American Kenpo 1

  
American Kenpo is the first style I will score. Seeing as it is the first style of martial arts I have ever done it seems fitting if I score it first. I do not intend to put the scores of each style on my blog until I have scored all five styles of Martial Arts. I have finalized the scoring system, and am applying it to American Kenpo.
   I am not putting myself as the practitioner for American Kenpo, which would lead to obvious bias on my part because I know what I am looking for in the style to receive a high score. I will be asking an Instructor from the martial arts school I train at to represent American Kenpo.
   What is American Kenpo? American Kenpo is a style created by Ed Parker based on the teachings of Professor K. S. Chow and a mixture of real-life self-defense and other martial arts styles. Professor K. S. Chow lived in Hawaii on the island of Honolulu and was the martial artist who gave Ed Parker his first black belt.
   Ed Parker went on to create the first modern martial arts tournament, the International Karate Championship. As well as teach many famous celebrities, most famous of all, Elvis Presley. Master Parkers was labeled a rebel while he started to create his martial art because of the non-traditional way he treated martial arts. They were not a mystical ancient tradition that must be respected and revered. But, he saw them as ever changing to suit the time. He uses the example of the sport of Boxing. The great classical boxer, John L. Sullivan, would not be able to win a match against our present day boxers because of how far we have come in perfecting boxing. The same applied to the martial arts.
   In American Kenpo the style of martial arts is based off of both linear and circular motion, and brutally exploits the weak areas of the body. In self-defense the rule is to survive. American Kenpo practitioners are encouraged to train and study hard, but Master Parker believed that when it came down to it, every person needed just one thing to defend themselves, guts. The one thing you can’t teach easily was the one thing that was really required.
   Master Parker came up with this system’s philosophy to better equip each student with “guts.” American Kenpo is not just a physical style of martial arts, it also entails a large philosophy to back up its physical manifestation.
I can’t wait to score it.
Thanks
Mr. Waaler