Tag Archives: ed parker

Ed Parker’s Kenpo Karate Problems!

Kenpo Karate is Broken!

That Kenpo is broken is obvious. Actually, not to hurt anybody’s feelings, it has been broken from the get go. One simple proof is that the founder himself, Edmund Parker, presented five different versions of the art during his lifetime.

Five different versions, starting with a shotokan karate based version, and progressing through a variety of made up kung fu. Yet, before you decide I am nothing but a detractor, all the martial arts can be found in Parker’s Kenpo. It is a massive system, and the potential is unlimited.

Now, the problem is that most kung fu systems have been passed along for generations. They have had hundreds, even thousands, of years to become developed, polished and evolved. Chinese Kenpo, on the other hand, has not been benefitted by this process.

The first version, the classical karate version, was extremely workable. Parker ran into difficulties with his instructor, however, and ran out of material to teach. Thus, he hired a kung fu artist from the San Francisco area, Jimmy Wu, to help him put together more material.

The next four versions of Chinese Kenpo, then, are they Parker? Or are they Wu? To be honest, they are probably a mix, but of what percentage?

And, to be fair, one must realize that Parker, through his lineage, and Wu, through his, did bring a certain amount of tried and tested material to the board. And, one must realize that the times were rich with material. There were all sorts of systems of karate and kung fu making their appearance, and Parker had front seat through these times.

That brings us to the intent promised by the title of this article, how to fix Kenpo. The best way to fix Parker’s Kenpo is to throw away the rankings, categorize the techniques by attack, and arrange them in order of difficulty. While this has been done somewhat, in doing it anew one will find all sorts of things that were left out, over emphasized, and so on.

The point is that all the martial arts are there, but they need to be arranged in a more workable manner, and only by a more scientific analysis is one going to come to grips with the truth of Kenpo.

About the Author: Al Case just finished revising and republishing his three volume ‘Matrixing Kenpo Karate’ series. In that series he fulfills the promise made by this article. Look for ‘Matrixing Kenpo Karate‘ on the net.

What Matrixing in the Martial Arts Really Does

Newsletter 800
What is Actually Happening With Matrixing and the Martial Arts

Good morning!
The sun is shining,
and then it is raining,
and shining and raining,
and so on.
that makes it THE day for working out!

To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace.

To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace.

I just received several emails.
Some fellow was bashing me on his blog.
He was a long time martial artist,
quoted me,
then proceeded to ‘dissect’ me.
And,
if anybody spoke up for me,
he bashed them.
Nice guy.

Anyway,
I thought this made for a wonderful opportunity
to explain about bad people in the martial arts,
what really makes them,
what you do about them,
and…what is really happening with matrixing.
So here we go.

Here is a scenario.
You are in the seventh grade,
and you are charged with teaching a fourth grader,
you have to teach him how to multiply.
You lay out the problems,
you show him,
and show and show him,
and he just doesn’t get it.
You get mad.
Stupid kid.
Teacher comes up,
she doesn’t get mad,
she just sort of straightens everything out.
Now,
here is what happened:
you had never taught anybody.
You didn’t know all the tricks.
The teacher has seen it all,
she knows all the tricks.

Now,
the people who attack me,
who attack matrixing,
they are like seventh graders.
They have done some martial arts,
but they don’t know all the tricks.
Or,
in this specific,
they don’t understand
how all the arts fit together.
They don’t understand the underlying principles,
the real philosophy behind it all.
So,
they get mad.

And,
think about it,
they have spent their lives doing martial arts,
and here I come along and say:
oh, that’s not right,
you should do it this way.

Man,
am I a threat.
So they strike back
against what is threatening them,
threatening their carefully cultivated view of themselves,
of their construct of how the world works.

And,
here is a proof for what i am saying:
If they knew the truth they wouldn’t get mad.
I don’t get mad…because I know the truth.
I know how the arts fit together,
I know all the tricks,
the gimmicks and methods,
the way it all works,
so I don’t get mad
when these fellows speak ill of me
on blogs and chatrooms and so on.

If you know the truth you don’t get mad,
you can look down to their level,
and see what it is they don’t understand.

The problem is…
you can’t make them understand
if they don’t want to understand,
that is to say,
if they are holding to the small bits of truth
they did manage to accumulate,
to the methods and things that they constructed
to try to make sense
out of the martial arts
which don’t always make sense.

Now,
the specific fellow who was attacking me,
was dissecting one of my Kenpo books.
And it gets very interesting.

For instance,
he claimed I wasn’t a serious student of Kenpo,
which,
in the book,
I explained that i wasn’t a serious student of Kenpo,
that I was applying matrixing principles
to what i had learned decades ago.

For instance,
he said my work needed more depth,
which,
in my book,
I set forth the idea that this was a beginning,
and that somebody should come along
and exploit my principles
to look deeper.

Do you get it?

He was saying things I had already pointed out in my book.

He was criticizing me
using points i had already used to criticize myself.

Not very creative,
especially for so called critical thinking.

But,
here’s the kicker.
in his attack he made an interesting statement, he said something to the effect that he had read my books,
and that at a certain point he came face to face with

a different way of seeing things.

This was the effect of matrixing.

And he immediately pushed it aside,
which is to say,
he held on to his carefully constructed world,
and was unable to evolve.

And,
I will say something else.
In my books I tell people, very plainly,
that they can’t just read the books,
they have to do the techniques,
then they will understand,
then they will get what I am talking about.

I gauran-forking-tee he did not do this.
He was a seventh grader,
thinking he was a teacher,
and he read the book without doing ANY of the techniques.
Without experiencing what I was really saying.

If he had done the book,
instead of reading it like a comic,
he would have been changed,
that different viewpoint would have popped out,
nice and neat and gently overwhelming,
and he would have evolved.

His art would have evolved.
He would have become a teacher,
a real teacher,
instead of a seventh grader thinking he was a teacher.

Now,
I know what I have just said
is the absolute truth,
because I have seen it work over the last ten years.

There are thousands of people who have DONE the material I have written.
Who have DONE the forms and techniques.
Who have DONE the drills.
And my wins book is packed with their stories.
Over six hundred pages of thanks yous.
Of ‘how did you ever figure this out?’
Of ‘OMG, I am making my own art,
and it all makes so much sense!’

So that is the point i want to make here.
You can read about,
or you can do.
But don’t bother criticizing what I’ve done
until you have done it for yourself.

Don’t be a seventh grader,
thinking you know it all,
when you only know what a seventh grader knows.
Don’t settle for that.

And,
that brings us to where this matrixing thing is going.
Let me make a few points.
I love the martial arts.
There is nothing i love more than doing the forms,
working out with people,
it is all a ball.
But,
I left the fighting part of the martial arts decades ago.
I lived in a time that has passed
where i was able to accumulate all the data,
and make sense of it,
and I was able to put fighting aside.

And,
the point of matrixing is to help you do this, too.
To learn how to fight so well,
that fighting stops being a game of chance,
and becomes a scientific endeavor,
where you analyze and handle people
like you are a teacher,
and they are seventh graders.

We are talking about actual evolution here.

If you lived fifty years,
you would have fifty years worth of knowledge.
But what if I could give you that knowledge in a year or two?
where would you be in fifty years then?
You would be at a hundred years,
because you would have my fifty,
plus your fifty.
And here is the interesting thing,
the martial arts accelerate beyond that,
once they are matrixed.
It is not just about getting my fifty years of knowledge,
it is about getting thousands of years of knowledge,
all the knowledge accumulated by the ancients
and passed down,
and finally made sense of.

Let me ask you a question:
what step of evolution is it
where you don’t get mad?

You watch the world
and everybody gets mad.
The politicians lie and get mad,
the corporate bosses,
for all their success,
cheat and steal,
and get awfully mad.
People on the street,
they get mad in their cars,
they flip each other off,
they have road rage,
they beat each other up with baseball bats.
Husbands and wives get mad,
they snipe at each other,
and the next thing you know
the man punches out the wife,
the wife does a Lorena Bobbit,
and…

do you get it?

From the playgrounds of our ‘educational’ institutions
to the prisons,
to the businesses and politicis,
we are a raging,
wild beast.

I don’t get mad.
And I am telling you exactly why,
because I have done the martial arts so much
that I have given up fighting.
Because I understand what frustrations
all those seventh graders are having out there.

Do you want to get ‘unmad?’
Do you want to give up anger?
Do you want to understand,
not like a seventh grader,
hopped up on GMO and vaccines and testosterone and all that,
but like a calm, patient teacher?

Do you like a world where you are out of control?
Where you travel from one conflict to the other,
and never partake of the chocolate cake in-between?

That’s what I am selling,
that’s the truth of what Matrixing does.
That’s where you would be,
if you could suddenly ‘evolve’ yourself.
If you could leap past all the minor frustrations
of a society that is dedicated to killing itself.

Now,
the interesting thing is this:
I have often thought about taking all the books off the market
that are attempts to apply matrixing to other arts.
It just seems to cause so much anger.
People think I am trying to destroy their construction,
instead of enhance it.
They think i am attacking their art,
when I am only trying to make it bigger,
better,
more logical.
When all I want is to take them to the end of one street,
and show them a thousand other streets.
When I just want to evolve them.

My consideration is simple.
Are my books causing anger among those unable to understand
because they cannot do more than read,
because they cannot do,
because they cannot understand the instructions?

Something to think about,
eh?

I’ve also thought about,
and even begun work
on setting up lines of endeavor
which can be closely watched.
I made an attempt at Monkeyland,
and still think about the mistakes made I made,
and how i could fix them.

I’ve thought about setting up a website
dedicated to taking people step by step,
but not allowing them to purchase the next step,
until they have completed the previous step.

And there are reasons I haven’t done this yet,
though I have made half starts.
Reasons like I don’t have the time and wherewithal.
Not very good reasons are these, I admit,
but…that is where I am.

Okay,
hope I didn’t bore you,
hope I actually made some sense with this ranting,
but let me just say this…
the most important course I’ve got
is the Master Instructor Course.
I push it more than any other,
because it lays out the way energy works in the martial arts,
it presents how techniques work.
And it tends to divest one of ALL the false reasons
behind the actual martial arts.
It tells you the information you need to instruct.
It opens the door
to the way of becoming
a calm, patient teacher,
and not a seventh grader.
Here go.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

And,
to all,
happy March,
March is named after the God of War,
so it is your month.
Enjoy it
by working out every day.

Happy martial arts!
and have a great work out!
Al

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/4-master-instructor-course/

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

How the Ignorant Defend Themselves in Martial Arts

How Ignorant People act in Kenpo and Karate and Other Martial Arts

March,
what a wonderful month.
I’m going to work out every single day,
right into April.
You do, too!

I was checking my stats on Amazon,
and reading the reviews people write about me.
Interesting reading.
But crazy.
Let me explain.

I’ll get two reviews for a book,
one is a five star review,

VERY Interesting.. and I like the “creation” theories and methods… JUST what I was looking for.
and one is a one star review.

Waste of time if you are a serious martial artist…poor illustrations…bad

The five star talks about interesting ideas.
The one star just says ‘stupid.’
Hmmm.

How could one book provoke two such dissimilar reviews?

Well,
let me tell you.

I received an email a while ago,
the fellow said:
I don’t understand all the writing,
but when I see the pictures (videos),
then I get it.

Well,
of course,
a picture is worth a thousand words.
BUT
the real key here
is that he didn’t understand the writing.

Here are some frightening statistics.

50% of adults can’t read at 8th grade level.
45 million people are functionally illiterate.
and,
one that is very important,
6 out of 10 households don’t buy a single book in a year.

Let’s consider the implications of these statistics
as they relate to my books.

Out of the 50% adults that can’t read at 8th grade level,
there are going to be a substantial number
who are passionate about the martial arts.
They are going to read what some people see as five star material,
but because they don’t understand it,
because there aren’t enough pictures,
they are going to perceive it as worthless.
At best,
they are going to sense that something just passed them by,
and they are going to be pissed.
Pissed enough to give one star.

Out of the 45 million that are functionally illiterate,
some are passionate,
they live in blogs with small words,
and they are,
again,
angry.
A rich life is passing them by,
and though they feel that something is happening,
they can’t see it.

But here’s the kicker,
6 out of 10 don’t buy a book in a year.
But they do read on the computer,
and they are vocally upset,
when they don’t understand what somebody has said.

This is the defense mechanism of the ignorant:
get upset when you don’t understand something.

Now,
why do I bring this up.
Because I get a few low reviews,
that discourages others from buying,
and the vey valuable knowledge
that is in my books,
is then removed from the hands of the consumer.
The intelligent consumer who needs to know,
but is being waylaid by the ignorant.

Feel free to give a review.
I prefer nice,
but honest will do.

When you see a bad review,
especially if you have read the book,
and disagree,
answer them.
I can’t,
but you can.
Set the record straight.

And,
make sure you are literate,
that your children are literate,
and that knowledge can be passed down.

This world is not Rep v Dem,
it is not haves v have nots,
it is ignorant v intelligent,
and if the intelligent don’t set the ignorant straight,
then the intelligent lose.
So do you want the world to get more intelligent?
Or more ignorant?

Here’s the book which received the reviews I listed above.

http://www.amazon.com/HowCreateKenpo-Creating-Kenpo-Create-Karate/dp/1500930245/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457201795&sr=1-7&refinements=p_27%3AAl+Case#customerReviews

Have a great work out!
Al

 

http://www.amazon.com/Matrixing-Tong-Bei-Internal-Gung/dp/1507869290/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423678613&sr=8-1&keywords=tong+bei

Three Kenpo Books!

I’ve finally put Matrixing to Kenpo Karate!

And, speaking of which, here is a new website…

http://kenponow.wordpress.com

I know you all know of my problems with the copyright infringement thing on the Matrixing Kenpo books.

I’ve just about got it fixed, people are happy, and it’s time to start getting the revamped books out.

The purpose of this new website is to give you an offer, all three books, in instant download, for only $15.

Normally the books are $15 a piece! So this is a REAL deal.

Doing this enables me to make sure things work, to get feedback, and to start the publishing process anew.

BUT, this will only last a short while. I hope to have the books up on the market within a few days. And if I don’t take this offer down then, it will be down shortly after, because when I publish on Kindle they won’t allow me to sell books that they are carrying in this format.

So you might have as little as a week to take advantage of this offer.

So head for the website…

http://kenponow.wordpress.com

and check it out.

Let me know if there are any problems.

And if you want to wait for the physical books, it won’t be long, but this offer is here for right now…

have a great work out!

Al

Best Karate Form to Learn Karate Online

Learn Karate Online Now!

To learn Karate online one needs the simplest, easiest method possible. And if you want to learn kung fu online or aikido online, or whatever, this holds true.

Interestingly, there are a few simple forms out there.

learn karate online

Jackie Chan knows Kung Fu, but he doesn’t know Karate!


Classical Karate, for instance, recommends a high dedication to what is called ‘Three Step Blocking.’ This is a straight forward step to the front and block sequence of moves. You step and low block, step and low block, step and low block, turn and repeat. And repeat, and repeat.

The problem with this martial arts training method, as you might imagine, is that it gets pretty boring.

Learning it is fun, and doing it as a warm up in class is great and beneficial, but to do it by yourself, hour after hour. Boring.

Ed Parker had a great idea with his ‘Short Form One.’ This little Kenpo Kata is only about eight moves, but it covers the four basic blocks in four directions. Unfortunately, there isn’t much opportunity for change, and this basic karate kata tends to get a little boring, too.

Every system has their basic forms, and they are easily sampled. Probably the best one is the square form.

To do the Square form you simply move around a square. Fight foot forward to one side, left foot back to the next side, right foot forward to the third side, and left foot back to the last side, or the beginning side.

First do it by simply stepping, then, when you understand how simple it is, you can start exploring stances.

The official form is done in a back stance, and with three blocks, low, middle outward, and high.

Now comes the fun part, and the defeat of boredom. Three blocks, four sides. That means the form is constantly changing, and you have to go around the square a few times to get the low block back to the beginning square. You will find this confusing.

And, as you do the form, you keep forgetting where you are, and this tends to build up an awareness, to make you focus your awareness in the form.

The real bonus of this form, however, is that it is not just a beginning form. As you move around and do the karate blocks you will find that the hands tend to circle,a nd they circle in front of the tan tien (the one point) which is the energy center for the body. Thus, you start causing the tan tien to generate more and more ki, or chi.

Within an hour or two of doing the form you will feel the tan tien heat up, and you will feel energy snapping out of the hands, and far in advance of a simple beginning form.

This is the absolute best karate form to learn karate online.

Here is the form on video if you wish to Learn Karate Online. Another good page is this article on how to Master Martial Arts.