Its All In There

[MJS]

Sure "its in there," that doesn't mean it is in a terribly useful state. Ragu might have a bell pepper in the sauce somewhere, but if someone is really interested in just the bell pepper, handing them that bottle of sauce and saying "hey, look on the label, its in there" is pretty foolish.

Given that many kenpo schools barely teach how to fall anymore, I'm hard pressed to say that it has an extensive groundfighting curriculum. Given the fairly straightforward way kenpo presents its self-defense concepts, I would expect to see something a little more explicit that a conceptual extension of a standing technique to inform the student. We have explicit defenses against someone kicking you when you are down, against jujitsu finger locks, against pro-wrestling holds, and somehow that vocabulary managed to ignore the example of a guy sitting on your chest, the move that every big brother ever figured out by themselves.

I don't doubt we can extrapolate something from one of the explicit techs, and several people already have, but many of those people also have backgrounds in arts that cover those ranges, allowing them to develop the skills to utilize the conceptual movement. Beyond grappling, the explicit weapons curriculum is fairly marginal. In Tracy's Kenpo a bunch of borrow forms does not a weapons system make. In AK the double knife and stick forms are well, not awesome, or at best make guys from weapon-centric arts blink and say "thats.... nice."

I don't think there is anything wrong with saying that an art has its strength in a particular range, they all pretty much do, but trying to be all things to all people is foolish.

I wish that I could find it, but there was a clip from a Kenpo GM, doing a standup tech. from the mount position. Now, I'm not taking anything away from this persons Kenpo, however, if we look at the position of the bad guy vs. what was being done, I would have to wonder how effective this move would be had the badguy been mounted like he should have.

This is why I'm having a hard time figuring out how a standup tech. can be applied with effectiveness on the ground. I was hoping to discuss this at some point in this thread. If someone could take one of the standup techs and make it work on the ground, I'm interested in hearing it.

 

[Danjo]

And this is, IMHO, difference #1. So, if I'm reading this correctly, the majority of the Kaju techs. end up with the person on the ground, that would differ from many of the Kenpo techs.

Yes, you're reading it right. Two of our five founders were Judo and JJ guys, one was a karate man, one a kung fu man and Emperado was a fifth degree Kenpo Black Belt under William Chow. So, there's a pretty good mix of techniques and strategies.

 

[MJS]

This is a subject that I have discussed with Kenpo people before and the overwhelming majority have said to me "If you end up on the ground, you've done something wrong." Well, s**t happens and people end up on the ground! You could slip on a wet floor, be facing multiple attackers, fall over a chair...these things happen to well trained people...fact.

While we're not pursuing a black belt in BJJ or interested in competing in grappling tournaments, we do cover quite a bit of groundwork with the emphasis on getting to your feet as quickly as possible. We're not looking for leg locks, rear naked chokes, or arm bars, we're looking to bridge, gain a dominant position, strike and escape asap. If stuck on the bottom, we strike vulnerable areas such as the groin, eyes, throat as many times as is necessary to stop the attack. We drill this as realistically as possible, wearing a gi, wearing street clothes and sometimes with the attacker wearing a F.I.S.T. Suit or other body armour to enable the defender to go "all out" on him. This works well for us and I personally feel it gives me a more rounded approach to self defence as we constantly look at the different ranges of fighting...kicking, punching and grappling.

A good topic to discuss...

Thanks for your input and I'm glad you're enjoying the thread. Yes, I agree, we have many tools to use...eye poke, pinching, biting, etc., but for me, I like to have other avenues to go down. While the above mentioned things are effective, I don't think that is what we should always rely on to get us out of dodge. This is why I'm in favor of having a basic knowledge of the ground.

 

[MJS]

in stand-up techniques the bodies are in a relative position (parallel, foot-to-foot and head-to-head) that you don't often see on the ground.

On the ground you get relative rotations through all 3 dimensions. So movements that make sense standing up need to be re-evaluated when the bodies for example are rotated 90 degrees to each other in the veryical plane (under full mount).

The things you may know about angles, ranges, dimension control are still true, for the most part I think they have been learned in a "2 bodies vertically parallel" position. Picture any groundfighting position 2 people might be in, and mentally rotate them until one of them is in a standing position. Now, look at the angles and ranges of the weapons and his dimensions and pivot points etc etc however your style teaches you these things...

So kenpo/kempo teaches how to assess and make use of ranges, angles weapons, control dimensions to restrict ability to attack; how to manipulate posture and position to give advantage; how to use the entire body; etc and these things all still are true, just the assumption of relative postition goes out the window.

In your opinion, do you feel that the ground hinders you with execution of certain things? In other words, while it may be easy for me to reach someone with a punch while standing, put that same person on the bottom, with someone mounted on them, and that punch will not have neither the reach or effectiveness as if you were standing.

 

[MJS]

MJS: I suspect you have your own thoughts and opinions on the matter. Since this is your thread, care to comment or otherwise add to the discussion?

My apologies for not getting back to it sooner. However, I've fixed that this morning.

 

[MJS]

Ok, I've got one.

I was taught a variation on Thrusting Prongs which is executed in this manner.


Striking Thumbs
Attack: Front bearhug, arms pinned
Direction: 12 o’clock
1. Drop you weight by letting it slump straight down, arch your back, and tuck your chin into your chest. The reasons for this is to make it easier to break away from the bearhug as we are about to step backward, and protect our face from the natural reaction of the attacker to the impending groin strike.
2. Step back with your right into a left forward bow stance facing 12 as you simultaneously execute a double forward thumb strike to the attacker’s bladder.
3. The attacker’s grasp should be broken now, immediately bring your left around the attacker’s right arm in an adducting circle into an inward hooking trap, keeping the attacker’s arm trapped against your left shoulder.
4. Execute a step-through knee kick (lifting) to the attacker’s body, causing him to stand up, as you swing your right arm behind you past the chambered position to generate opposing forces for the knee.
5. Land forward, continuing to apply the trap, into a right neutral bow facing 12, applying a neutral bow knee check to the attacker’s right leg. As you land, without loss of motion from step four, loop the right arm into an inward elbow striking the left cheekbone using marriage of gravity to add power.
6. Cover out to 6.


The trapping and stiking portions of this technique are very close to what I was taught as an "oompah" mount defense.

The mount defense as I was taught it was to

Push your opponent down towards your hips by placing pressure on his bladder with both hands

Trap one arm and one leg on the same side of the body

Arch you hips up and at a 45 degree angle towards your head in the direction of the arm and leg you pinned on your opponent.

Now, take the Striking Thumbs techinque I posted, and extrapolate those same movements to a position where my opponent is mounted on top of me while I lay on the ground.

I thrust my thumbs into his bladder, forcing him towards my hips, pin his right arm and pull him in towards my body, then use my right inward elbow strike in conjunction with lifting my hips and bucking up and at an angle to roll my opponent over so I am in his guard.

It's not an exact translation, but this is one example where the movements of the standing technique are very similar to those of a grappling technique. With some variation, we can translate a great deal of our standing skills to the ground. Though I believe that process can only take place effectively if we actually train it. Merely saying, "it's in there," doesn't mean we can find it.


-Rob

Looks good. I'd like to try this out and comment further then.

 

[Flying Crane]

For clarification, I'm certainly not advocating staying on the ground for X amount of time, rolling, looking for some submission. By all means, do what you gotta do, get back up and finish from standing. Likewise, while we may not face a Royce on the ground or a Filipino knife master, I would think that with the grappling/MMA craze, you may find more people working on ground stuff. I think its also proof from the early UFCs, that many of these highly skilled guys were fish outta water once they were off their land legs.

Sure, we have our dirty fighting...all the nasty tricks that we can emply and God knows, Kenpo is full of them. But, for me anyways, I like to have a plan B, for when those tricks may not work. Kaju obviously does some ground training, so they ( the founders and current teachers) apparently feel that it was a) worth putting in and b) still worth training. I look at it like this....we can take a tech. that was designed for stand up and try to make it work on the ground or we could take some basic grappling, and use a proven escape to get us back to our feet. What makes more sense?

On another note, I have a series of clips that were sent to me by someone who shall remain nameless. They were of a GM Mike Pick seminar. In one of the clips he stated something along the lines of, "And back in the early days, the old man taught ground fighting." Now, is this still taught in schools today? Did it get removed at some point? Maybe I'm the one thats missing it, but its taught at other Kenpo schools. But, I'm sure Mr. Parker wasn't a stupid man and he put that in for a reason. Again, I ask, if it was put in, where did it go? Why is Jeff Speakman revamping his material over what was supposedly taught?

For the record, my intent is not to bash the Kenpo arts. My God, if that was the case, I wouldn't still be training the art for all this time.

I guess the way I look at it, do what works for ya.

I have a very limited experience with ground grappling of this type. I had a semester at the local community college about a year ago or so, the sensei is a high level judo player and danzan-ryu jujitsu, and he knows how to compete in the BJJ method, so that was the focus of the training. We mostly worked on the ground methods, altho we spent some time with some self-defense techniques from danzan-ryu, which were very similar to some kenpo self defense techs.

It was kind of fun and hard work, but ultimately simply not something I was interested in. I didn't find the approach to be something that worked well for me, altho I did fairly well in the class. I am glad for the experience, but really I simply did not feel it was something that was really necessary in my training. That's not to disparage the method or those who practice it. It's just my personal feelings on the matter.

A lot of people have jumped into the ranks of the BJJ groups, and if that is what you like, all the power to ya. But I don't feel it's necessary, and I don't feel I have a gap in my training simply because I don't make it a regular part of my training.

I see a lot of threads here that discuss mixing BJJ with other styles. There's a very very long one going on the the Wing Chun area right now. I think it's OK if that is what you want to do. But it seems like a lot of people take the position that if you DON'T do it, you have some serious gaps in your methods. I do not believe that is inherently true.

Could you gain something by adding BJJ to your training? I imagine so.

But MUST you do so in order to have good self defense skills? I don't believe so. I believe that any method will give one the tools to successfully defend oneself if trained properly, including against a grapple-type attack. I don't believe adding BJJ is necessary. But neither do I object to it when people do so.

Our method of kenpo does have material to address a grappling/ground situation in a self defense scenario. I think it's solid material. I would never enter a BJJ tournament armed with this method alone. But like I mentioned previously, it's not meant to win a gruelling grappling tournament. It's simply meant to get me home safe if I run into the wrong guy.

Really, the grand ultimate self defense skill is to simply not be there when the **** hits the fan. I've accomplished this in two ways: 1) I don't hang out in places where trouble is likely to happen, thus trouble has rarely found me; and 2) when trouble has found me, my nike-jitsu has always served me well.

 

[Kembudo-Kai Kempoka]

For clarification, I'm certainly not advocating staying on the ground for X amount of time, rolling, looking for some submission. By all means, do what you gotta do, get back up and finish from standing. Likewise, while we may not face a Royce on the ground or a Filipino knife master, I would think that with the grappling/MMA craze, you may find more people working on ground stuff. I think its also proof from the early UFCs, that many of these highly skilled guys were fish outta water once they were off their land legs.

Sure, we have our dirty fighting...all the nasty tricks that we can emply and God knows, Kenpo is full of them. But, for me anyways, I like to have a plan B, for when those tricks may not work. Kaju obviously does some ground training, so they ( the founders and current teachers) apparently feel that it was a) worth putting in and b) still worth training. I look at it like this....we can take a tech. that was designed for stand up and try to make it work on the ground or we could take some basic grappling, and use a proven escape to get us back to our feet. What makes more sense?

On another note, I have a series of clips that were sent to me by someone who shall remain nameless. They were of a GM Mike Pick seminar. In one of the clips he stated something along the lines of, "And back in the early days, the old man taught ground fighting." Now, is this still taught in schools today? Did it get removed at some point? Maybe I'm the one thats missing it, but its taught at other Kenpo schools. But, I'm sure Mr. Parker wasn't a stupid man and he put that in for a reason. Again, I ask, if it was put in, where did it go? Why is Jeff Speakman revamping his material over what was supposedly taught?

For the record, my intent is not to bash the Kenpo arts. My God, if that was the case, I wouldn't still be training the art for all this time.

Jeff isn't even remotely an old-school kenpoist; can't revamp, cuz he never saw it. Comparatively he's a new kid on the block. He was new when guys like Trejo and Tatum were established. And there were guys who were established when Tatum and Trejo were up and coming color and brown belts...THAT generation are the ones who got the kenpo ground stuff. And it's largely what you've described as Mr. Tracy describing. Mostly, guys who came up during the 50's and early-to-mid 60's. Jeff didn't come in until the early to mid eighties.

Mr. Parker stopped doing it, cuz it was bad for business expansion...not something women and kids might want to do with their play time. Decided it was finincially more beneficial to enroll families, then just alpha male brawlers.

On a similar note, I had lunch the other day with a GM level inheritor of one of the Chow lineages. He also does Danzan-Ryu, as do many kenpoists and judoka in/from Hawaii. He recounted for me the name and training locations of Mr. Parkers judo days. The reason he had started judo was that this judo instructor...at about 140 pounds...tied Mr. Parker in a knot. Back then, they didn;t use weight classes in Hawaii. You got Number 1 status by beating everyone there was to beat, and this little guy was number one.

The DZR connection is another unsung, little appreciated connection with kenpo. Watching DZR training, tests, demo's, you can see where a lions share of the moves in kenpo came from...watching it, you go, "OMG...that's Crashing Wings...and that's Locked Wing, and that's Cross of Destruction, ...." and so on.

Interesting thing about the kajukenbo endings versus the kenpo endings. Early day extensions; there were mebbe a dozen of them that just kept getting tagged onto the end of base techniques. Almost every technique ended in throwing the guy down, kneeling next to him with an arm-bar or pin, then punching and stomping on him. Later came all the "cover out to X:00" stuff, leaving the guy standing or just stopping mid-brawl.

Funny story about Pick and ground stuff that one of the oldsters relates...involves him beating up a challenge match guy in the Pas studio, basically being knee-up on him and hitting him. This oldster and Parker walk in, see what's happening, and ask what it is all about; Pick says this judo guy came in saying kenpo doesn't work. Parker asks if the guy signed a waiver; nope. So Parker hands Pick a waiver, and he beats the guy until he signs it; Parker walks on by into the office and closes the door behind him. Apparently, things were different back in the day.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

They were of a GM Mike Pick seminar. In one of the clips he stated something along the lines of, "And back in the early days, the old man taught ground fighting." Now, is this still taught in schools today? Did it get removed at some point? Maybe I'm the one thats missing it, but its taught at other Kenpo schools. But, I'm sure Mr. Parker wasn't a stupid man and he put that in for a reason. Again, I ask, if it was put in, where did it go? Why is Jeff Speakman revamping his material over what was supposedly taught?

For the record, my intent is not to bash the Kenpo arts. My God, if that was the case, I wouldn't still be training the art for all this time.

I would be interested in some cross documentation of this being backed up.

(not just hearsay but of some thing demonstrating that Parker was showing ground techniques and not just take downs to strikes) I'm just curious by nature!

 

[Kembudo-Kai Kempoka]

I would be interested in some cross documentation of this being backed up.

(not just hearsay but of some thing demonstrating that Parker was showing ground techniques and not just take downs to strikes) I'm just curious by nature!

Maybe I can help. My first "straight" Parker kenpo instructor was Robert Perry, whom I started with in 1974/5, having moved over from Hawaii, where I started kenpo in 1971. Mr. Perry's classes always started with warm up calisthenics, followed by basics drills. Many of those basics drills were done from the ground, for grounded fighting. You know that Gracie trick...stamping with your insteps at the knees of a guy who is standing, while you're on your back? Those, and lots of variations of those...rolling onto one side from the back, to deliver kneeling side thrust kicks, etc. Breakfalls, throws, judo pins, and strikes from various pin positions.

Politically and financially, Perry had already broken from Parker. They were still friends; Perry just didn't want to throw more money at the franchise agreement, so he quit it. In the wings were several changes...Mr. Parker was changing some of the forms and sets, techniques, and extensions; constantly adding stuff or changing it. Every couple years, he would announce the need for everyone to get caught up on the changes, and everytime he did it, some bunch of guys would leave his fold. Many often came by Perry's school, so I would hear/see all over again the differences. "Mr. Parker wants us to stop doing this (demo some thing), and start doing this (demo some other thing) instead...well I'm not gonna do it".

One of those things was to stop the ground fighting. Old timers still around who will probably remember that stuff? Doc, who is on this board; Tom Kelly, who can be found in the Yahoo Yellow Pages; Steve LaBounty; Bob White; Mike Pick; Dave Hebler; and the list goes on.

Mr. White has a BBQ at the house after seminars. I've been to a few while oldsters from BKF, Trejo, and others, are also there. And they would kvetch about how glad they were to not have to do those drills anymore, cuz they wore you out, and led to rug burns (carpets back then, not puzzle mats). I in no way consider myself an oldster, but would be one of the few who actually remembered doing the drills, because of my time at Perry's. Add to that...I'm having lunch with Olohe Kaihewalu at a mutual friends house, and we start talking about Perry and old kenpo...and he asks me if I still train or teach the old ground stuff they used to drill at Perry's. Reminding that we used to spar with one man up, and one man down...down man not allowed to stand up, but being required to exchange volleys from on the ground, allowed to pull the other guy down if he wanted to, and could.

These guys are all real, all alive, ... and "business" with interschool rivalries back in the day had guys like Tino Tuiolesega and other dinosaurs from Parkers schools going out to "visit" trash-talkers, and actually using these skills in knock-down/drag-out slug fests, doing "ground and pound" before it had a nickname in popular martial arts culture. Bug Doc...he has footage of the old ground-fighting drills in black and white, 16mm format (incidentally, from the days when everyone was still wearing white gi's...that would place it in the 60's); if you go hang with him in the studio, you might be around when the rendered copy is playing in the background. Me? I just got memories of throwing thousands of strikes from different ground positions, and have some funky hernias to remind me of it.

 

[Flying Crane]

Maybe I can help. My first "straight" Parker kenpo instructor was Robert Perry, whom I started with in 1974/5, having moved over from Hawaii, where I started kenpo in 1971. Mr. Perry's classes always started with warm up calisthenics, followed by basics drills. Many of those basics drills were done from the ground, for grounded fighting. You know that Gracie trick...stamping with your insteps at the knees of a guy who is standing, while you're on your back? Those, and lots of variations of those...rolling onto one side from the back, to deliver kneeling side thrust kicks, etc. Breakfalls, throws, judo pins, and strikes from various pin positions.

This is very similar to what Ted Sumner has described to me, training with the Tracys in the early 1960s. And of course what the Tracys were teaching at that time was exactly how they trained it under Mr. Parker.

 

[DavidCC]

In your opinion, do you feel that the ground hinders you with execution of certain things? In other words, while it may be easy for me to reach someone with a punch while standing, put that same person on the bottom, with someone mounted on them, and that punch will not have neither the reach or effectiveness as if you were standing.

well, yeah, of course it does. also very difficult to get your body mass behind a strike from the bottom It makes some things easier - like using your body mass in a strike from the top!