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.

Open Hands

I've seen Kenpo as an uninitiated observer for years, first in movies, then in books and instructional videos. But after learning from an instructor for a few months, I realize how much, and how many different ways, open hands are used. (And I'm sure there are many other ways I haven't seen yet.)

Of course, everybody knows about the famous karate chop with the knife edge of the hand. On a side note, I find it quite amusing that Austin Powers always yells "Judo chop!" when lightly tapping a bad guy on the shoulder, causing him to crumble like telephone pole fell on him. Modern forms of judo normally focus on off-balancing (kazushi), throwing (nage), and locks or holds, but not striking (atemi) like jujitsu and aikido. But I guess that is the joke!

On the serious side, using the knife edge of the hand as a weapon can be very effective. The contact area is from the base joint of the pinky finger to the wrist bones. Closing your fingers together and pulling your thumb in protects your fingers and thumb, and also makes this edge of your palm more solid. If you deliver all the force that comes from hip rotation, shoulder muscles, and elbow extension through that narrow strip of flesh and bone, it is penetrating and painful, especially against the neck or collarbone. (A smaller surface of the striking weapon with the same amount of force behind it equals greater penetration.)

Some techniques in Kenpo use a short range, downward and forward cut with the knife edge of the hand to create space, bring the attacker's head forward for the next strike, to off-balance him, and to check his height. When I first saw the move, it looked like a push, and I didn't perceive it as delivering pain or even as being effective. Then my instructor gently delivered it properly down my lower ribs and into my stomach. Very painful and penetrating, even though he was being nice.

Let me get off track for a minute, since this reminds me of another moment of enlightenment. We were practicing a defense for an overhead club attack which involves a quick side-step right to move your head out of the path, a right inward parry, and a left outward block to the forearm holding the club. Being a former jujitsu student, I was puzzled why we were not controlling or grasping the weapon hand. Once you block the arm, the attacker can take that stick anywhere, including follow up strikes to your knee, arms, ribs, etc.! When I made this point to my instructor, rather than explain, he just handed me the stick and said "attack me". I expected he would talk me through technical points as he usually does while demonstrating a technique. But he simply blocked my arm and planted the ball of his foot in my lower stomach with a front thrust kick. The technique calls for a front snap kick to the groin, so he was being nice, but it caused me enough pain to make me double over and cough. And I noticed that my body folded at the hips as I was knocked back, leaving me in no position to execute follow up strikes with my stick. In fact, I nearly dropped the stick. The technique then calls for a side kick to the rear knee and a back knuckle strike to the head immediately following the front kick, so there would be no time to recover.  A completely different approach to dealing with an impact weapon from my previous training, but certainly effective.

Back to open hands: An open hand can also check, and there are different types of checking, or preventing an attacker from using his weapons effectively. There are finger pokes, which are most effective to the eyes. There is the "palm-claw" which begins as a palm strike to the face or groin and ends with a raking claw or a grab and pull. The opposite of a knifehand strike is a ridgehand or reverse knifehand. You strike with the bone at the base of your thumb. Of course, there are inward and outward parrys, which redirect incoming attacks. There is also a "crane" hook, where you point the fingertips and elbow down, creating an arch which can trap and manipulate attacking arms without latching on to your opponent. I noticed Kenpo seems to avoid techniques which bind or tie you to your opponent and might allow a bigger, stronger attacker to fling you around. Not being latched on also allows you to transition quickly to other moves or checks if needed.

When these open hand techniques are used in combination with punches, hammerfists, and back knuckle strikes, it begins to feel like you are constantly opening and clenching your fist. Seems like good training for coordination, and it also helps teach you to relax until the point of impact. A relaxed arm moves faster than a tense, stiff one. But my previous perception that open hand strikes are weaker, and you use them when you want to use less aggressive force, has been shattered.  When you take into consideration things like the "puzzle principle" (your weapons fitting into different targets on an attacker's body), open hand strikes could actually be more effective than a closed fist in certain applications.