I teach TKD kata and basics, but I start adding kenpo elements at gold belt, and by black belt my students will know a LOT of kenpo theory. While I have included all the TKD techniques required, i have ADDED lots of new elements, with the full approval of my Master.
Why?
TKD's weakness is hand techniques and lack of "flow"
Kenpo's weakness is kicking and power
My goal is to produce the most well rounded martial artists possible
I've often thought that the kenpo 'flow' drills are an extremely valuable training tool, in that they keep you working a move or two
ahead, which you really need to do in an actual fight. It's like in slalom ski racing: if your mind is no further ahead than the gate you're in, you're in big trouble and will either blow out of the course or have to slow down to fix your line to the point where you might as well not have bothered entering in the first place. The whole concept in karate of
muchimi is the smooth flow of the same limb from being the attacking weapon to the controlling weapon that sets up the strike by the other limb, and so on and on. That concept is there all right, but it's not really trained in a lot of TKD schools, even where many of the very same techs are used. I hate to sound like a broken record, but this is one of the very worst effects of the Olympic-rules competition stress in TKD—the choppiness of the kind of training you do: throw a tech, evade the counter out of range, circle a bit, feint, come in for an opening, back out again... the worst possible way to approach the rhythm of real combat, where every strike had better set up the next one so that you get that final disabling strike in
fast. The kenpo people seem to understand that point very well—though they also have tournaments, apparently... I guess it's not a huge component of the art the way it is in TKD and, increasingly, in karate.
Try telling the Bujinkan guys that :rofl:! Kidding aside, you are right and I agree 100% - every style has burrowed from another style at some point and incorporated techs from another system into it. That is the beautiful thing about martial arts - they are alive and they are growing. I believe that stylistic purity is more of a modern thing where most of the people train for ego purposes and such. I mean, not that it didn't matter back then, but I think we make it a bigger issue today than people did back then. It is best to add to your own personal repetoire and make your own arsenal that much better.
Absolutely. I just don't think the 'style police' were as nearly as big a part of the scene as they seem to be these days, in some quarters (e.g., I've had people tell me that if you use elbows, you're not doing TKD. So then, what are the elbow strikes there for in the Palgwes, for example? I can think of at least three where elbows are a major component, especially Palgwe Pal Jang, where there are exactly two kicks and elbow techs play a major role in the rest of the nearly thirty remaining moves. The answers I've gotten range from some muttered nonsense about 'that's old TKD, not the art as it really is is today' to the remarkable claim that the hyungs are just decorative nostalgia in TKD and are really technically unimportant). I know that even way back, Shuri and Naha in Okinawa had significant rivalries over their styles, but my guess is, æsthetics and stylistic correctness had a much lower priority then than they have now.
I have to say, that kind of thin-lipped purism strikes me as something that dilettantes love to indulge in, like the old 'red wine doesn't go with fish' nonsense spouted by people who've never had had a glass of nice Beaujolais with a healthy slab of barbecued Alaskan king salmon. Real wine pros know that most of those old rules are largely superstitions, and real MA pros, I'm equally sure, are happy to use whatever comes to hand, whatever the approved manuals tell them. But there's this mystification of style in the MAs that we've lumbered ourselves with, for some reason...
