OK, I've had a bit of time to sleep on this and ponder a bit, let's see what I can come up with...
QUOTE=MJS;962071]
Personally I believe there is something lacking in kenpo. I believe that most kenpo individuals, due to a lack of well structured martial arts, key word art, aren’t very good with their legs. Sure their they are good with their legs but no where near as efficient as their arms or most tae kwon do individuals.
ok, by "good with their legs" are you referring to kicks, footwork, both, or something else?
Kenpo has very effective footwork. It's not fancy like capoeira or some kung fu systems, but it's definitely more complex than other kung fu systems like wing chun. I think it's just effective and targeted. Nothing unnecessarily fancy. The footwork fits the purpose of the art: self defense.
As far as kicking goes, I think I systematically learned kicking better in kenpo, than I did when I trained capoeira, which is an art with a heavy focus on kicking. My kenpo background definitely gave me an edge in learning capoeira in this regard. I already knew how to kick well, and I could adapt what I knew to fit within the capoeira method as well. So I guess from my own experience, I think kenpo has a very full range of kicking techniques. It's just how much you choose to focus on it and develop those skills for yourself.
However as a defensive system kenpo is complete. It has a large encyclopedia of movements, mostly, depending whether it is tracy or parker system, it concentrates on efficient moves to defends one’s life.
agreed. And the body of self defense techniques found in most kenpo lineages gives plenty of good material to work with and be a very effective method of self defense. I believe that even if the technique lists were reduced by 50%, maybe even more, there would still be plenty there to meet the needs of most anyone, as long as the reduction was well thought out. Not everyone has the insight to make the right choices, however.
But back to the important point as an art most of it’s forms, in my opinion lack leg conditioning and cardio. The upper body gets somewhat of a workout but the lower doesn’t.
My solution to this problem is to exchange the kenpo forms for forms that would serve its purpose. What I mean by this is that KM or BJJ don’t have forms, using that as a basis, defensive system don’t need forms. KM or BJJ isn’t criticized as a defensive system or lacks efficiency or usefulness due to not having forms.
Now seeing KM and BJJ in a artistic manner we could say that they do lack an aesthetic value which forms would fill. Seeing forms in this matter leads me to replace most kenpo forms with forms with excellent aesthetic value and whole body conditioning specifically targeting the lower body.
My recommendation would be to include kung fu forms into kenpo, specifically northern forms, since they concentrate more on legs than they do arms.
OK, first off, I agree in that forms are not a requirement for a method to be good self defense. KM and BJJ are arguably valid examples, and I do believe that if you removed the forms from kenpo, focused only on solid basics and the techniques, you could develop very good self defense skills. I think you would be missing out on something by eliminating forms, but I can agree that forms in kenpo may not be absolutely critical in developing self defense skills.
Now, laying that idea aside for a moment, I think you need to decide what you want the forms for. You have mentioned aesthetic purposes, as well as conditioning. I will agree in so far that in my experiences with the Chinese arts, which includes Tibetan White Crane, elements of Shaolin Lohan, Wing Chun, and Taiji Chuan, I will say that in general, the Chinese forms do offer a greater degree of conditioning, as well as are generally more beautiful in a physical way.
But I think you need to decide if these elements are appropriate or necessary in kenpo, given what kenpo generally claims to be: a very effective method of self defense. So aesthetic value isn't necessary in forms, if you don't want to compete with them. All that matters is that the techniques found within the forms are effective, and often that means they are ugly and not interesting or beautiful from the viewpoint of a spectator. If you haven't seen them yet, take a look a the forms in Wing Chun. There is nothing pretty about that system. It's got this ugly squatty stance, these cramped in movements, it's ugly all the way around. But it's got some terrifically effective methods and techniques, and that's what matters to people who do Wing Chun. They don't care about pretty, because that's not the goal.
I will agree that conditioning is important. That's my opinion, at least. The White Crane and Lohan forms I practice are far more challenging in an aerobic way, than any of the kenpo forms, and they help maintain that kind of fitness. I think that would be great if it was found more in kenpo. However, you can get that in kenpo by working thru all the forms repeatedly, and in rapid succession. I guess it's in how you train the material. Aerobic conditioning can be there, if you choose to train for that.
Now, it's important to be careful about what kind of forms you might mix into a system. Often, different systems are built upon a foundation that can be at odds with another system. The techniques and methods are designed to work from that foundation, and they work very well in that way. But if you mix techniques and try to build them on top of a different foundation, they often fail miserably because then you are trying to use them in a way that they were never designed for. I know that the foundation of kenpo, wing chun, white crane, and capoeira are all VASTLY different. Trying to throw even the basic punches of White Crane from a kenpo or wing chun foundation will make them pathetically useless, etc. So there is more to it than simply introducing forms from other systems. In order to do so, you really need to build the foundation of that system first, before you can accurately teach and practice those forms. So in the middle of training your kenpo, you suddenly need to retool, start over to build the foundation of White Crane, for example, and then learn the White Crane forms. But the two don't really mix well, because in addition to their foundations being different, their entire approach to combat is also very different. This is why I always advise that if you want to train more than one system, do not blend them in training. Always keep them separate from each other so that you get the benefits of what they have to offer for what they are.
I believe this is also why the Chinese forms that have been borrowed into Tracy kenpo, like Tiger/Crane, Panther, Tam Tui, and 18 Hands, have been "kenpo-ized". The foundation of the parent arts where these forms came from is different from kenpo. So in borrowing these forms, they did need to be adapted in order to be workable within the kenpo system. Otherwise we would have this problem of virtually trying to change from one style to another, mid-stride, and trying to make it all "kenpo" when it doesn't properly fit together.
I know for many tracy kenpoist or kenpoista, whatever, this isn’t news. Tracy schools have “Tiger & Crane”, “Panther (book set)” and “18 hand set”.
The first two forms are Hung gar “like” forms which is a southern kung fu style that primarily focus on their upper body rather than their lower. I say “like” because they are kenpo versions of the original hung gar forms. The third form is self-explanatory
The only other Kung fu form that is worth bringing up is tracy’s tan tui, which is a severly bastardized excuse to it’s counterpart. Some of the movements are their but most of them have been so altered that they have lost all original applications and all basic conditioning. I say basic conditioning because while many kung fu schools teach tan tui as their first form kenpo teaches it as a black belt form.
I've partially addressed this issue above, but have a couple more things to say.
Some forms, like Tiger/Crane, have become very popular and have been adopted by several different arts and schools, outside of the parent art (hung gar, in this case). This form has been recognized as being an extremely well structured and thought-out form, with really solid technique and training methods. So people have taken it and made it their own. This form exists in many different versions, often differences even exist from one hung gar school to the next, and it's even more extreme when looking at versions that exist outside of hung gar. Some versions are so different as to seem like it may be a completely different form. Only certain segments seem similar, and the entire choreography of the form has been altered.
This doesn't make it necessarily wrong. It's just been adopted and changed. Sure, it's different from the original. Maybe in some cases that's a bad thing, but in others it's still good. So this is just the reality of what often happens in the martial arts, material gets borrowed. Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not. Sometimes the end result is good, sometimes it's terrible. But that is a big way in which systems change over the generations.
I practice a version of Tam Tui that I learned from my kung fu sifu, as well as the Tracy kenpo version. They are definitely different, but very clearly came from the same source. This is another form that has been widely adopted into many different arts, and numerous versions exist. The most obvious difference is the 12 Row Buddhist version and the 10 Row Islamic version. But even within these two generalities, there are variations. It can be tempting to believe there must be one original, master version that is absolutely "correct", but I think that is not true. These forms have travelled so much, and been changed so many times, that if there was a true original version, I believe it has been lost. So now we simply have different versions, and they ought to all have value in their own way.
I enjoy learning and teaching an art, so if I were to open my school I would teach kung fu forms. But if I was interested in teaching a defensive system then I would teach techniques w/o forms
You can do this, but keep in mind my points above, about different foundations. If you teach some kung fu in addition to kenpo, teach them as separate and distinct arts, and build the proper foundation. Do that for yourself, and for your students. Not every student is capable of doing this, so I expect you need to be careful about who learns what.
If you train several arts and then try to combine them, or somehow develop short cuts to condense the material, you may be successful for yourself with this method. But often this doesn't work well for your students, and they have difficulty progressing beyond mediocrity, even if the teacher himself is quite good. I believe this is because you had the benefit of studying the complete system(s) and developed a deeper understanding of them. Once you have this, you can find the shortcuts and condensations, and blendings that work. But you students don't get that benefit. They also would need to experience the complete system(s), before they would be ready to understand and utilize the shortcuts and blendings and whatnot. So keep that in mind, and don't short-change the students.
Question for you. In this post, you said,
