The Way of Least Resistance

Before I leave the subject of Ed Parker behind completely, I'm going to delve into something I touched on very briefly in my last article - his hand postures.  I'm doing so because the issue was raised recently on the Kenpotalk forum . A friend of mine, MarkC, posted that he felt the postures were "fake".  Another replied to him as follows: "So tell me again why posing with the extended fingers is some kind of fake.  In fact tell that to Ed Parker and his followers.  This is the form of the Crane and there is a specific application for it." So I replied with the more or less what follows below: There are two types of "postures" seen in photos of quan fa practitioners: poses of strikes; and  poses of "guard positions". The poses of "strikes" are usually what quan fa people adopt for photos. Here's me posing with others at a temple during training in Taiwan: The strike is used in action in the tiger crane ...

Introduction Like any transition in martial arts, the cross step ("kosa dachi" in Japanese) has its uses - sometimes very powerful ones. It also comes with significant, inherent weaknesses. On the latter subject, let me quote from the fantastic MMA writer Jack Slack in his recent article concerning Machida's " triangle kick " knockout of CB Dollaway: 
In karate there is the idea of  kyo , something I was writing about at length this week, but actually abandoned in order to publish my  Karate's Holy Trinity .  Kyo  is a moment of weakness in an opponent. When he is recovering from an attack, when he hesitates between techniques or mid combination, when he is breathing in or recovering his guard.  A cross step (kosa dachi) is such a kyo .  Let me explain why. Weakness #1: extra time and telegraphing First, it is important to understand that the cross step is really a species of "tsugi ashi" - where one leg skips up to the other (or cro...

Introduction My recent article about Ed Parker's basics in 1963 provoked a storm of protest and understandably so: he is the "senior grandmaster" of practically all kenpo lineages in America.  It seems sacrilegious to call his technique into doubt - even in 1963. Well in fairness to Ed Parker, I did find some footage of him kicking in his later years - it looks like the '80s - and I have to say the kick is perfectly functional. In fact, he breaks some boards (something Parker seems to have done quite well) and the kicks and punches were well up to the task. So I post the video by way of "atonement" for my comment that I doubted his technique would have improved in later years.  It clearly did.  Whatever one might say of Ed Parker, he was not one to rest on his laurels as I had so dismissively (as well as rashly and unfairly) assumed. But if there is any "silver lining" in this whole debate it is this: a discussion has ensued about the ...

Ed Parker is today one of the legends of martial arts.  He is the father of "American kenpo" and is regarded as one of the original pioneers of traditional eastern martial arts in the US. It is widely accepted that Parker developed most of what became his own martial art.   And some of it, as practised today, is very good indeed.  But just how "good" was Ed Parker himself?  What did he study - and what did he originally teach? We know that Parker was a student of William KS Chow in Hawaii.  Chow was himself a student of the infamous James Mitose .  While Chow might have evolved the system a little, it appears that at the time he taught Parker it was essentially still Mitose's: shorin ryu karate, as passed down from the likes of Matsumura, through Itosu and people like Funakoshi and Choki Motobu. So it's hardly surprising to see that Parker's first book, " Kenpo Karate " (published in 1961) shows what Wikipedia describes as the "hard...