Kenpo was made popular by Ed Parker. Ed Parker once said “Every black belt is a style unto themselves.” Ed took a system that was taught to him, and mixed it with other instruction he received to make his own unique style, and American Kenpo was born. Although Ed Parker added a lot of Chinese influence, he chose to keep the Japanese pronunciation of Kenpo for his style rather than just using the English translation of the term, “Law of the Fist”.
The Chinese term for Kenpo is Chuan Fa. Many practitioners prefer to use this term when referring to the style as it does have a heavy Chinese influence, incorporating techniques from both Northern Shaolin and Southern Hung Gar.
Within these systems, you will find wide variations in techniques. This happens because the style evolves with each new instructor. One of the things that makes Chuan Fa such a great style is that willingness to change it. With many other arts, even if a technique is proven to be ineffective, it will continue to be taught for the sake of tradition. This ideology can keep a style from evolving.
To celebrate and demonstrate this, Kyle Russell of Arkansas Wushu and Roger Grimes of Tracy Kenpo have decided to have a friendly creative forms competition using their own unique experience. These two will be posting 30 forms within the first 30 days of November.
The competition will consist of the following rules:
- All forms have to be original and a unique creation from the performer.
- All techniques must be performed on both the left Side and the right Side
- Each form must contain a minimum of 5 different self-defense techniques.
We will post these forms up daily and allow public voting. We hope you enjoy this display and test of skill.
If you would like to view some of the previous work, you can a form demonstration from Kyle Russell at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bj-a7IdVKU
You can find a demonstration from Roger Grimes at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONvpD1gUX0g