Areas covered in the Seminar:- Larry Lauer – Relative Body Position
- Jerry Brooksher – Spontaneity Drills
- Bill Parsons – Joint Locks 101
- Vic LeRoux – Kenpo Takedowns
- Vic LeRoux – Parker Knife Technique
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Before the seminar…
The seminar date is April 21st, 2007 and it is being held at the Open Door Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC. This is the second year the event has been hosted here as it worked out great last year. This is the church that both Sifu and Jeff (a fellow student) attend.
On the Thursday afternoon before the seminar, Sifu asked if I would be willing to swing by Walt’s house to pick up his training dummy and then bring both Walt’s dummy and my own to the seminar. We did this last year as well and though they didn’t seem to get used a whole lot, there were several comments by attendees that were interested in the dummies but had never seen one until that seminar. So I stopped over to Walt’s house an picked up his Ultraman and on Saturday morning Maria and I headed out a few minutes early so we could catch some breakfast at IHOP – with both dummies heads sticking out by the tailgate.
Per Sifu’s request, we arrived a few minutes early at about 8:00am. The seminar was slated to begin at 9:00am and we wanted to be set up and ready as the attendees started to arrive. Everyone was asked to be there at 8:30am to get checked in and dressed so they were ready to go at 9:00am. As with most planned events, something is always bound to go not quite according to plan. As Maria and I finished unloading the car, we learned that two helpers that were going to be there to help Donna out with the registration and check-in were going to be “no-shows”. Maria jumped in at the table with Donna and Walt and I had the job of arm banding all who entered. Problem solved and nobody was overwhelmed.
Around 9:00am when things were supposed to be getting kicked off, Sifu received a phone call. Vic was lost somewhere in downtown Raleigh. Not only was Vic not there yet, Jerry Brooksher was with him in the car. After several minutes of trying to determine their location based on the landmarks that Vic was calling out to Bill, we figured out that they were heading in the right general direction and would eventually make to us – but they were going to be late. They did finally arrive at the church parking lot around 9:10am to an eager crowd.
We got started around 9:20am or so with introductions. Bill started with introductions and ground rules for behavior in the church and on church grounds. Vic had the floor for a few brief minutes at that point thanking everyone for attending and then we got started. First on the agenda were some promotions.
Sifu called up Alex Hinkle-Risher and Phyl Parsons – fellow students from TKI – and proceeded on with the promotions. Both Alex and Phyl were advancing from Blue belts to Green belts. Walt had tested a couple of weeks ago and sent in his test for review, which allowed Sifu his certification as an instructor to Green belt. After the belt ceremony itself, Sifu asked if they would like to be kicked in, which they did of course, and he did so.
Following Alex and Phyl, another gentleman was promoted by the name of Mark Williams. I know Mark, which surprised me because I don’t know a lot of people in the IKCA, but Mark is the one I sent copies of the photos to last year. He was very grateful for them but I never really heard from him again until I saw him at the door for this event. I noticed that he was wearing a Brown belt when he first entered and I was struggling to think what he was ranked last year when he attended. I think he was Blue belt. Anyway, Jerry Brooksher and Vic LeRoux were up front and up strode Mark. Vic explained that Mark was a video-only student and corresponded regularly with Jerry. He recently tested for Black belt and was being promoted today! It was cool to see him go through the ceremony and get his Black belt. It was also cool to see that he got kicked in by not only Jerry, but he was also kicked in by Vic as well. With the promotions now over, Vic turned things over to the instructor for the first segment – Larry Lauer.
Larry Lauer’s topic was “Relative Body Positioning” which is a topic that Sifu discusses in nearly every class we have. Larry chose to illustrate the topic with several techniques from the IKCA system, although he was quick to mention that the American Kenpo systems have very similar techniques. The first one was Beheading the Dragon. He requested that we pair up with someone we didn’t know, and further requested that if at all possible for the IKCA people to pair up with someone with the American Kenpo system. I had the opportunity to do this – sort of. The first person I paired up with was Rob Ray.
Rob Ray, who goes by “The Celtic Crippler” on his MySpace page, originally ran a school in Georgia that featured instruction in American Kenpo. He attended the first Kenpo in the Carolinas last year and hit it off well with Master Vic, so much so that he went back home and applied for a school license to the IKCA. He has been an affiliate school ever since.
So, although he has experience in American Kenpo, Rob also has experience with the IKCA system as well. His take on Beheading the Dragon was interesting. When we do it at TKI, the waiter check is close to ‘zero sensitivity’ and is meant to control that lead arm in such a way as to keep it from coming back up on you – that’s it. After we rake the ribs, the arm comes up high as if drawing a sword, and we deliver a hand chop to the base of the skull. When Rob moves, he reminds me of Larry Lauer in the sense that he is very forceful and ‘bullish’. In this case, the waiter check comes down into a looping sort of pinning check, which orients the body such that the attacker sort of caves in at that point, dropping the lead shoulder. The hand sword is then executed to the base of the neck or the seam at the neck and shoulder in a crushing downward blow.
I have to admit, this was interesting at first and after I tried it, I found that it was still very effective. Upon further analysis, I realized that it was still loyal to technique as far as using principles and concepts of Kenpo. Ultimately, it worked, and it was cool to see another take on one of the techniques that I was familiar with.
The next technique Larry had us do was Circling Serpent. In describing this to us as he came around, Larry referred to the initial step as a “triangle step” because of the shape the path of your foot takes. This has also been referred to as a “K step” or a “C step” for the same reasons. Larry describes his triangle step as moving in 45 degree angles. All of this is pretty much the same as the way I learned it, up until the entry. Rob and Larry had a brief discussion about the initial punch used in this technique and Larry stated that he really likes the thrust punch to the whipping back-knuckle, and promptly demonstrated why. When he comes into you off the ‘triangle step’, he is using his body mass to not only take your space but to deliver a thrust punch utilizing all the power of his forward momentum in a thrusting punch that is perfectly in line with his line of movement. The punch has the potential to be much more devastating than the whipping back knuckle and would really take the fight out of the attacker. After this first punch, Rob and I started having fun with it because we realized that when you come in that hard, you really move your attacker away from you, and when you grab his shoulder for the lunge punch to the ribs, there is some additional travel time that you can use to really pull them into that punch and bury it deep in the ribs. Following this second brutal assault, Rob would do the foot replacement and take down but would basically just take him to the ground. He commented that an extension to this is to retain control of the arm. I showed him how we do it at TKI, where the ‘bad guy’ is essentially planted on the point of your knee and we retain control of him. There was one key thing that Rob pointed out and it made a lot of sense, regardless of how you do the technique. When the final takedown is down, I noticed that he brought his left hand up high near his head as a checking hand. I don’t do that. It got me thinking and I wondered: “Why don’t I do that?” Rob stated simply that there are no idle hands in Kenpo and that if your hand isn’t attacking or busy doing something it should be checking. Yeah, I know that too. So why wasn’t I doing it? I don’t recall ever doing it, and I don’t recall being corrected for it. I’ll have to ask Sifu for his take on this one.
Before we got started on the next technique, Larry had us switch partners again. I again looked for someone outside of our school and partnered up with John, one of Rob Ray’s students. John is a very well mannered guy wearing a Blue belt and had an American Kenpo patch on his gi. He stated that since the school had converted to the IKCA system, he had learned techniques up and through the Purple belt curriculum. The next technique that Larry had us doing was Hooking Thunder.
John had stated that he knew the technique but that he was having some trouble with it. We went through it a couple of times, both of us taking turns, and he could see that I was doing something differently but couldn’t put his finger on it. He asked what I thought. I looked carefully and I suggested that he start with the stance. I told him that I was taught to step almost straight back into a cat stance, which puts me just outside of the normal range of the kick, allowing me to crane hand in and ‘hook’ the kicking leg. This turned out to be the first difference as he was stepping more to the side and trying to catch the kick. It was both difficult to catch this way, and it was difficult to control as he was attempting to hold it out away from his body. So far, so good. The next part of how I was taught had to do with how I control the leg. Sifu teaches to lift and anchor the elbow in to affect the attacker’s height and depth zones. I shared this and John tried it. He said it felt better, that he had more control. The last part had to do with the final punch. Each time I did it, John was ‘forced’ to come into my thrusting punch. When he was doing the technique, I was moving slightly away from him and didn’t always come forward into him. I explained that this was because of the control of the foot. I showed him how you can pull the leg a bit as you release it and force the attacker to ‘dead leg’ into the punch. We continued to practice and discuss these concepts until Larry introduced the next technique: Raking Hammer.
I knew already that Sifu teaches Raking Hammer a little differently than the IKCA tapes, and with Vic’s blessing. As Larry went through this one, he described stepping back into a neutral bow for the initial block, and transitioning into a horse stance for the rake across the nose and hammer fist to the groin. Then, as Larry likes to do, he shuffles in hard with a leg buckle and rising elbow. This is exactly how we practiced it at first and we were both having problems shuffling in for the leg buckle. We were not getting in deep enough for an effective buckle. Jerry Brooksher was walking around checking on everyone and we asked him about it. He suggested that we change the angle slightly on the leg and buckle against the lower part of the leg as opposed to the upper thigh area. He demonstrated and it did seem to work, although it seemed more difficult to actually get the buckle. Jerry moved on and I asked John if he was interested in seeing how I had learned it with our modification. I showed him how we drop in place for the initial block, which puts us closer to the action and lines us up better for the leg buckle. John felt it was a good modification and we practiced it a couple of times. Jerry was nearby and stopped back over to us. I simply mentioned that it was how I was taught by Bill Parsons and he was familiar with it. He didn’t really critique the move, per se, but rather he said something that I found interesting. He said that if we study the techniques the way Chuck and Vic designed them, by the time we work our way through the system we will have a greater understanding for the original system and intent of Ed Parker, as the IKCA system has all of the key elements of the original American Kenpo system. He went on to say that the way we do the technique is definitely effective and works well, but to consider learning the system the way it was intended.
The next segment was led by Jerry Brooksher and the topic was “Developing Spontaneity in Kenpo”. The tool of focus for this topic was a spontaneity drill called the Semi Circle. As Jerry described the drill, he stated that because of the way that some people train, this drill is sometimes referred to as the “Circle of Shame”. Why? Because there is nothing that can really help you develop true spontaneity except actually working it and practicing with it. There are those that by purpose or circumstance that have never trained for spontaneity before and are surprised at how they are unable to respond in a way that allows them to defend themselves when they take part in the Semi Circle drill.
There is a build up to getting to the full drill but when you get to that level it will look something like this. You will be in the middle facing forward. There will be 5 people around you spaced evenly from your immediate left to your immediate right. There will be a drill coordinator that is standing behind you that you cannot see. That coordinator will silently point at random to any given person in the circle and that person will respond with a strike. Depending on what direction that strike is coming from, the defender in the middle of the circle will respond with an appropriate block or technique.
As you are learning this drill, you normally do not just jump right into it the way it is described above but rather you will build up to that level incrementally. For instance, the physical layout is the same but instead of a coordinator pointing silently to the attackers, the attackers will simply go in order of their line, say from left to right. The attack would likely be the same from each attacker and the defender may start by simply blocking each attack as it comes in. This type of arrangement allows for everyone participating to get used to the general concepts of the drill. As the drill progresses forward, you the attackers will eventually be pointed to at random and the defender may work up from blocks to techniques – or whatever the drill may call for.
Overall, this drill is awesome. I can certainly see where it helps with the spontaneity but there was one other thing I noticed too. As I work with different people in a technique line or one on one, I tend to sort of get used to them. It’s much harder to do that when you don’t know who is going to b e attacking and from where. Also, Jerry showed how there is a technique in the IKCA system for every angle of attack once you learn the whole system. There aren’t too many other drills that allow you to practice such a full range of techniques. It’s also a little humbling. There are times when the attack comes in and flat out gets through. Although this isn’t an actual fight, it does force you to adapt to the direction and angle of a given attack in order to make your defense work.
All of this said, I didn’t really do much of this in today’s seminar. I was in a group comprised mostly of Orange belts or equivalent training and the techniques that were chosen to be used were not known by all of us. We spent a majority of the time in the circle learning the techniques as opposed to actually doing the drill. For anyone reading this, I am not complaining, but rather just stating a fact. I did get a ton out of this time working with Greg Payne and the other guys in the circle as I was exposed to techniques that I haven’t yet been taught.
I did talk with some of the other guys in class and it seems they got more out of the actual drill that I did. In speaking with Phyl specifically, he was very impressed with his group, particularly the American Kenpo practitioner that was visiting from Peru. He said that the drill was new to him but was working a different technique with each attack, just as Jerry Brooksher had described, but using techniques from his own system.
We broke for lunch after Jerry’s segment and when we came back there were some brief demonstrations. First up was Jerry’s son, who appeared to be roughly 10 or 11 years old and was wearing a Brown belt. He did several techniques with his father dummying for him. It must be awkward doing some of these techniques with such a difference in height. He seemed to do pretty well though and he and his father wrapped up their demo pretty quickly.
Next up was the TKI group. They ugly mugs composing this group were Brandon, me, Walt, Alex, Phyl, and Sifu. We formed a large circle on the mat and, starting with an attack on Brandon, we took turns first attacking and then defending as we worked our way around the circle. The last to be attacked was Sifu and was attacked with an overhead club strike by Phyl. As I was told in practice, I did my best to wear my mean face full of intent and make a lot of noise. At one point, Walt went down on a knee but was facing out of the circle. More than one of us was wondering if we should offer help or wait but the incident turned out to be minor and Walt rejoined the circle momentarily. All in all our little demo went pretty well and was over very quickly.
Sifu Bill Parsons was next up with his segment: Joint Manipulations 101. He started with a relatively lengthy oration and demonstration with Phyl. He didn’t appear to be taking it easy on Phyl at all as Phyl was repeatedly taken down or brought to tap. The points that Sifu was making were all too clear to us in the TKI group but as I looked around to the others in the group, the looks I saw seemed to be a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. It dawned on me at that point that some of these people were seeing this type of manipulation for the first time.
After Sifu finished his demonstration and lecture, he showed us what he wanted us to practice first. It was a defense against a wrist grab where the hand is bent in at the wrist toward the body and pressure is applied to the back of the hand. We all broke off and paired up. I wound up working with Mike, an American Kenpo practitioner that had recently made the switch with his school to the IKCA system. In talking with him a little bit, he stated that he had never worked anything like this before and inquired if I was one of Bill’s students. We continued the conversation as we worked the drill. At one point he stated that I seemed comfortable with this drill and asked if I was able to use these joint manipulations in an actual fight or altercation. My response was that the only person that I was aware of in our school that was at a comfort level high enough to use these joint locks in a fight was Sifu. Although we have been practicing joint locks and manipulations on and off since I have started with TKI, there was no way I felt comfortable manipulating someone into position expressly to point them into a joint manipulation. If the situation presented itself, that was one thing, but to consciously enter a fray with that intention? Nope. Just Sifu.
Mike and I got a little ahead of the group as we did some additional joint locks. He asked about a lock that was intended for control instead of submission and I showed him the basic come-along. He had seen this before but had not been in a situation where he was shown how to get to that position. There were a few other manipulations and locks we did as the class around us worked on the assigned moves. We both obeyed the rules for tapping and all went really well. Overall I really enjoyed working with Mike and I hope to see him again at another function.
We had a brief break to do the second raffle before the final segments were started by Grand Master Vic LeRoux of the International Karate Connection Association. The segments that Master Vic spoke about were Kenpo Takedowns and Parker Knife Technique.
Master Vic started with a brief discussion and a demonstration utilizing Jerry Brooksher as his dummy. Although humorous in his delivery, Master Vic made a very good point right away about his version of ‘ground fighting’. Utilizing a punching combination as a method of entry for a leg buckle take down, and continued pumping a series of 10 punches or more into Jerry as he followed him down to the floor. Once on the floor, Master Vic maintained control and continued to pump even more punches into Jerry. He paused long enough to look up and say: “That’s my version of ground fighting.” As dramatic and even humorous as this was, the point was clear that if you are a striker, you shouldn’t stop doing what you do best just because you are on the ground or fighting someone versed in jujitsu.
Master Vic spoke about relative positioning for take downs, about how it was important to utilize the concepts of Kenpo to get in and take your attacker’s space. He demonstrated several times how easy it is to disrupt their balance and ultimately take them off their feet; at a bare minimum affect their center in a way that allows you to control their core movements. Leg buckles are incredibly useful to this end and lend themselves very well to working inside. He also showed how to use leg buckles in conjunction with short leg sweeps – not the type of sweeps to take the legs completely out from under someone but rather sweeping the foot to further affect one or more height, width, or depth zones.
One of the most interesting versions of these leg buckles and sweeps is the one delivered to the front of the leg. To watch this done it seemed like the person dummying for Master Vic was simply complying with the move but when he came around and applied the move to me, I was stunned. I asked him to do it again. This time I thought I was well rooted. Again, with a simple front leg sweep just above the ankle, he took my leg out like it was barely in his way. No keep something in mind here; I was in a neutral bow facing him when he began this ‘basic’ maneuver. The next thing I knew I was catching my balance thinking I was going to hit the floor.
The next item he covered was the logical progression from the disruption and takedowns. Master Vic showed that the initial takedown is just the beginning of a series of moves. As your assailant is moving in the direction that you have created, you should utilize that movement to follow-up with whatever series of strikes makes sense. If they are falling, into you, you might rise a knee up to the face. If they are falling into you and down from behind, a series of strikes started off by a rising elbow may be in order. The whole point is that this is still Kenpo. Every move has a purpose and should be followed up with additional purpose. It is Master Vic’s opinion that each of your counter attacks should be a minimum of three strikes.
We split off into groups several times and practiced what Master Vic was showing us. We also practiced another item where a takedown is combined with an interesting arm break. During the course of the takedown, the would-be attacker’s arm is drawn out and trapped between your legs. As you turn your torso and twist your legs, the arm is broken. The whole thing is very fast and obviously effective. In practicing this, we had to use restraint to be sure not to injure our partners. So far as I know, there were no broken arms today.
There were some additional items that Master Vic discussed regarding take downs. He showed us how effective a Thai kick to the back of the knee can be. There was a simple combination that included a Thai kick to the back of the knee which typically brings the assailant to a kneeling position. In most cases, the foot is positioned vertically with the toes bent backward. This also presents the Achilles tendon at the back of the heel – a prime target for a solid foot stomp, resulting in disabling the mobility of the attacker. Gruesome if you think about it, but you can hardly argue its effectiveness.
We ended the segment on takedowns with some big leg sweeps like you might see in the movies. Master Vic noted that these were difficult to do and took a lot of time to execute, but the sure look pretty when done well. There was a move in particular that he asked Jerry Brooksher to demonstrate. I think he said it was called “Dragon sweeps tail and clears path” or some other flowery thing. It is from one of the traditional schools of Chinese Kung Fu and might be called a double leg sweep. It was a big long circular path on the ground with one leg that comes up from behind and takes both legs out at once, causing the person being swept to essentially fall to the mat either on his butt or his back. I’m sure it looks spectacular when done properly but I just can’t imagine trying to execute something like this on the street. I guess if you are Master Vic LeRoux and have mastered the ability to keep your assailant standing semi paralyzed in a vertical position, it would work great. For me? I think I’ll stick to the leg buckles.
The next segment with Master Vic was on Parker Knife Technique. He started out with a demonstration using Phyl as a partner. We were using cut lengths of PVC pipe in lieu of training knives. Master Vic did some maneuvers where he moved in to slash and stick, then the partner did the same thing. He commented on where the strikes should be directed, where as the major blood vessels are exposed at major joints such as the wrist, inside the elbow, the groin, the neck, etc. He also mentioned that generally speaking, cuts to major arteries will bleed out faster the closer you get to the heart.
Vic also showed us how the knife could be used in other ways than just to cut. He demonstrated how the butt of the knife can be used in a pulling type motion to control a hand or open up defenses for a follow-up slash or stab. He also said that you could use the butt of the knife to strike with, particularly to pressure points, but qualified the statement saying that he didn’t know why you would want to strike someone with a tool that was designed to cut. Hey, it’s a knife, not a hammer!
Another item that Vic covered was how a ‘real’ knife fighter holds position. He commented on how experienced knife fighters will protect the knife by holding it close to the body using the other hand in a sort of guard position. The knife comes forward for striking and slashing and then is returned to its protective position. This is the complete opposite of what you see in the movies where a knife fighter will be waving around the blade in any number of ways, flashing glints of light off the blade to the camera from several angles.
After this we paired up and attempted to do the same exercise that Master Vic had demonstrated before everyone. I paired up with Clayton, a Brown belt in the IKCA system from South Carolina. Although not nearly as graceful as Master Vic, I think we got the basic movements down as we did this maneuver in slow motion. It was interesting to see – and Clayton and I both noted – that if you can slip a stabbing maneuver and gain the back of your assailant, your target selection and time to strike goes up dramatically. We also realized as we spoke about this that we were moving very slowly, and that it would take a lot of training to be able to move and react appropriately to do such a maneuver. It was interesting to do this exercise, especially when we take a close look at how many times the PVC ‘knives’ grazed a surface that wasn’t intended. When we considered this closely, these may well have been minor wounds, sometimes to yourself if you aren’t careful.
I think Master Vic said it the best when he said that if you wind up in a knife fight, you should expect to be cut. Hopefully you will not be mortally wounded, but you will most assuredly be cut.
There was one other item to note about the Parker Knife Technique segment. Master Vic stated that the IKCA doesn’t have a knife form but there were several students of the system that had created their own. He noted that although it doesn’t apply to all of the IKCA techniques, several of them do lend themselves well to knife technique. With that he turned the floor over to Jerry Brooksher, who is one of those he had mentioned that had put a form together. Jerry did his form and it was interesting to watch. Jerry is quite graceful and watching him was pretty cool, although I’m not sure that it is anything that our school would adopt.
After the knife segment we closed the day with a few maneuvers that are somewhat of a ritual in IKCA gatherings. Everyone stands in a circle sorted by rank and then proceed with something that is known as “Passing the Pain”. Master Vic starts by delivering a back-fist to the solar plexus of the next highest ranking Black belt in the room, and then it repeats on down the line until it reaches the first White belt in line – and then it comes all the way back around ending with Master Vic.
We also go through a line and salute every other attendee. Again, this starts with Master Vic and the lines up according to rank. The highest ranking Black belt is first after Master Vic and then falls in line behind him. This continues until everyone has gone through the line.
Photographs were the last thing on the agenda. We all came in for a group shot and then we did some shots of just the Black belts. Following this, Master Vic was gracious enough to pose with any individuals that wished to have their photos taken with him. As you can imagine, this takes a little while to get through the line of people looking for pictures.
Everyone that was able to got together at a Chinese buffet restaurant. The food was good, the company was great, and it was a great close to the day’s activities. My wife and I finished up with dinner and visited for a while before we all broke up and headed on out. Overall the seminar was great and I’m looking forward the next one.
