While I'm at it, I know Ed Parker, the father of American Kenpo, admitted himself that his art was only ten percent of the Chinese Kempo he learned from his teacher. The rest is from other martial arts or his own creativity. Parker was both a street fighter in Hawaii and a student of Chinese and Japanese martial arts. He created American Kenpo to be a more modern and effective system of self-defense, drawing on both his street fighting experience and his classical martial arts training. While some students break off and found their own art/school/style by "dumbing down" the art and spoon feeding their students, Parker went the opposite direction. He honed and polished what he learned to perfection. He threw out the parts that did not work and added more that did. In my opinion, he was a genius. But I am only beginning to understand parts of this complex and fascinating system.
Now in the transition from orange to purple, I see a shift in focus. Instead of firing strikes and blocks in a steady rhythm (1... 2... 3...), I am expected to use a broken rhythm now (1... 2/3... 4..5). It is easy to see why when you start sparring or static practice. People who strike at you with a steady rhythm are much easier to block or parry. You can anticipate their movement before they begin to move. This is nothing new - I learned about this from other martial arts, but I wasn't expected to perform it effectively at 6th kyu (6 promotions from 1st degree black, most Japanese martial arts have 9 ranks from white to whatever comes before black called kyu ranks).
Another shift I see is in some of the techniques. A theme that runs through yellow and orange is "alternating height zones". The human body bends easily and naturally at the waist. It's how we sit in a chair - how we put our socks on. So mid-level strikes to the groin or bladder send the hips back and bring the head forward into your upper-level strikes to the head and neck. Chops to the neck immediately follow groin kicks in yellow belt techniques. Orange continues the theme with techniques using slight arm manipulations, when someone shoves or grabs you, to expose mid-level targets like floating ribs. High mid, or mid high. But even in yellow and orange, you get introduced to techniques that use leg checks and buckles while your hands are doing other things. I can't begin to sum up everything you learn about in these two ranks in a paragraph. I am just touching on highlights here.
When I first saw Thundering Hammers (a purple belt technique), I thought "Oh, that looks cool. Reverse hammerfist to solar plexus, hammerfist to kidney, hammerfist across back of neck... Nice flow." I didn't even notice that the knees where striking and checking attacker's right leg simultaneously with each strike. No wonder they stress hip rotation to beginners! You can't accomplish checks/strikes with both knees in the same technique without moving your feet unless you use hip rotation. Most people don't know that Elvis was one of Ed Parker's blackbelts. But when you start shifting stances quickly back and forth, or using both your knees to alternately hit one leg, you start thinking "so that's the funky thing he was doing on stage while he was singing!"
Back to the point, we're going from striking alternating height zones to simultaneous height zones. It definitely feels different when someone does the technique on me. When I am getting nailed in the stomach and knee (or knee and kidney, or knee and neck) at the same time, I am helpless! And when it happens with the speed Kenpo is famous for, it's over before you know what hit you! Whatever you were trying to do, it's completely cancelled.
But I should be honest, as cool as the technique is, I think it would take a LOT of application on a body before I could use it effectively if I got surprised on the street. It takes a lot of coordination and adapting to how your attacker reacts. The initial block and strike would be easy and that may be all you need. I practiced the sidestep-thrustingblock-reverse hammerfist on a heavy foam shield the other night. The power was enough to knock the big guy holding it back and gave me a "speckle bruise" on my hand as the impact forced blood up through the pores in my skin. But using both knees to check same leg would require a narrower, less stable "close kneel" stance. You could easily be knocked off balance by a thrashing, bucking opponent. I have no doubt that it could be pulled off by an advanced practioner, I'm just not at that level yet.
I mentioned "the speed Kenpo is famous for". Some skilled Kenpoists can strike a person in ten places in less that a second. But I never thought I'd hear a Kenpo instructor say, "That's too fast, it won't work", and I heard it the other night. Kenpo is designed for one strike to feed you the target for the next. It operates based on the body's reactions to pain and impact. A back hammerfist to the groin brings the attacker's chin over your obscure upward elbow. But if your follow up strike is faster than your attacker's reaction, you could miss completely. As practitioners, we can move with blinding speed because we practice a sequence over and over, and we don't have to think about what comes next. The attacker, on the other hand, is simply reacting spontaneously to getting hit. He is caught off guard and doesn't know what he's supposed to do. To put it crudely, you have to give the guy a few microseconds to bend over (after you kick him in the groin) before you try to chop him in the neck! On the other hand, Kenpo is also an art full of plan B's, plan C's, even plan L's. It does not take for granted that the first strike or two will eliminate the threat. So there are times when your first strike or two is so effective, that the target is no longer around for the 5th or 14th. They either collapsed or retreated.
It's kind of funny: each belt level I have gone through has something in it that I taught myself from a book. A blocking set in yellow, a coordination set in orange, a kicking set in purple. So I spend a lot of time trying to re-program my brain and body to do these sequences properly. What was I doing wrong? Most of what needs changing is footwork for greater stability. And my flashy, kung-fu style moves need to be sharpened and shrunk to reflect "economy of motion" and provide better protection. If I had a video of me doing this stuff on my own 8 years ago, it would look faster but sloppier. I may be slower and less interesting to watch now, but I am more stable, better protected, more accurate, and more powerful. The speed will come, but I have to be patient. Speed without accuracy and power is useless flailing.
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