Question about Staff Set

[RichK]

ALL;
I have a question about the kicking direction in Staff Set 1. I was taught Staff Set 1 13 years ago and was taught to kick to the 12-6 line. When I went to the IKC 12 years ago we stopped by a certain persons studio and I saw one of the students moving n the 12-6 line but kicking to the 3-9 line. I got chastised for asking that question and have never asked it since. Needless to say I teach it to the 12-6 line. I have seen it both ways and to this day am still curious as to the direction of the kicks. Is it personal preferrance? Is it what the student can do? Thanks

 

[Doc]

ALL;
I have a question about the kicking direction in Staff Set 1. I was taught Staff Set 1 13 years ago and was taught to kick to the 12-6 line. When I went to the IKC 12 years ago we stopped by a certain persons studio and I saw one of the students moving n the 12-6 line but kicking to the 3-9 line. I got chastised for asking that question and have never asked it since. Needless to say I teach it to the 12-6 line. I have seen it both ways and to this day am still curious as to the direction of the kicks. Is it personal preferrance? Is it what the student can do? Thanks

There will always be many variations in an ever evolving undefined conceptually tailored art form. There is no right or wrong except what is right for you, and your students may change it to what is right for them.

 

[RichK]

Doc, thank you for the answer. I always thought that the case but was put down for asking the question before. Heaven knows I had to change the kicking method and some of the other techniques with kicking motions due to a knee injury.

 

[Doc]

Doc, thank you for the answer. I always thought that the case but was put down for asking the question before. Heaven knows I had to change the kicking method and some of the other techniques with kicking motions due to a knee injury.

I have always suggested that looking for definitive "system answers" is not possible. They have never existed in the conceptaully and tailored commercial curriculum. Do what works for you in your circumstances, and when/if you find something better, than change it sir.

 

[Sigung86]

I have always suggested that looking for definitive "system answers" is not possible. They have never existed in the conceptaully and tailored commercial curriculum. Do what works for you in your circumstances, and when/if you find something better, than change it sir.

That would acquire a hearty and loud "AMEN" from da peanut gallery.
%-}

 

[IWishToLearn]

Dr. Chapel - is the Staff Set in any form part of the SL-4 curriculum? Actually come to think of it are there any of the weapons forms in the SL-4 curriculum?

 

[Doc]

Dr. Chapel - is the Staff Set in any form part of the SL-4 curriculum? Actually come to think of it are there any of the weapons forms in the SL-4 curriculum?

No. Per Ed Parker, they are unneccessary.

 

[IWishToLearn]

I believe it was you who first introduced me to this concept - and please correct me if I'm wrong in recollection or in principle - but until a student has completely understood the physiological processes of movement, putting a weapon in their hand will screw up their progress because it requires a completely separate set of mental pathways to deal with the use of said weapon effectively. Am I recalling correctly?

 

[Doc]

I believe it was you who first introduced me to this concept - and please correct me if I'm wrong in recollection or in principle - but until a student has completely understood the physiological processes of movement, putting a weapon in their hand will screw up their progress because it requires a completely separate set of mental pathways to deal with the use of said weapon effectively. Am I recalling correctly?

Yes, essentially, as taught to me by Ed Parker. Parker introduced weapons commercially because students demanded them so they could compete in weapons forms competitions.

Mr. Parker personally felt that the indiviidual properly trained should be the weapon, and then anything placed in the hands would be an extension of, and enhance the human weapon. To place a weapon in the hand of someone not proerly trained means the weapon they hold IS THE WEAPON, and not the person. Without foundation, the 2 are not compatible.

 

[Flying Crane]

Mr. Parker personally felt that the indiviidual properly trained should be the weapon, and then anything placed in the hands would be an extension of, and enhance the human weapon. To place a weapon in the hand of someone not proerly trained means the weapon they hold IS THE WEAPON, and not the person. Without foundation, the 2 are not compatible.

I understand the point here, but we have to keep in mind that any weapon, whether it is a traditional weapon such as a sword or spear or staff, or a weapon that could be used on the streets today such as a knife, stick or gun, is employed using a proper series of techniques. At some point, if one is to become proficient with the weapon, they have to begin training the technique and understand how to properly handle the weapon. No matter how well trained someone might otherwise be, until they begin training with the weapon they will be unable to use it effectively and efficiently. An otherwise well trained individual does not simply pick up a weapon and intuitively understand how to properly use it, at least not beyond a superficial level.

 

[Doc]

I understand the point here, but we have to keep in mind that any weapon, whether it is a traditional weapon such as a sword or spear or staff, or a weapon that could be used on the streets today such as a knife, stick or gun, is employed using a proper series of techniques. At some point, if one is to become proficient with the weapon, they have to begin training the technique and understand how to properly handle the weapon. No matter how well trained someone might otherwise be, until they begin training with the weapon they will be unable to use it effectively and efficiently. An otherwise well trained individual does not simply pick up a weapon and intuitively understand how to properly use it, at least not beyond a superficial level.

I see you're repeating the sale job that has been put out there. Think about it. On one level you are correct. However given a stick, or knife, or a gun to almost anyone makes them a threat. No skill needed at all to inflict damage. So it comes down to priorities. Why does a person need to be a trained knife fighter in our society? Or an expert with a stick? Now I admit the bulk of my students do carry firearms and I have enhanced their shooting skills with simple body mechanics, but their occupation and my own require us to be proficient with firearms, most don't.

Mr. Parker reasoned HIS American Kenpo was a self defense art, and the carrying of weapons by most was not a part of our modern society. He was right. People are if at all, more likely to be attacked empty handed and the stretch between being attacked with weapons, to needing to be proficient with weapons is a part of the sells job of the commercial arts, or simply personal artistic expression. People do it for the same reasons the average person learns to shoot. They just like it.

The argument that you need to be proficient with a weapon to learn how to defend against it, doesn't hold water. Those of us who have these confrontations on a regular basis are usually attacked empty handed, and rarely train specific defenses for all the many types of weapons that exist because the stats show it just doesn't happen. Besides we'd go crazy trying to anticipate all the many different weapons available. I work the hardcore 'hoods' and ghettos, and truth be told, you're more likely to get shot at if someone wants to take you out. Even a knife requires 'up close and personal' guts most don't have. Or like Mr. Parker said to me, "When a guy says he wants to kick your a$$, he has to bring his a$$ with him."

Even if you carry a weapon, you're limited to perhaps a 'buckknife.' Two long sticks in your back pocket? Nunchaku? You'll be arrested and get pretty tired of carrying them around if you don't. Truth is the best weapon you can train is you. It's the one you're mostly likely to need and use. if you want to do these things, then do so but not under the guise of 'I need to know this to defend myself against all those weapon carrying ninjas out there.'

Properly handle a weapon? Other than a firearm, it doesn't matter. How do you properly handle a 'stick?' Any idiot can pick up a stick a be a threat. A person in the arts should spend time on learning proper mechanics, not flinging around a weapon they'll never use especially when their body mechanics suck so badly.

Mr. Parker gave me a lesson in a restaurant to illustrate his position, (and now mine) on the subject. He picked up a couple of spoons and whipped off some variation of what I knew of Five Swords and blew me away with the lethality of what he demonstrated. Then he said, "You thought that was cool, check this out." Then he picked up an astray and a bottle of ketchup and did Reversing Maces with equal devastation. Then he said, "I spent many years working on my spoon, ashtray, and ketchup skills in the monastery." with a big grin on his face. His point was well taken for me.

And what did he do when students kept asking for a "club set?" He gave them a set that was nothing but techniques they were already supposed to know, with sticks in their hands. Of course if they had the underlining mechanics, it might actually work. But they don't and it doesn't, anymore than it does for an unskilled guy off the street.

 

[Flying Crane]

However given a stick, or knife, or a gun to almost anyone makes them a threat. No skill needed at all to inflict damage. So it comes down to priorities. Why does a person need to be a trained knife fighter in our society? Or an expert with a stick?

Agreed.

Mr. Parker reasoned HIS American Kenpo was a self defense art, and the carrying of weapons by most was not a part of our modern society. He was right. People are if at all, more likely to be attacked empty handed... People do it for the same reasons the average person learns to shoot. They just like it.

Agreed.

The argument that you need to be proficient with a weapon to learn how to defend against it, doesn't hold water.

Besides we'd go crazy trying to anticipate all the many different weapons available.

Even a knife requires 'up close and personal' guts most don't have.

Agreed.

Even if you carry a weapon, you're limited to perhaps a 'buckknife.' Two long sticks in your back pocket? Nunchaku? You'll be arrested and get pretty tired of carrying them around if you don't. Truth is the best weapon you can train is you. It's the one you're mostly likely to need and use. if you want to do these things, then do so but not under the guise of 'I need to know this to defend myself against all those weapon carrying ninjas out there.'

Agreed.

Properly handle a weapon? Other than a firearm, it doesn't matter. How do you properly handle a 'stick?' Any idiot can pick up a stick a be a threat. A person in the arts should spend time on learning proper mechanics, not flinging around a weapon they'll never use especially when their body mechanics suck so badly.

Agreed.

Mr. Parker gave me a lesson in a restaurant to illustrate his position, (and now mine) on the subject. He picked up a couple of spoons and whipped off some variation of what I knew of Five Swords and blew me away with the lethality of what he demonstrated. Then he said, "You thought that was cool, check this out." Then he picked up an astray and a bottle of ketchup and did Reversing Maces with equal devastation. Then he said, "I spent many years working on my spoon, ashtray, and ketchup skills in the monastery." with a big grin on his face. His point was well taken for me.

Nice point.

I guess my comments were probably more appropriate in regards to the use of traditional weaponry. They have little street relevance today but people still enjoy training them, and to do so properly requires learning the proper techniques and methodology. Traditional Japanese swordsmanship, for example, is a demanding art of its own, and to simply pick up a sword and think you can use it with a level of real skill, the way it was meant to be used, just because you are an otherwise trained martial artist is not realistic. Same with Chinese sword, broadsword, spear, three section staff, staff, etc. Sure, you could pick up any of these items and be a hazard, but that doesn't mean you understand how the weapon is meant to be used. Given this thread centered around the staff set, I was looking at it from that perspective, as a traditional weapon whose practice is still maintained by many people today.

 

[Doc]

However given a stick, or knife, or a gun to almost anyone makes them a threat. No skill needed at all to inflict damage. So it comes down to priorities. Why does a person need to be a trained knife fighter in our society? Or an expert with a stick?

Agreed.

Mr. Parker reasoned HIS American Kenpo was a self defense art, and the carrying of weapons by most was not a part of our modern society. He was right. People are if at all, more likely to be attacked empty handed... People do it for the same reasons the average person learns to shoot. They just like it.

Agreed.

The argument that you need to be proficient with a weapon to learn how to defend against it, doesn't hold water.

Besides we'd go crazy trying to anticipate all the many different weapons available.

Even a knife requires 'up close and personal' guts most don't have.

Agreed.

Even if you carry a weapon, you're limited to perhaps a 'buckknife.' Two long sticks in your back pocket? Nunchaku? You'll be arrested and get pretty tired of carrying them around if you don't. Truth is the best weapon you can train is you. It's the one you're mostly likely to need and use. if you want to do these things, then do so but not under the guise of 'I need to know this to defend myself against all those weapon carrying ninjas out there.'

Agreed.

Properly handle a weapon? Other than a firearm, it doesn't matter. How do you properly handle a 'stick?' Any idiot can pick up a stick a be a threat. A person in the arts should spend time on learning proper mechanics, not flinging around a weapon they'll never use especially when their body mechanics suck so badly.

Agreed.

Mr. Parker gave me a lesson in a restaurant to illustrate his position, (and now mine) on the subject. He picked up a couple of spoons and whipped off some variation of what I knew of Five Swords and blew me away with the lethality of what he demonstrated. Then he said, "You thought that was cool, check this out." Then he picked up an astray and a bottle of ketchup and did Reversing Maces with equal devastation. Then he said, "I spent many years working on my spoon, ashtray, and ketchup skills in the monastery." with a big grin on his face. His point was well taken for me.

Nice point.

I guess my comments were probably more appropriate in regards to the use of traditional weaponry. They have little street relevance today but people still enjoy training them, and to do so properly requires learning the proper techniques and methodology. Traditional Japanese swordsmanship, for example, is a demanding art of its own, and to simply pick up a sword and think you can use it with a level of real skill, the way it was meant to be used, just because you are an otherwise trained martial artist is not realistic. Same with Chinese sword, broadsword, spear, three section staff, staff, etc. Sure, you could pick up any of these items and be a hazard, but that doesn't mean you understand how the weapon is meant to be used. Given this thread centered around the staff set, I was looking at it from that perspective, as a traditional weapon whose practice is still maintained by many people today.

I agree with you completely sir.

 

[Flying Crane]

I agree with you completely sir.

Leave it to the internet to compound miscommunications.

 

[Kembudo-Kai Kempoka]

...
I guess my comments were probably more appropriate in regards to the use of traditional weaponry. They have little street relevance today but people still enjoy training them, and to do so properly requires learning the proper techniques and methodology. Traditional Japanese swordsmanship, for example, is a demanding art of its own, and to simply pick up a sword and think you can use it with a level of real skill, the way it was meant to be used, just because you are an otherwise trained martial artist is not realistic. Same with Chinese sword, broadsword, spear, three section staff, staff, etc. Sure, you could pick up any of these items and be a hazard, but that doesn't mean you understand how the weapon is meant to be used. Given this thread centered around the staff set, I was looking at it from that perspective, as a traditional weapon whose practice is still maintained by many people today.

I had a kind of reverse engineering lesson with weaponry that makes me even more critical of the practices I see widely now. Much of my early training was in a koryu bujutsu system, focusing heavily on traditional sword, bo, jo, naginata, knife, and archery. I was also busy cross-training in a wu-shu-type kung fu system called Tien Shan, with an emphasis on fancy-movin, gymnastic-like broadsword & spear. The attention to mechanics during execution was excruciating. The intensity in the kenjutsu fencing would wear out my eyes and brain along with my forearms and calves and shoulders. As a beginner, all sorts of uneconomic, wasted, weak motion. With tutoring and practice, some of the waste got replaced with efficiency, and the weakness was replaced by a strength that grew from proper form, not muscle (how the experienced oldsters could still whip the youngsters who gots more muscles).

Then I took these same basic ideas to my kenpo. Realized somewhere along the line that we ARE the weapon. The most powerful weapon in the human arsenal is the mind. A mind and body connected and trained can turn anything into a weapon. I'm still super-grateful for my weapons training: without it, I'm sure I never would have reached that awareness. Since "getting it", I look for the universals of body mechanics in weapons forms and practice. With that missing, the weapon really does become unusable and inefficient....a liability, even, since the use of a weapon locks the antagonist into a predictable set of behavioral options; hence, if they ain't good at it, they gonna get a whoopin. In the full kendo sparring getup, try some of the moves from Staff Set in a 2-man randori. Most of them will bounce off into thin air, lacking any backup mass or penetration, because the form -- the angles of the weapon in relationship to the mass of the user striking at the natural force resistance of the mass of the guy you're hitting -- sucks.

I've seen some scary-good wushu guys who I would'nt want to cross with a pool cue, and some Japanese jojutsu and kendo gents who would inspire me to run like heck if they happened accross a walking stick. Unfortunately (and this is where all y'all are free to baste me if you like), the Staff Set in kenpo is one of the weakest weapons applications I've ever seen, and it is so consistently weak that you'd think someone woulda stopped it by now. There are moves in cudgel play (read: "heated and aggressive staff sparring") that are transitions...meant to get the pole from one place to another place, with the strikes coming from these "other places". Staff set seems to be all transition, and very little solid "thwack" from authoritative positions (mechanically...sure, you can add more chutzpah, but staff players in the know still have a tendency to laugh at the Staff Set positioning). The closest example I can think of as a parallel...you know that little flippy thing with a knife that switches it from long grip to short grip/reverse grip? Imagine seeing some poor, uninformed guy trying to cut with the blade, using only the momentum it's developed getting partway through the flip. That move's intended to get the blade from one place (long grip) to another place (reverse or ice-pick grip), with the strikes, hacks & slashes coming from the two grips...not the flippy transitions between them. Seems ironic to me, since kenpo guys are supposed to be the gods of body mechanics, that they would have such consistently poor mechanics in their weapons forms.


Just to be a persnickity buttock, that same "striking from some of the weakest possible positions with some of the worst backup body mechanics" thing is also visible in the knife & stick forms. Some of these guys are gonna lose their knives right out of their grips, just because it grazed something more solid than air.

Sorry for the rant. This just reminded me of a peeve.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Flying Crane]

Unfortunately (and this is where all y'all are free to baste me if you like), the Staff Set in kenpo is one of the weakest weapons applications I've ever seen, and it is so consistently weak that you'd think someone woulda stopped it by now.

Regards,

Dave

Good points Dave. I agree with this top statement quite a lot. I have a staff set from Tibetan White Crane that I practice a lot. It's a long pole grip, rather than a middle pole grip, I use a fairly heavy waxwood staff rather than a Japanese style bo, and it actually has some superficial similarity to kenpo's second staff set.

However, the Crane set has always felt A LOT more powerful than either of kenpo's staff sets. It is a fairly simple set, just a few techniques that repeat a lot in different directions with a few simple transitions, very fast, but the techniques are just killer. A lot of low-high striking with the end, followed by a thrust and tip rake downward, designed to rip open someone's centerline, or at least smash down their guard, whether it is a weapon or empty hands. Simple and useful. It's hard to describe in words, without showing. But given that comparison I certainly can agree with this statement.

 

[Doc]

Good points Dave. I agree with this top statement quite a lot. I have a staff set from Tibetan White Crane that I practice a lot. It's a long pole grip, rather than a middle pole grip, I use a fairly heavy waxwood staff rather than a Japanese style bo, and it actually has some superficial similarity to kenpo's second staff set.

However, the Crane set has always felt A LOT more powerful than either of kenpo's staff sets. It is a fairly simple set, just a few techniques that repeat a lot in different directions with a few simple transitions, very fast, but the techniques are just killer. A lot of low-high striking with the end, followed by a thrust and tip rake downward, designed to rip open someone's centerline, or at least smash down their guard, whether it is a weapon or empty hands. Simple and useful. It's hard to describe in words, without showing. But given that comparison I certainly can agree with this statement.

For the record sir, Ed Parker never had a second staff set. Having decided to work from an Americanized Chinese Perspective of training, he dropped all weapons training, until proded by students for competition forms.

 

[Flying Crane]

For the record sir, Ed Parker never had a second staff set. Having decided to work from an Americanized Chinese Perspective of training, he dropped all weapons training, until proded by students for competition forms.

Ah-ha. Do you know where the second staff set came from? Is that something that is strictly found in Tracys?

 

[Flying Crane]

Having decided to work from an Americanized Chinese Perspective of training, he dropped all weapons training, until proded by students for competition forms.

This is an interesting comment. From my experience with Chinese arts, they tend to be heavily focused on forms training as the method of teaching. This usually includes a myriad of weaponry. Why would Mr. Parker's experience with Chinese arts prompt him to drop weapons training?

 

[Carol]

This is an interesting comment. From my experience with Chinese arts, they tend to be heavily focused on forms training as the method of teaching. This usually includes a myriad of weaponry. Why would Mr. Parker's experience with Chinese arts prompt him to drop weapons training?

Heavily influenced, but Mr. Parker all but dropped forms training...