Hi Jason,
This thread will light some fires no matter how much you beg otherwise, but I will try to answer your question.
The funny thing about that statement is that most Tracy practitioners would say it the other way around, that EPAK only has half the techniques (or less).
The math goes something like this:
Under the official Tracy curriculum the technique requirements are 10 for yellow and 30 for every belt after that, through 5th black. A first degree Tracy BB should have 250 techniques, a 5th degree would have 370.
These numbers don't include all of the ABC... variations that the tracy techs include, though the number of base techs should actually be reduced because some techs are split so that Kimono Grab ABC is taught at one belt level, and Kimono Grab DE is taught at another. (With all the variations the complete Tracy curriculum is supposed to come out at 600 techs).
OK, the calculations on the EPAK side are equally tricky, I'll use the 24 tech curriculum because it is so well publicised and popular. Yellow is 10 techs, plus 24 techniques through Green, Brown and up you get extensions for your Orange to Green techs. By my calculation that is 106 base techniques, plus 96 variations, for a total of 202 techniques. Under this curriculum a 1st degree EPAK BB has 154 techniques, a 3rd degree has 202.
Does that make sense? At least this much of the argument is verifiable, and is relatively simple math.
The far harder to define question is, what is the purpose of teaching the techniques. The Tracy focus is to have an answering technique for an extremely large number of variables, the EPAK curriculum is designed to give a fewer number of techniques (concepts of motion), but then use the web of knowledge to allow you to figure out the answer for yourself.
What the best methodology really is, is a matter of opinion there is no factual answer.
Hope that helped,
Lamont
