# Question For Doc



## MJS (Jul 10, 2007)

Hey Doc! 

This may have been discussed before, but I thought I'd ask again.

Regarding kicks in the Kenpo system.  Here are my questions.

A) What were the original kicks that SGM Parker taught?

B) What was the average height that he applied these kicks?  ie: head height, belt level, below the belt.

C) Do you teach the same kicks or have you made changes to anything?

D) What are the pros/cons of the heights I mentioned above?  

E) I know that you always mention proper alignment, etc.  Depending on how high the kick is executed, will the alignment be better or worse?

Thanks in advance and I look forward to your replies. 

Mike


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## IWishToLearn (Jul 10, 2007)

Tag.


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## MJS (Jul 11, 2007)

Bumping this again.  I'd like to hear Docs thoughts.


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## Doc (Jul 13, 2007)

> Regarding kicks in the Kenpo system. Here are my questions.
> 
> A) What were the original kicks that SGM Parker taught?


Historically speaking, the Kenpo Karate of William Chow that Ed Parker importer from Hawaii had relatively few kicks. This is because the style of the time was heavily Jiujitsu influenced based by Henry Okazaki's DanZan Ryu. Parker came here with an always prominent front kick, back kick, low knife-edge kick, roundhouse kicks, and stomping kicks. All very self-defense oriented kicks.


> B) What was the average height that he applied these kicks? ie: head height, belt level, below the belt.


As self-defense mandated. High kicks are a product of the influence of sport and performance martial arts like TKD and WuShu.


> C) Do you teach the same kicks or have you made changes to anything?


Mr. Parker's personal choices in kicks mirror my own. However he often allowed that some wanted the more flashing TKD style kicks and he never discouraged them, although he would never utilize them himself.


> D) What are the pros/cons of the heights I mentioned above?


There are no anatomical self-defense benefits to kicking above the general height of the sternum of an adult vertical standing target.


> E) I know that you always mention proper alignment, etc. Depending on how high the kick is executed, will the alignment be better or worse?


See above. In general, any kick that is executed significantly beyond the height of the hip flexors are anatomically not good, but can be mitigated somewhat depending upon the kick and height.


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## arnisador (Jul 13, 2007)

Doc said:


> Parker came here with an always prominent front kick, back kick, low knife-edge kick, roundhouse kicks, and stomping kicks. All very self-defense oriented kicks.



I often hear the roundhouse kick criticized for self-defense. I am so-so on the traditional Karate-style mawashi-geri, but the Thai-style roundhouse kick to the thigh and the JKD-style quick shuffle kick to the groin seem worthwhile to me. I only ever recall seeing Mr. Parker do front kicks on the (few) video clips I have seen of him.



> There are no anatomical self-defense benefits to kicking above the general height of the sternum of an adult vertical standing target.[...]In general, any kick that is executed significantly beyond the height of the hip flexors are anatomically not good, but can be mitigated somewhat depending upon the kick and height.


I certainly agree. One notable exception to my mind--excepting capoeira-style kicks, which are just a whole 'nother kettle of fish--are some of the hook kicks. The spinning hook kick with the leg kept straight, with the upper body leaning toward the ground to keep the leg in line, looks to me like it's well set for power. 

Of course, I can't imagine that the power makes up for turning your back on your opponent, so I consider this to be a not-very-useful observation.


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## Doc (Jul 13, 2007)

arnisador said:


> I often hear the roundhouse kick criticized for self-defense. I am so-so on the traditional Karate-style mawashi-geri, but the Thai-style roundhouse kick to the thigh and the JKD-style quick shuffle kick to the groin seem worthwhile to me. I only ever recall seeing Mr. Parker do front kicks on the (few) video clips I have seen of him.
> 
> I certainly agree. One notable exception to my mind--excepting capoeira-style kicks, which are just a whole 'nother kettle of fish--are some of the hook kicks. The spinning hook kick with the leg kept straight, with the upper body leaning toward the ground to keep the leg in line, looks to me like it's well set for power.
> 
> Of course, I can't imagine that the power makes up for turning your back on your opponent, so I consider this to be a not-very-useful observation.


I agree with you totally sir. One thing however. The spinning straight leg kick, by Parker's definition is not considered a hook kick. The "hook" kick utilizes the flexation of the knee, the same as the elbow joint in the punching hook. They are included in the curriculum I teach along with inside and outside crescents, front and rear scoops (which are vertical hooks) as well as side kicks (with the heel), and certain kicks in combination with each other.


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## exile (Jul 13, 2007)

Doc said:


> High kicks are a product of the influence of sport and performance martial arts like TKD and WuShu.



My guess is that the key factor here is the first, the `influence of sport', as Doc puts it, and that so far as TKD is concerned, it was the relatively early sport orientation which led TKD to emphasize what was, much earlier, the relatively restricted use of high kicks. One bit of evidence to this effect is that karate has picked up a number of TKD's high kicks and uses these far from frequently, according to some observers, than it has in the past, as sport competition has come play an increasingly important role in karate culture. I suspect that any MA in which visual spectacle attains great prominence will wind up with a correspondingly expanded range and use of high kicks, for similar reasons....


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## Goldendragon7 (Jan 16, 2008)

exile said:


> Karate can have high kicks and uses these far from frequently, however, as sport competition has come play an increasingly important role in the demonstration of high kicks, I suspect that any MA in which this visual spectacle attains great prominence will wind up with a correspondingly expanded range and use of high kicks as a platform.



High kicks have always been available to all martial arts if they wanted to develop them.  Some "focus" on them more than others.  In the street, High kicks can be dangerous and less effective than lower kicks.  

This is probably due to the difficulty and time needed in gaining flexibility to achieve high kicks with power as well as practicality and speed of delivering lower targeted kicking.

:asian:


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## kidswarrior (Jan 22, 2008)

Doc, 
If I may drag this excellent discussion down to my level (roughly kindergarten ) for a moment, I'd like your opinion on something. There's another thread on the board re: the  effectiveness of kicks targeting the knees in self defense situations (http://martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59213). The replies are uneven in my view, and while I have my own opinion, all my street experience ended before I began the MA (thank God). So, I'd really like to know _your _opinion--as someone who knows anatomy and physiology, *street* effectiveness, and ken/mpo history and evolution--on the effectiveness of kicks to the knee for self defense. 
Thanks.


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## exile (Jan 23, 2008)

Goldendragon7 said:


> High kicks have always been available to all martial arts if they wanted to develop them.



Of course, but that's because they're anatomically possible for the individual who practices one or the other of those arts. The question, though, is why do some arts emphasize them and change techniques that they've acquired from their 'source' arts to reflect high kicks? Original TKD, for example, shared virtually all of the kata that Shotokan, its primary source art, did; but if you look at the contemporary versions of those kata in the relatively few TKD schools that still teach them, what you see is a systematic replacement of low kicks&#8212;or even quite different leg techs&#8212;with high kicks. So take the Okinawan/Shotokan Empi kata, which becomes Eunbi in Song Moo Kwan TKD. The performance is very, very similar... but the differences are very revealing. There are a series of knee strikes in the Empi forms, set up with a strike to the throat&#8212;which via muchimi becomes an achoring grip&#8212;bringing the defender into close range to deliver the abdomen/groin knee strike, and continuing with a followup punch to the abdomen with the other fist, followed by a 'down-block' strike to the groin. What's happened in TKD is that this knee strike has become a high front kick&#8212;a move which doesn't seem to me to fit in any reasonable way as a followup to the high punch-then-grab, simply because the respective ranges of the punch/grab and the kick don't appear to match up well; and the followup moves are also out of synch. The clean, effective bunkai for the O/J version gets lost under a literal interpretation of the TKD version as a high kick. But the rule seems to be, any kick you see in an O/J 'source' kata becomes a high version of the kick in the TKD version; and in the case of Empi, those kicks originally weren't even foot strikes, but knee techs. 

This is the kind of thing I was getting at: there is a kind of rule that seems to be in place in TKD, even very traditional 'Kwan' type styles such as mine: regardless of the original bunkai, kick high when a leg tech is involved. So it's not a matter simply of taking advantage of availability, doing it when you can or when it looks as if it'll be useful, but of something more like a built-in rule, part of the culture of the art, apparently,  that you interpret the leg tech as a kick, and the higher the better, regardless of what the original SD basis for the tech was.




Goldendragon7 said:


> Some "focus" on them more than others.  In the street, High kicks can be dangerous and less effective than lower kicks.



I happen to agree completely with this, but there are some conflicting opinions out there on the matter&#8212;check out this thread for a fairly full range of views...



Goldendragon7 said:


> This is probably due to the difficulty and time needed in gaining flexibility to achieve high kicks with power as well as practicality and speed of delivering lower targeted kicking.
> 
> :asian:



Again&#8212;you'll get no quarrel from me on that point! 



kidswarrior said:


> Doc,
> If I may drag this excellent discussion down to my level (roughly kindergarten ) for a moment, I'd like your opinion on something. There's another thread on the board re: the  effectiveness of kicks targeting the knees in self defense situations (http://martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59213). The replies are uneven in my view, and while I have my own opinion, all my street experience ended before I began the MA (thank God). So, I'd really like to know _your _opinion--as someone who knows anatomy and physiology, *street* effectiveness, and ken/mpo history and evolution--on the effectiveness of kicks to the knee for self defense.
> Thanks.



I also would like to hear the answers to this question...


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## Doc (Jan 25, 2008)

kidswarrior said:


> Doc,
> If I may drag this excellent discussion down to my level (roughly kindergarten ) for a moment, I'd like your opinion on something. There's another thread on the board re: the  effectiveness of kicks targeting the knees in self defense situations (http://martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59213). The replies are uneven in my view, and while I have my own opinion, all my street experience ended before I began the MA (thank God). So, I'd really like to know _your _opinion--as someone who knows anatomy and physiology, *street* effectiveness, and ken/mpo history and evolution--on the effectiveness of kicks to the knee for self defense.
> Thanks.



Kicks to the knees are a tactical advantage in street confrontations. The average person does not have the skill to offensively attack the knees, and defensively they are extremely difficult to defend. Further from an anatomical perspective, they are extremely strong, but also very weak at the same time. Knees and elbow joints are evolutionarily designed to perform flexion and extend. Forced movements that hyper-extend or collapse the joint are devastating. Moreover, any movement outside of the normal range and direction of flex/extension carries with it serious and incapacitating results with minimal effort.  Mr. Parker said, "When you look to sports, all the good stuff is left out. Too many injuries."


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## Doc (Jan 25, 2008)

exile said:


> Of course, but that's because they're anatomically possible for the individual who practices one or the other of those arts. The question, though, is why do some arts emphasize them and change techniques that they've acquired from their 'source' arts to reflect high kicks? Original TKD, for example, shared virtually all of the kata that Shotokan, its primary source art, did; but if you look at the contemporary versions of those kata in the relatively few TKD schools that still teach them, what you see is a systematic replacement of low kicks&#8212;or even quite different leg techs&#8212;with high kicks. So take the Okinawan/Shotokan Empi kata, which becomes Eunbi in Song Moo Kwan TKD. The performance is very, very similar... but the differences are very revealing. There are a series of knee strikes in the Empi forms, set up with a strike to the throat&#8212;which via muchimi becomes an achoring grip&#8212;bringing the defender into close range to deliver the abdomen/groin knee strike, and continuing with a followup punch to the abdomen with the other fist, followed by a 'down-block' strike to the groin. What's happened in TKD is that this knee strike has become a high front kick&#8212;a move which doesn't seem to me to fit in any reasonable way as a followup to the high punch-then-grab, simply because the respective ranges of the punch/grab and the kick don't appear to match up well; and the followup moves are also out of synch. The clean, effective bunkai for the O/J version gets lost under a literal interpretation of the TKD version as a high kick. But the rule seems to be, any kick you see in an O/J 'source' kata becomes a high version of the kick in the TKD version; and in the case of Empi, those kicks originally weren't even foot strikes, but knee techs.
> 
> This is the kind of thing I was getting at: there is a kind of rule that seems to be in place in TKD, even very traditional 'Kwan' type styles such as mine: regardless of the original bunkai, kick high when a leg tech is involved. So it's not a matter simply of taking advantage of availability, doing it when you can or when it looks as if it'll be useful, but of something more like a built-in rule, part of the culture of the art, apparently,  that you interpret the leg tech as a kick, and the higher the better, regardless of what the original SD basis for the tech was.



I recently wrote of this over on KenpoTalk. The answer is a simple one. It's about establishing a martial arts identity.

Take TKD and TKD/like arts for example. The reason they remove things from their training is so what they do remains viable, within the context of their chosen philosophy and identity. TKD has chosen the philosophy that kicks are better, and their identity signature is very high kicking. It is a choice, so to support that choice within the art, there is no groin kicks allowed. If they allowed groin kicks, then every time someone tried a high kick, they'd get kicked in the groin. Then people would stop doing all those kicks, and then it wouldn't be TKD. It would literally change their identity. So the "rules" allow it to exist and remain viable as an identifiable entity that can be promoted and/or sold. So style philosophies are made predicated on identity as much as anything else. The desire to distinguish one art from another is a strong influence on the chosen identity and philosophy. The decision to become a primary kicking art or not, requires a decision to alter what is done to be different from other source information.


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## kidswarrior (Jan 25, 2008)

Doc said:


> Kicks to the knees are a tactical advantage in street confrontations. The average person does not have the skill to offensively attack the knees, and defensively they are extremely difficult to defend. Further from an anatomical perspective, they are extremely strong, but also very weak at the same time. Knees and elbow joints are evolutionarily designed to perform flexion and extend. Forced movements that hyper-extend or collapse the joint are devastating. Moreover, any movement outside of the normal range and direction of flex/extension carries with it serious and incapacitating results with minimal effort.  Mr. Parker said, "When you look to sports, all the good stuff is left out. Too many injuries."


Thank you, Sir. Exactly the info I was seeking :asian:


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## arnisador (Jan 25, 2008)

Doc said:


> Kicks to the knees are a tactical advantage in street confrontations. The average person does not have the skill to offensively attack the knees, and defensively they are extremely difficult to defend. Further from an anatomical perspective, they are extremely strong, but also very weak at the same time.



I agree, and as my first Karate instructor used to say about a kick to the knee, "A man that can't stand can't fight." (I doubt someone with a hyperextended knee could do BJJ either.) On the other hand, I do think it's a fair objection that with people moving around in a fight, shoving and dodging and swinging and all on possibly uneven or obstructed terrain, fewer eye jabs will land on an eye than (regular) jabs will land somewhere on the face, and fewer low side kicks will land on the side of the knee than mid-level side kicks will land somewhere on the torso (or the arms covering it).

That having been said, I would rarely kick much above the waist but often do kick to the legs for all the reasons indicated. I just scale down my expectations from that instructor's belief that one should be able to end the fight quickly with a kick to the knee (and I'm not suggesting that *Doc* was implying that this was magic, either).



Doc said:


> Take TKD and TKD/like arts for example. The reason they remove things from their training is so what they do remains viable, within the context of their chosen philosophy and identity. TKD has chosen the philosophy that kicks are better, and their identity signature is very high kicking.



Yes, they have designed their art around a certain idea of how to fight, and I agree that if given their axioms and compelled to follow them then most of us would be driven to very similar solutions. I'd add that "...and it's got to be an interesting sport" was part of their vision of this system, as Korea freed itself from Japan's cultural grip in the wake of Japanese occupation, and that affects both the focus on high kicking and the development of other rules. Who doesn't like to see someone take a jump kick to the head?


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## kidswarrior (Jan 25, 2008)

arnisador said:


> That having been said, I would rarely kick much above the waist but often do kick to the legs for all the reasons indicated. *I just scale down my expectations from that instructor's belief that one should be able to end the fight quickly with a kick to the knee* (and I'm not suggesting that *Doc* was implying that this was magic, either).


A good perspective, imho.


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## IWishToLearn (Jan 26, 2008)

Great responses all around actually. We should start a thread for Parker quotes...between Dragon and Doc it'd prolly be about a million responses alone.


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## marlon (May 29, 2008)

Hello Doc, if you can spare the time i would like to know what are the mechanics you teach for the hook kick and roundhouse kick?

respectfully,
marlon


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## Doc (May 30, 2008)

marlon said:


> Hello Doc, if you can spare the time i would like to know what are the mechanics you teach for the hook kick and roundhouse kick?
> 
> respectfully,
> marlon



Unfortunately the mechanics require specific Body Index Points that cannot be properly described and understood in writing alone.


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## marlon (May 31, 2008)

thanks anyway...gotta get out there !!!

marlon


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## marlon (May 31, 2008)

i may be setting myself up to be blasted..but what about jumping kicks?  No value?  Value if done correctly?  No correct way to eefectively defend ones self with a jumping kick?

Marlon


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## marlon (May 31, 2008)

Is a kick to the torso a reliable effective means to end a confrontation?

Respectfully,
Marlon


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## marlon (Jun 13, 2008)

Good day Doc.  This is more of a follow up about L1.  i cannot find where it was discussed before, however, i have experimented striking L1 instead of L6  against a braced attack and find it much more effective.  I also noted that striking L6 tends to bring the attacker forward and so certain follow up moves become less practical than others.  thank you for you insights.

respectfully,
Marlon


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