Decisions

[Gerry Seymour]

It depends on how its done. I once had a white belt Taekwondo student come up to me and complain that she wasn't able to practice her hand grabs on her son, who is a black belt. He knew what she was going to do and applied all his strength against that motion. She said she wasn't sure she was doing it right if she couldn't use it on him.

I explained to her that she wouldn't be able to. What she would do, if she knew more techniques, is to go the other direction. If your attacker is preventing you from going across their body to break their grip, you go around their body. However, she hasn't been taught that yet, and shouldn't be expected to know it. Heck, she hasn't even been taught the techniques that go in the other direction! At her level, she's learning pieces of the puzzle that will come together later. Her son, the black belt, should have been using passive resistance (make her have control of the technique, but don't fight her on it), because she's not yet ready to figure out those transitions and modifications to make it work.

This is something I discuss often with students. I end up explaining it when I visit other schools, because most students take an inordinately long time to understand there are many kinds of resistance:

• full resistance (fighting back to prevent a technique and apply your own)
• passive resistance (giving a fairly "normal" response in the situation rather than just standing there like a grappling dummy - continuing the thing you were doing when they started the technique)
• false resistance (doing something that only makes sense as a dojo counter to the technique (locking both arms and your upper body so you're immovable, for instance)
• counters (these can be part of full resistance, but can be practiced separately)

I had a BB who was a bit junior to me say how impressed he was by a senior BB, because he couldn't do his Scissors against him. I demonstrated that it's not that hard to stop, if you know what's coming - that particular senior BB was just a jerk (he once punched me by mistake in a demonstration and blamed me for it).

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Yeah, and to be honest I can understand the desire to have ownership of the family legacy and how it would be frustrating to feel like non-family members use the family to promote themselves, possibly making money from it. I get it, that would make most people grind their teeth. But for a lot of this stuff, the barn door has been open for too long. A lot of it just cannot be stuffed back in. The ship sailed decades ago.

Yeah, the right way to make money from that legacy is to have a strong and supportive organization that members get benefit from (including the benefit of being able to call what they do EPAK), and charging some nominal fees for that membership. But the way they approach it - trying to keep people from displaying certificates they earned, etc.,, is just BS to me.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Ok. But some of these are just plain bad ideas. I know people like to see if they can salvage sketchy stuff. Maybe I don’t understand it properly. Maybe I wasn’t taught correctly. Maybe I just haven’t put enough work into it yet. Sure, that can be the case.

But some stuff is just plain stupid.

I can't speak to Kempo, but I do know there are some bits in NGA that seemed cool at one time, then seemed foolish. Then, as I went back and looked at them, I decided they were useful, but not with direct application. They taught principles that I use in scrambling - those moments in grappling when you've lost that hold on the arm and they're moving into better position on you. I find myself grabbing some of those principles and using them to regain some control. They don't look like the formal technique at all (most of them in Classical form end with a throw and a roll, but that never happens in scrambling). So I just teach them for that purpose, and use them for fiddling and getting better at the overall principles. I refer to them as "esoteric" techniques now.

So I wonder if some of the sketchy stuff you're referring to might be the same. Viewed as techniques, they're sketchy, but the principles in them are helpful in odd situations.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

following my thread about the disappointing grading I've been thinking a lot about the state of kenpo and looking around online and realise there is so much crap out there with people being given high ranks who are rubbish and its polluting the art bringing down its reputation. When I started training kenpo was considered extremely tough with hard technique lines brutal gradings and fitness tests and hard sparring. Now it's extremely watered down with a lot of instructors focusing more on theoretical than practical and it's making people think it's useless. I still believe kenpo as it should be taught is one of the best systems for self defence.

I've talked to a few friends of mine who agree with what I'm saying and one of them suggested we start our own club and make it old school training. Making people actually have to work for their belts, testing techniques against resistance and doing hard fitness workouts and sparring multiple opponents. I like the Idea of bringing back the intensity to kenpo but I'm also not sure.

For one there's no market especially for adults. Karate isn't as big as it was and it would be hard to sustain a club in our area. Second there's all the bs rights going on In kenpo. Apparently I'd have to pay a hell of a lot of money to even hang one of my certificates in my own school because it has a logo on it. And I'm to old to be dealing with crap like that. A while back I had a little training group going. Not a school just an informal training session and it was good. It had to stop when I moved away but i don't know.

It just really saddens me that Kenpo at least in my area has completely fallen in quality. It's a style I love and though I train in other systems kenpo will always be my base and I would love to bring back some of the old intensity that isn't seen much anymore in the style.

Getting back to your OP, HH....

I can understand your frustration and disappointment. I've seen some stuff in my primary art that I wish was done differently. Schools seem to be getting softer in their practice. Maybe it's just me looking back at the "good old days", but I remember a lot more enthusiasm and sweat in the dojo than I see when I visit now. Some of that is probably because of aging instructors who have more intellectual interest in the art (there's a real benefit to having younger assistant instructors running large parts of class).

I'd like to heal all that by being a paragon of what I think NGA can be. But it's unlikely I'll have the kind of influence I want. Even if I went full-time and started a brand new school, I'm probably not going to reach enough people or create enough new instructors to change the flow. What I can do is teach the way I think is best, share my thoughts with instructors who ask, and model the intensity when I visit (as best I can - I really haven't found anyone who wants to go as hard as I want to, even the guys much younger than me).

If I had the money to run a dojo without needing to break even (and the time to devote), I'd open a full dojo and do the most I could for the art and martial arts in general. But the impact I want to have probably needs a focus on teens and young adults, and it's hard to build a school around that. It seems these days you pretty much need kids unless you can use the MMA label. Folks who want intense training seem to head that way, and many never walk into schools that don't bear that label. It's a perception thing, so you end up teaching as best you can to the folks who do walk in. I think that's part of what many of us see happening - the kind of folks we loved training with don't seek out the same training we did - they are looking more for MMA - and that waters down the old training grounds.

 

[dvcochran]

Many years ago when I was still “kind of” a kenpo guy I actually did this in a way.

The problem is, you are limited by your own experience and quite likely will have problems in what you develop. The system overall may not be very viable.

In my case, I took the Tracy curriculum, which is actually much larger than the other Parker kenpo lineages ( I prefer to refer to them as “lineages” rather than as “Ed Parker’s American Kenpo” because I think that reflects the truth a lot better, as the Tracy brothers were student of Parker in the early days, who split and established their own lineage, and the Parker Kenpo folks are also people who trained under Ed Parker at different times, and continue to teach what they learned) and made some serious modifications. I eliminated a lot of stuff that seemed repetitive and nearly identical to other stuff, eliminated a bunch of stuff that just seemed like bad and dysfunctional ideas (there are a lot of those, in my opinion) and re-wrote some that I felt had potential but needed to be tweaked. The result was kind of interesting, but overall I didn’t have a lot of faith in it as I was just doing it on my own, wasn’t training with anyone, didn’t have a group or teacher with whom to work it through.

Inventing a method on your own is difficult, you need to really experiment with that stuff to feel confident that it is sound and functional. That is actually my main disillusionment with the kenpo that I trained and the kenpo that I’ve seen: I feel that a lot of those self defense techniques are filled with bad ideas that would never work. The argument is that they aren’t meant to work directly, in a “problem/solution” sort of way. Rather, they are meant to give ideas of possibilities, and parts of different SD techs can be mixed and grafted together to fit a unique situation. While this is true in theory, I find it to be a very clumsy approach in organizing a curriculum, and the plethora of bad ideas just undermines the whole approach. For me, I finally decided that kenpo is not a good match and i need to do something else.

I agree on how some techniques just seem risky, at least to me. We have 55 one-steps we teach from white belt to beyond 1st BB. I am very transparent about how some of them are for very unique situations and, by in large, are low percentage techniques. Is their any value in knowing them? I think so if for no other reason than footwork and conditioning.

 

[JR 137]

I see and can emphasize with both sides of the Ed Parker fiasco...

My father owns an auto repair shop. He’s had people work under him and leave over the almost 40 years he’s been in business. Some have opened their own shops. I’m picturing the following when he dies and if I’m the executor of his estate:

If people start opening garages using his name and likeness, I’m getting a cut. You’re not making money on my father’s name free and clear without paying his estate a royalty. If you’re using his logo and selling it, same thing. He’s the one who built up the name and logo and gave it the recognition it’s garnering. It’s not yours, it’s his. He let you use it with his own set of caveats, he didn’t give it to you to do as you wish. There was talk previously of the Ed Parker Memorial Tournament with interference from the Parker family. Same thing - you’re not going to use my father’s name for something without my permission. If you’re going to hold that tournament and give all the profits to charity or some other good cause, you’ve got my blessing and I don’t want anything. But you still need my permission and need to tell me your intentions before you go ahead and use his name. If you’re pocketing money from it, I want my cut because you’re using my father’s name to make money for yourself.

But that’s where it should stop. I wouldn’t go after people who claimed they worked under my father. If they actually did and we’re accurate about the specifics. If a guy swept the floor for a few weeks and claimed to be his apprentice for a few years, then yeah, I’m going after him to protect his name and everyone who’s being honest. I wouldn’t go after people for doing oil changes because my father did them too; that’s just flat out stupid and greedy, regardless of if I had some legal standing or not.

Parker’s family has a leg to stand on with protecting the name and likeness, and wanting their cut from people who are using it for financial gain. But charging people to display certificates they’ve earned is absurd. Harassing a student at a tournament who’s wearing a patch their teacher required them to wear is just ridiculous. Go after the guy who’s wrongfully selling them. Go after the guy who wrongfully made the copyrighted patches. Louis Vuitton isn’t running around the streets and yelling at the people carrying knockoffs (that I know of). He’s going after the people making them and the people selling them. Or at least should be.

 

[JR 137]

To bring this back to what I’m assuming is the original intent:

If you’re going to call yourself American Kenpo or Ed Parker’s Kenpo, you’ve got to get permission and pay the royalties. If you’re going to use the logo in any way, same thing. They’re not yours to do as you wish with them.

If you’re going to call it your own name and teach what you’ve learned, you don’t owe anyone anything. So long as you’re not just teaching EPAK stuff and you’re genuinely teaching what you know from many different sources. State your credentials and experience from everything you’ve done, not just EPAK. Don’t give your EPAK credentials/experience any more or less prominence than everything else, and don’t claim to be teaching his system.

 

[CB Jones]

To bring this back to what I’m assuming is the original intent:

If you’re going to call yourself American Kenpo or Ed Parker’s Kenpo, you’ve got to get permission and pay the royalties. If you’re going to use the logo in any way, same thing. They’re not yours to do as you wish with them.

If you’re going to call it your own name and teach what you’ve learned, you don’t owe anyone anything. So long as you’re not just teaching EPAK stuff and you’re genuinely teaching what you know from many different sources. State your credentials and experience from everything you’ve done, not just EPAK. Don’t give your EPAK credentials/experience any more or less prominence than everything else, and don’t claim to be teaching his system.

Agreed....IMO teaching from your own experience and knowledge is the best method anyway.

 

[skribs]

This is something I discuss often with students. I end up explaining it when I visit other schools, because most students take an inordinately long time to understand there are many kinds of resistance:

• full resistance (fighting back to prevent a technique and apply your own)
• passive resistance (giving a fairly "normal" response in the situation rather than just standing there like a grappling dummy - continuing the thing you were doing when they started the technique)
• false resistance (doing something that only makes sense as a dojo counter to the technique (locking both arms and your upper body so you're immovable, for instance)
• counters (these can be part of full resistance, but can be practiced separately)

I had a BB who was a bit junior to me say how impressed he was by a senior BB, because he couldn't do his Scissors against him. I demonstrated that it's not that hard to stop, if you know what's coming - that particular senior BB was just a jerk (he once punched me by mistake in a demonstration and blamed me for it).

It depends on what the goal is - learn the technique, or apply it.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

To bring this back to what I’m assuming is the original intent:

If you’re going to call yourself American Kenpo or Ed Parker’s Kenpo, you’ve got to get permission and pay the royalties. If you’re going to use the logo in any way, same thing. They’re not yours to do as you wish with them.

If you’re going to call it your own name and teach what you’ve learned, you don’t owe anyone anything. So long as you’re not just teaching EPAK stuff and you’re genuinely teaching what you know from many different sources. State your credentials and experience from everything you’ve done, not just EPAK. Don’t give your EPAK credentials/experience any more or less prominence than everything else, and don’t claim to be teaching his system.

I don't even think it's necessary that they be teaching from multiple primary sources. If their teaching is based primarily on (derivative of) EPAK, but isn't EPAK, then they are good to go, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Flying Crane]

Can you provide an example of something that was "just plain stupid."

I don’t know if all this stuff is on video somewhere, but I’ll see if I can find a good example.

 

[JR 137]

I don't even think it's necessary that they be teaching from multiple primary sources. If their teaching is based primarily on (derivative of) EPAK, but isn't EPAK, then they are good to go, as far as I'm concerned.

Absolutely. But he’s trained a couple different things - Krav and kickboxing come to mind here.

 

[Flying Crane]

Can you provide an example of something that was "just plain stupid."

I did a quick perusal of YouTube and then realized I did not want to use any examples from there because I don’t want to point a finger at the people who made the video. I don’t know them personally nor by reputation, they believe in what they do, and i don’t think it’s fair to link to their video and say “see how stupid this is.” It’s just bad form.

So instead I’ll just say that some SD Techs and kata include strange and very unrealistic stepping patterns while a punch is coming at your head, things that deliberately put you in an unnatural position where generation of power is very clumsy, follow-up striking that makes huge assumptions about where the enemy will be after several moves into the engagement.

There is good stuff in the curriculum too, I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But the Tracy lineage has a huge curriculum, far larger than most other Parker-derived lineages, and the sheer size of the curriculum is something that I personally feel is cumbersome. When the body of SD Techs is so large, it should not include things that are bad ideas. Slim down the tech lists. Streamlining would be a good thing.

At any rate, it seems to me that a lot of people are reluctant to ever point out something that is foolish in their curriculum. People want to believe that this stuff was developed by enlightened masters. It wasn’t. This stuff (martial arts in general) was developed by people who had the same failings as you and I, and some of their ideas were bad. Systems were built over time and as their knowledge evolved. Some bad ideas crept in and did not get weeded out. It happens. The martial ancestors were people too, not gods. They made mistakes. Not everything is salvageable.

 

[skribs]

I did a quick perusal of YouTube and then realized I did not want to use any examples from there because I don’t want to point a finger at the people who made the video. I don’t know them personally nor by reputation, they believe in what they do, and i don’t think it’s fair to link to their video and say “see how stupid this is.” It’s just bad form.

So instead I’ll just say that some SD Techs and kata include strange and very unrealistic stepping patterns while a punch is coming at your head, things that deliberately put you in an unnatural position where generation of power is very clumsy, follow-up striking that makes huge assumptions about where the enemy will be after several moves into the engagement.

There is good stuff in the curriculum too, I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But the Tracy lineage has a huge curriculum, far larger than most other Parker-derived lineages, and the sheer size of the curriculum is something that I personally feel is cumbersome. When the body of SD Techs is so large, it should not include things that are bad ideas. Slim down the tech lists. Streamlining would be a good thing.

At any rate, it seems to me that a lot of people are reluctant to ever point out something that is foolish in their curriculum. People want to believe that this stuff was developed by enlightened masters. It wasn’t. This stuff (martial arts in general) was developed by people who had the same failings as you and I, and some of their ideas were bad. Systems were built over time and as their knowledge evolved. Some bad ideas crept in and did not get weeded out. It happens. The martial ancestors were people too, not gods. They made mistakes. Not everything is salvageable.

Are they short drills (i.e. several strikes in a row) or long drills (i.e. grab here, strike there, turn here, strike there, sweep this way, do this other thing)?

If it's several strikes I could see that as just training a combination. If it's a longer drill, there should be pieces you could combine in different ways.

For example, one of my hapkido techniques involves using a Z-lock to take someone onto their stomach, and then applying an armbar from there. The person I was practicing with yesterday would not go onto her stomach. One time I got her hunched over into a kneeling position, another time I got her on her back. In both cases, the "assumption" in the technique is that my opponent will be on their stomach, but she was not. However, I was able to get her to tap out by figuring out what to do from there, based on other techniques (which made similar assumptions).

Now, without seeing the techniques you're talking about, I can't really say if that's the case or not.

 

[Flying Crane]

Are they short drills (i.e. several strikes in a row) or long drills (i.e. grab here, strike there, turn here, strike there, sweep this way, do this other thing)?

If it's several strikes I could see that as just training a combination. If it's a longer drill, there should be pieces you could combine in different ways.

For example, one of my hapkido techniques involves using a Z-lock to take someone onto their stomach, and then applying an armbar from there. The person I was practicing with yesterday would not go onto her stomach. One time I got her hunched over into a kneeling position, another time I got her on her back. In both cases, the "assumption" in the technique is that my opponent will be on their stomach, but she was not. However, I was able to get her to tap out by figuring out what to do from there, based on other techniques (which made similar assumptions).

Now, without seeing the techniques you're talking about, I can't really say if that's the case or not.

Good points, and these can range from a short few moves to a longer combo of moves, up to some of the kata.

On the issue of kata, the Tracy lineage in particular has adopted kata and forms from several different sources, including traditional Japanese and Chinese martial arts. It is clear to me that these forms were poorly adopted, without good understanding of how to do them nor of the foundations upon which the original Chinese methods are built. They are literally exercises in movement, without the benefits of the original method.

People can do what they want, but in my assessment, that is very poor practice. Perhaps the original folks who made the adoptions understood the parent material well, and something got lost in translation downstream, but really I don’t think so. This is stuff coming from the main headquarters of Tracy’s.

I believe they wanted to be everything: a progressive American system but with ties to Japan and roots in China, and they wanted to have material representative of all those things. It does not work that way however. The foundations get jumbled, material does not all work on the same foundation. There is no recognition of that.

They ought to jettison most of that stuff, and just be what they are, which is an Americanized method. In a way it could be seen as an American kuntao. Don’t try to be everything, especially when it mixes up old methods from vastly different systems.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

You can trademark a specific curriculum of combinations of techniques for specific responses.

I don't think that's correct. You can trademark a unique name for the curriculum. You can copyright the specific sequence of moves. (Google dance choreography copyright law.) You'd need a pretty good lawyer specializing in that domain to make such a copyright hold up in court, however.

The problem is, people sue you and hope the fear and the expense of a legal defense will intimidate you into just folding. They don’t want an expensive fight either, and if they lose the fight it would set precedent for others to fight them as well. Their house of cards will crumble and they know it. So they try to get people to step in line with cease-and-desist letters and threats of law suits.

Yeah, I wonder whether the folks in question have actually sued anyone over use of the curriculum or if they've just threatened it. Threatening a lawsuit is cheap. Actually suing is expensive and could end up with embarrassing results.

 

[CB Jones]

I don't think that's correct. You can trademark a unique name for the curriculum. You can copyright the specific sequence of moves. (Google dance choreography copyright law.) You'd need a pretty good lawyer specializing in that domain to make such a copyright hold up in court, however.

Agree...you caught me being lazy with my terminology. Lol.

Legally...you can trademark a name...copyright a written curriculum...and patent a method.

From my understanding it is tough though and can get expensive.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Found an example for SKK. Jury Awards $7.7 Million to United Studios of Self Defense in Lawsuit Against Z-Ultimate | Cappello & Noël LLP | Trial Lawyers Santa Barbara

Obviously there's more to this story then what headhunter would be doing, but two lines popped out to me. "USSD proved at trial that the defendants, during and after the takeover attempt, misappropriated USSD’s trade secrets including the Shaolin Kempo-style training system exclusively owned by USSD." and "Defendants were found to have infringed the USSD logos and trademark."

and from Eszlinger v. United Studios of Self Def., Inc, G051888 | Casetext

"[Appellants] sought declaratory relief whether USSD had exclusive rights to use of Shaolin Kempo techniques and combinations and whether they could sever their relationships with USSD and operate their karate studios under the 'Z-Ultimate' logo."

And ""Judge Chaffee, sitting without a jury, denied [respondents] any equitable or injunctive relief on their efforts to bar [appellants] from using the Shaolin [K]empo system of training instruction at their Z-Ultimate branded martial arts studios. Instead, the court found '[t]he method and style of karate called Shaolin Kempo karate is not a trade secret, could not be a trade secret, and that something that is so publicly displayed in tournaments, in classes, in lectures and on the Internet repeatedly cannot in and of itself be a trade secret.'"

It seems like initially they were ruled in favor of being allowed to use the techniques, and them not being considered "trade secrets", but that that part of it was overturned later in the secondary lawsuit? Not 100% sure, and I could be misreading it.

 

[dvcochran]

I don't think that's correct. You can trademark a unique name for the curriculum. You can copyright the specific sequence of moves. (Google dance choreography copyright law.) You'd need a pretty good lawyer specializing in that domain to make such a copyright hold up in court, however.


Yeah, I wonder whether the folks in question have actually sued anyone over use of the curriculum or if they've just threatened it. Threatening a lawsuit is cheap. Actually suing is expensive and could end up with embarrassing results.

Agree, My wife always says the next step when someone sues is a counter-suit. Then it is a lot of posturing and threats until someone backs off. The time is money saying really comes into play.

 

[dvcochran]

Agree...you caught me being lazy with my terminology. Lol.

Legally...you can trademark a name...copyright a written curriculum...and patent a method.

From my understanding it is tough though and can get expensive.

From start to finish it took me 4 years on my first patent. I did not get legal help until I was 2 years in because the patent board started asking questions that I felt I had to be very careful how I answered. Turned out to be true. I feel there is some rubbing of elbows in the process as well. After my 2nd patent one of the patent board advisors laughed and told me I would have never gotten the 1st patent had I not gotten an attorney involved.