released with his son. He later did a video for the New England States with Klemisch and others where he essentially does all of the commercial techniques, pre-yellow belt. They haved changed much, and are very recognizable. Although most still do the techniques that way, the big change came in Ed Parker and the way he moved versus what his student did.


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## IWishToLearn (Mar 9, 2007)

Doc are you sure there isn't an "s" missing from the "moved versus what his student(s) did." part?


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## Doc (Mar 9, 2007)

IWishToLearn said:


> Doc are you sure there isn't an "s" missing from the "moved versus what his student(s) did." part?



Yeah he did have a couple.


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## IWishToLearn (Mar 9, 2007)

Yay! Score #2 for the broken clock.


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