Kenpo Principles

There are a multitude of American Kenpo principles and concepts. Kenpo is a very scientific and technical martial art where even the slightest movement has a purpose. My instructor, Mr. Steinman, teaches six key principles using a combination of moves for each of them. This is a good way to illustrate them because they are hidden in Kenpo self-defense techniques, and it teaches us to look for them as we grow more proficient.

I came to Kenpo after studying other martial arts, so manipulating the attacker's body is not a new concept to me. But I studied Japanese Jujitsu where we manipulate the opponent by latching on, locking, trapping, holding... all very close and heavy contact. What IS new to me (and what takes an effort to retrain my mind) is the concept of controlling the attacker's body with quick and momentary contact using checks, angled blocks, canceling, etc. As I facetiously tell my instructor sometimes, "They didn't teach me THIS in Tae Kwon Do, sir". While the comment is intended to be humorous, there is also a lot of truth to this. The hard styles of karate and Tae Kwon Do I studied do not include such concepts - at least not until a much higher rank than I reached. In this way, Kenpo throws white belts in the deep end of the pool, and you start learning advanced concepts right away. Why not be exposed early? The student will have a head start when they reach a level where proficiency is required.

Ok, here are the six principles: Two things first off. This is dry physics and theory so I wouldn't blame anyone for clicking on to something more interesting. Second, keep in mind this is FAR from an exhaustive list of Kenpo principles.

Contouring - I expressed concern for my less than perfect vision and difficulty, at times, with depth perception once to Mr. Steinman. He responded that Kenpo can work in complete darkness, because as you grow in skill, when you feel one part of the attacker's body, you know where the rest of the body is. Contouring refers to following the line of the body, but without dragging or leaning on it (which robs power and speed). Once you block into an elbow or bicep, you "contour" along the arm to chop the neck or backfist the temple. Contouring helps eliminate wasted motion and guide you straight to a target. It can be done along legs, up the back, down the arms - anywhere the path leads to a target.

Angle of Incidence - I'm still not sure I completely understand this one, but it has to do with the angle at which your weapon (fist, foot, elbow) hits it's intended target. Angles are extremely important in Kenpo. Striking someone straight horizontal in the chest will knock them back. Striking downward into the solar plexus or stomach will compact and ground them - and keep them closer so your next strike can blast them. Angles can move the attacker up, down, back, or into a follow up strike. Properly used, angles can protect you by canceling an attacker's potential weapons.

Fusion - Most of the time in Kenpo, the feet and hands move much faster than the torso. They are lighter and more flexible. But you put the backup mass of the body behind the arm and it becomes much more powerful. Fusion harnesses the mass of the body to give power to a limb. For example: executing an inward elbow strike has a lot of power because your lats, pecs, and deltoids power it up. But try connecting your fist to your opposite shoulder and strike by rotating your hips. Now, not only your shoulder, but your entire body is behind that elbow. Fusing a flexible weapon to the torso harnesses amazing power. This can also be accomplished by stiffening a joint momentarily. It helps your entire body to move as one unit.

Point of Origin - I imagine this principle comes from Kenpo's heavy emphasis on self-defense. You can fire a strike or block from a relaxed position, even when you are not in a ready position or expecting an attack. There is no cocking or chambering the weapon. An arm hanging at your side can easily shoot straight into the groin. Casual, folded arms can execute all kinds of mid- and upper-level strikes without ever moving the torso. The idea is to meet a surprise attack with one of your own. So there are two bonuses here.
1. Quick response to a sudden threat
2. A deceptive and difficult to anticipate counter-attack

Frictional pull - This is one of the most fascinating, I think, but also tricky to use effectively. The idea is to contact part of the attacker's body and move him by rubbing or dragging sharply against him. For example: chopping into a bicep and scrapping the edge of your hand into the elbow pocket. This one little move can accomplish a lot. It can cancel attacks from other limbs (ground the feet from kicking for an instant). It can bring or suck in the attacker's head to meet an elbow or palm strike with your other hand. This is a very good example of how Kenpo makes use of brief contact (which does NOT bind or fuse you to the attacker) to control him.

Rounded Corners & Elongated Circles - I wonder how many nervous tongues this had tied during tests! I did a bit of online research on this one and found at least one advantage for each of these.
Rounded Corners: A weapon (fist) traveling in a circular motion does not waste time or energy to stop and change directions. You can go from moving horizontal to vertical with continuous motion by cutting off the corner.
Elongated Circles: A weapon following an oval path means that the weapon can reach the target sooner than a full, round circle motion, and apply more direct force to the target. Where a completely round, circle path might cause your fist to scrape or graze the target, a stretched oval allows you to cut off the corners and still get most of the battering ram power of a linear strike.

I have just briefly touched on each principle and there is a whole lot more to them than what I've outlined here. But anybody should be able to see the value of the American Kenpo system and an instructor who takes the time to make sure his students understand these things.

Three Stooges or Charlie's Angels

Ok, the title might be a bit dramatic, but there are three areas of skill that every martial art I've dabbled in has focused on, at least to some extent. These are: Power, Speed, and Accuracy.  You need all three to be effective and most martial artists strive to build skill in these areas. It is also important to keep these three abilities in balance. Too much of one and neglect of another can cause problems. I'll dip into each of these briefly and you'll see why.

Power: This is what the board breaking in Tae Kwon Do and Karate are all about, right? What's the old saying? "If you can break a board, you can break a rib." True, though boards don't dodge and hit back. I would describe power in martial arts as the ability to generate force. Force enough to block an incoming strike, force to penetrate and damage a target, force to push or knock an opponent back, etc.

I was practicing a step-through punch on a padded shield in a rotating line of students a few years ago. The guy holding the shield said "I don't know what you're doing, but I can really feel your punches coming through the pad." What he felt was power. The target was large and did not require precise accuracy. It was stationary and did not require high speed. I was actually doing a combination of three things to generate the power my fellow student could feel.
1. I dropped my weight slightly when stepping forward and made contact with the punch at the moment my front foot began to stop and absorb my forward and downward momentum. Imagine bending your knees on a bathroom scale. The needle jumps, right? At that precise instant, if I weigh 160 pounds, I could hit as hard as a 200 pound person. There are disadvantages to dropping your weight, such as telegraphing, but that's another subject.
2. Mentally, I did not focus on the pad, I focused on the guy behind it. As a result, my brain didn't tell my fist to stop at the pad's surface, and it kept going. Visualization is important because the mental has a strong effect on the physical.
3. I was breathing out sharply at the moment of impact. Now I cannot completely explain how this works, but it does. When you breath in harmony with your strikes and kicks, you get a boost in power that is definitely noticeable. I've been kicked in the stomach and chest hard enough to knock me back several steps. When I breathed properly, it didn't even hurt. It's almost as if your body generates an energy shockwave which absorbs the incoming force. That's what it feels like to me.
So Visualization, proper breathing, and what Kenpo calls the "marriage of gravity" (dropping your weight) are some ways to generate power.

Speed: This is an interesting skill and one that can sabotage power and accuracy if you're not careful. I've seen over and over again how accuracy and precision begin to deteriorate if you speed up a technique combo too soon. Also, high speed often has the effect of reducing target penetration (you "pull the punch" in anticipation of the next move). It really is key to balance power, speed, and accuracy so they compliment each other instead of detracting from each other.

Speed is important because it allows you to reach a live target before it has a chance to move or block your strike. It's also important in Kenpo because of necessary timing. For example: if I don't follow my angled down block to an incoming kick with a groin kick of my own soon enough (Thrusting Salute), I lose the benefit of "borrowed force". In other words, when someone is trying to kick me and I suck them in by deflecting the leg off diagonally, they will step down forward. If I kick them while the their body is still moving forward, I add the force of their forward momentum to force of my kick. If I am too slow and wait until their kick plants down before kicking, then it's only my power because they are not longer moving toward me. This is a good example of power and speed complimenting each other. But speed must be controlled. A back hammerfist to the groin followed by a lightening fast upward elbow could send the strike right past the intended target (the jaw) before your attacker has a chance to react to the hammerfist. Timing is an important and needs to be used to control speed.

Accuracy: When I think of accuracy, I think of what I would call "placement accuracy" or the ability to hit precisely where you mean to. But when practicing with fellow students, what I would call "penetration accuracy" is required. You have to hit the target on a human body to be sure of your "placement accuracy", but you need "penetration accuracy" to hit them lightly so you don't cause undue pain or injury. I say "undue pain" because you cannot expect to train in martial arts without pain. But we should try to keep that pain to a minimum while staying honest with ourselves about realism. In a really fight, "penetration accuracy" becomes irrelevant. You just drive it home. But all the power in the world does abosolutely no good if you can't place it where it needs to go. And it's important to practice moves slowly at first to develop "articulate motion" before you start speeding things up. Fast looks cool, but without power and accuracy, it's useless flailing.

One concept I am still struggling with is that relaxing your muscles while you move can actually increase both speed and power (impact on the target). Ever tried power-braking a car? (Pushing the gas to spin the tires, but holding the car back with the brake) This is what happens when there is too much tension in the muscles, and I definitely flex when striking and blocking. I rely too much on the muscle tension for accuracy (I want intensity, but I don't want to kill my fellow students). There are some teens in my class who are very lose. They are quick, but they chop me in the ear or the shoulder sometimes when they are shooting for the neck. Being lose AND accurate takes practice. Being quick and accurate takes a LOT of practice.

Accuracy is much easier with straight punches and front snap kicks than with moves like a spinning back kick. Try having someone spin you around on a merry-go-round and toss a ball to someone standing stationary a short distance away. Now stop the merry-go-round and try it. Much easier! Turning the head first on spinning moves helps keep balance and improve accuracy. Kenpo doesn't use a lot of these because you are turning your back on the threat along with losing some important, solid structure (a grounded, planted stance). It does use looping back knuckles, windmill parries, and many other circular motions, which take some practice in slow motion before accuracy comes easily.

So yes, martial artists are on a quest to grow and develop from stooges to sexy fighting machines. Ok, I admit they probably don't think of it in these terms, and I probably should clarify that I don't really aspire to be a female spy. I just had to think of a highly skilled movie trio to contrast with the Three Stooges.

Kenpo Synonyms

My instructor often says "If you want terminology, Kenpo as a ton of it".  At first, learning all the terms to describe complex movements is intimidating, but once you get some of it down, it makes things much easier to understand.  When you don't know what a "front crossover to the rear" is you feel kind of silly in the dojo, looking around while everybody else moves as one unit. A little common sense and you can probably figure out what the basic idea is. A crossover may look like an opportunity to stumble over your own feet, but it allows you to adjust your distance without turning your vital organs towards a threat. Where it gets tricky is remembering that a "rear crossover to the rear" (2 Rs) means you move straight back, while a "front crossover to the rear" (one F, one R) means you move diagonally backward. Using the same logic, a "front crossover forward" (2 Fs) is straight forward and a "rear crossover forward" (one R, one F) is diagonal. This is necessary because you cannot maintain a neutral bow stance without getting your legs all twisted if you try to move your forward leg around the rear instead of simply crossing in front of it. So whether you cross behind or in front depends on where you need move.

But I wanted to discuss synonyms used in Kenpo. These are interesting and I'll just dive right in.
A "sword" means a knifehand position is used (fingers extended straight and squeezed together, thumb tucked in along side). There are many ways to use this hand position, but it's especially useful for chopping into places where a clenched fist or flat hand would be awkward or less effective. This is called the "Puzzle Principle" (weapon fits into the target) and yes, Kenpo has a long list of principles and concepts. You can bend the elbow by chopping into the inside of the joint. You can get better penetration for strikes to the throat or neck. You can use a scrapping thrust, cutting into the ribs, and down into the stomach to ground an opponent and set them up for a strike. Lots of options.  You can jab with your finger tips, but this requires some training on proper targets and delivery or you can get hurt. And never strike with the side of your pinky! Use the edge of your palm or the spot just in front of your wrist. You can use the other side of the hand (the area between the wrist and the base of your thumb) and this is called a "ridgehand" or "reverse knifehand".  It's far easier to swing a ridgehand up into someone's groin from a natural, relaxed position than to use a regular knifehand. Upward strikes (like attacking tendons behind the elbow joint) are easier with a ridgehand also.

Hammer = pinky side of the clenched fist. This is commonly used against the groin when someone is attacking your from behind. Hammers are also used against the ribs and the side of the face. A downward hammerfist can easily break a collarbone. In Kenpo, hammerfists (and all movements for that matter) are inserted into technique sequences in such a way that they "feed" the next move or the previous move "feeds" them. If I use an "extended outward block" to protect myself from a punch, it leaves my forearm in a mostly vertical position. It's a very natural movement to rotate your hand a quarter turn and drop the clenched fist, pinky-side first, onto the collarbone. If you just elbowed the attacker behind you in the stomach, swinging the fist down into the groin is natural. By the way, you could easily guess that the technique named "Sword and Hammer" would include a knifehand strike and a hammerfist.

Salute = palm strike. Just imagine a "heil Hitler" salute with the palm and fingers pointed more vertical than at a 45 degree angle. As with any hand strike, it's important that the area of your hand with "backup mass" takes the brunt of the force. With a palm strike, the base of your palm (not the bases of your fingers) have the most backup mass because it is closer to your wrist joint (which has the backup mass of your arm, which has the backup mass of your body). The orange belt level alone has "Triggered Salute", "Thrusting Salute", and "Glancing Salute" self-defense techniques, and each of them incorporate a palm strike somewhere in the squence of moves.

Here's a few more:
Wings = elbow or bent arm
Feathers = hair (as in hair grab)
Branch = leg (the technique "Buckling Branch" involves a kick to the back of the knee)
Mace = fist
Claw = attacking with the fingernails in addition to a palm strike
Twigs = arms ("Captured Twigs" is a defense for a rear bear hug with arms pinned)

It seems silly, but you can create some very kung-fu sounding names for techniques using analogies like this!  Mr. Parker had a sense of humor too, or else he wouldn't have placed a technique called "Squeezing the Peach" (grabbing the testicles) into the system.  I wonder if he imagined how many black belt instructors would struggle to keep a straight face while calling that one out on a test in front of parents and girlfriends!

One last comment: the guy in the picture looks cool, showing all his muscles, but he is in a VERY vulnerable position there! Everything from his front knee to his groin, the inside of his front thigh, all major organs, and his left ribs are all easy targets. His elbow joint is also fully extended, and punching with power like that can damage the joint. Simply dropping his rear fist and his front elbow would add a lot of protection. He should turn his front foot inward so that the knee provides some cover for the groin and it can bend if attacked. You gotta protect yourself! ;-)