kempoinfo.com » Marlon

At Home in the Crane

Marlon — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:26:27 +0000

When I last tested with MSDC, I noted a big deficiency in myself. When exhausted, dehydrated and hungry standing in a crane / flamingo stance was not easy. I was shaky and those testing me not only noticed but made a point of telling me so, loudly and repeatedly. So, nearly comatose on the way home to Montreal I resolved to improve this aspect (among many others) of my Kempo. Eventually, I began to ask myself why do we train such a stance…I mean we tend not to fight much on one leg, right? So, what about this stance is important. Balance is the long and short of it. It trains balance standing on one leg and more precisely the training forces you to find your center and go there whenever necessary. The basic crane stance teaches us to sink into the ground and bring everything to our center(our limbs, our breathing , our thoughts) while maintaining spinal alignment. Before and after kicks we crane in order to return to our center and from there have a choice of where to move next. Falling after an air kick happens frequently in forms and we always correct it because we know that such a habit will serve an attacker well when we attempt to hit something solid with crappy body mechanics and little control over ourselves. What happened to me in the test is that, instead of using the crane stance to find my balance I used muscle strength and tension to hold me in place. Fatigue killed my balance and this should not be. The tiredness that can happen in a fight against one attacker or many needs to be minimized as an enemy. Now, I practice relaxing into each stance and especially the crane. I sink and center, finding my balance within myself allowing gravity to hold me up. Repetition has even made this stance a trigger for me to relax and center almost instantly, even with closed eyes. Now, I can conserve my energy better, move more smoothly and give myself more options than before in any given situation, using this tool. I am more at home in my crane stance than ever before and whenver I am ‘lost’ / misaligned it is a quick and easy way to return to center. My kempo teachers always taught the crane as do I, now I just have a more detailed thinking as to the ‘why’ of it.

Getting Around

Marlon — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:29:56 +0000

Where I am after I ‘block’ not only depends on my footwork but also my attackers reaction to my response. So much of our kempo involves us getting to the side of an attacker or behind them , so the question becomes speed versus technique. A big criticism I heard of SK was that it was primarily built to be effective for young athletes only. Once again I re-examined my kempo and found something interesting, so see if this works for you as well. If my block sends a ‘stop’ signal to the attacker then I have to work harder to get where I want to go. However, should I change my blocking approach I can draw a serious attacker into a place where little or no effort is needed on my part to get around them. This, of course, at first, works less effectively against an uncommitted attack, yet in the end even with when dealing with those wary attacks you can win with much less work. Try it out and let me know.

marlon

Winter and Kempo

Marlon — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 18:59:36 +0000

GM Villari is from the northern East coast and this could explain a big difference in our skk and other styles of kempo. Almost all of our techniques gets us in close and we start to manipulate the musculoskeletal system…why? Perhaps, because our west coast cousins do not need to deal with the clothing of winter when formulating and practicing their art. A big winter coat can provide a great deal of padding, snow and ice means that grounding and footwork must compensate for less traction. So take a look at your Shaolin Kempo compared to the West coast versions and see how the base techniques and concepts are perhaps built with the environment in mind and see what you find.

Marlon’s web log

Marlon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:02:38 +0000

If sho tung kwa is the quintesential form of the Villari system, and it in part represents ‘hands and feet in harmony’, does this change how we look at our kempo? How much do we take out the legs in the combinations and how much should we? Minor adjustments can change many things. Is there a buckle in three combo…more importantly, how much bodily self awareness is needed to make ‘hands and feet in harmony’ a fighting reality? Is there an internal to SK or not? These ideas all link in my mind…