Originally posted by Ragnar
I'm curious as to the evolutionary history of Ed Parker's American Kenpo techniques.
Where did these techniques come from?
The Initial techniques came from the training and self defense, basics and Keys that Chow taught Ed Parker, along with his many street confrontations.
Did Mr. Parker create all (or some) of the techniques wholly himself?
Mr. Parker would teach run class in the traditional manner in which most of us still do today.... warm up exercises, basics, and then work on self defense or sparring.
During the Self Defense portion he would have a central theme in mind.... say punches. Then he would demonstrate different possibilities ... such as step forward or back...... using the inward block on the inside or outside or the extended outward on the inside or outside and all sorts of different variations...... then would put together a few movements after the key block and have everybody work on them. Soon these techniques were named and organized in groups.
As he evolved through the years and developed the Web of knowledge, he began organizing the curriculum and the key techniques and forms into some order.
A huge key was reverse motion. That changed much of the material. One of his biggest discoveries.
The Universal Pattern also was a great help as the clock principle to diagram out movements and show paths, lines, and many different angles of defense and attack.
Many people had a hand along the way to help him in class as guinea pigs and also brought in questions that he had to analyze and think about which he loved. The complete process was always Ed Parkers stamp being applied so No one person could claim that he did it. Tom Kelly, Huk Planas, Tom Gow, James Ibroa, Chuck Sullivan, Al Tracy, Tom Connor, were many of the old guys in the beginning, of course there are many new ones as well that helped him immensely through out the 70's and 80's up until his passing.
Was he taught the bulk of the techniques and passed them along, or made modifications to them?
No, as mentioned above, some of the material other than key basics and movements were retained and modified, but very few as much was filed because he didn't think much of it would work ........ so he created his own.
For instance, was Delayed Sword (or Five Swords or the rest of the techniques) a technique that Mr. Parker created completely himself or was that taught to him by William Chow, or did it come from something else entirely?
No, these were not taught by Chow. He did witness Chow break a guys arm once in a move that we now call Lone Kimono ....... that is the origin of that technique.
Was there a core set of techniques that Mr. Parker learned from Chow that was substantially smaller than the 154 currently taught?
Yes, in those days.... it was mainly basics and sparring with a little bit of self defense individual training such as "tricks" to show grab releases and an idea of how to break a bear hug etc. very crude
Did Mr. Parker just learn the basics from Chow and create all the techniques, principles, etc. himself? Anyone know the complete story?Thanks, Ragnar
Yes, that is exactly what happened. (or at least a very quick overview of the historical perspective that I share)
:asian:
