The passing on or "teaching" of our Art (American Kenpo) as a system is an integral part of all of our studios today. Even so, when we appoint someone to teach, we often do so without considering their ability to convey philosophy, basics, self defense techniques, forms and sets, history, sparring, training drills, principles, etc. Wearing a different colored belt, uniform, or even a patch that distinguishes you as a special person doesn't mean you are qualified to pass on the System of Kenpo.  We all believe that it is essential for our students to become true "Kenpo Instructors," and to this end we have them teach so that they can learn how to teach. But many studios have students teach (or should I say show) other students without proper instruction or at least an understanding of the material, rules, or philosophy being taught- the "what, where, when, how, why, etc." In most cases students' only "instructor training" is to recall what they have been taught (mirroring and modeling) and to try to duplicate experiences from memory. While mirroring and modeling your  instructor is normally a good thing, it is based on an assumption that the "instructor" we are using knows what he/she is doing and why. Just because he/she taught us one thing does not mean that the best method to teach others is to do the same thing in the same way (tailoring). I am not referring to the standardization of material, but to how it is taught and why. To further illustrate this point let us examine our current educational system".  We all must go to grade school and finish high school to achieve our diploma (12 years in all).   If we want a "professional job" in the teaching field, we must then go an additional four  years to college!  Yes, four years Plus, ....... just to teach Kindergarten or 1st Grade!  If this is what is needed to be able to teach young children (which, by the way, we do ) should we be any different in our approach teaching both physical and mental skills?  I believe not!  Hence to be considered a true instructor, you need acutely developed skills in several facets of Kenpo.  Until you achieve them, you are not an instructor; you are an instructor trainee.  Let us examine some of those skills.

The Teacher

                  First, the "Trainee" must be a teacher- one who introduces material that has not been covered before. Knowing the correct amount to introduce (so as to not starve or overwhelm the student) is as important as the manner in which it is presented. To Quote Ed Parker, "What is truth for one may not be truth for another."   The material must be taught to the student at his or her level of competence in the Art and the teacher must be able to comprehend and communicate the general idea that underlies material. To be successful at  this, the trainee needs constant guidance and help from an instructor who understands exactly how to teach Kenpo. The trainee needs to know how much to teach and why particular information is to be taught at this way, at this time. Clearly, the trainee must know the gross movements of Delayed Sword, but must know a lot more besides.

The Coach

                  Second, the trainee must be able to coach. This means to enhance, refine, explain, and tailor material that has already been taught. Obviously, the coach follows the teacher in sequence, improving on the student's form, angles, and principles. Technical training points must be continually "coached" and watched for correctness and improvement. If the left hand rib check disappears during the first move of Delayed Sword, the coach needs to reimpress the student with its function and importance. There are numerous ways of doing this; the coach needs to know them. Once the student recovers from the coaching tip, the coach goes back to observing and commenting.

The Trainer

                  Third, the trainee must be able to train to drill and ingrain material that has already been taught and, usually, coached. Students improve when a trainer drills them on the material over and over, so as to etch the material permanently in the student's muscle memory. The importance of this should not be underestimated: extemporaneous response in the street usually cannot be any better than the conditioning the student has received in the movements. To Quote Mr. Parker: "Conditioning and guts (courage) take over where knowledge and skill end." It is a truism that you react in the street as you react in the studio, and that is precisely why the studio must inculcate good reactions. As for repetition, the trainer needs  to keep in mind that "Practice makes permanent, not perfect." It profits the student not at all to repeat Delayed Sword meaninglessly or incorrectly, without timing or an appreciation of the angles and the use of weight. If this is done, the "benefit" of the practice becomes merely a disadvantage that subsequent drilling must eradicate. And it takes longer to untrain than it does to train. Improvement is the result of repeated practice with coaching and constant adjustment. Thus, a trainer needs a clever eye in conjunction with the other skills to achieve optimal results.

The Innovator

                  The last step to complete the process of becoming a "True Kenpo Instructor" is that the trainee must be able to create or innovate. As Mr. Parker said:  "The man who knows how will always be a student; the man who knows why will continue to be the instructor." We have been given an excellent Base System to work with, but we have to remember that Mr. Parker was a constant innovator; he always looked to improve the System of American Kenpo whenever he could. Remember all the alterations or improvements and adjustments over the past five decades. Always keep in mind: "Progress is possible; provided that knowledge is transferred, assuming that motivation is present and innovation takes place."  As with the other areas I have discussed, students have varying abilities to innovate to use a solid understanding of numerous details to achieve a new solution. Opportunities for developing inherent skill at this occur much less frequently than opportunities to teach or to coach or to drill, but a trainee who spends enough time working with students will sooner or later be forced to innovate or fail. The key is to provide the trainee with enough experience;  this increases the probability that a situation requiring innovation will arise.

The True Kenpo Instructor

                  The study of Kenpo is a continual process. It is sometimes possible to bring trainees along sequentially: having them teach, coach, or train. Putting them in situations that force them to innovate is more difficult, but it can be done. Monitor your trainees for progress in the art of teaching as well as adherence to the facts of Kenpo. Often, situations will come up to make trainees become, for a moment, an innovator, extending their skills as teacher, coach, or trainer. These moments are crucial to trainees' development, and you have to make sure that the lesson is not lost, that they do not simply revert to what they were doing before without understanding the new level they have momentarily glimpsed. This is difficult to do, and almost impossible to do systematically or on a schedule. It requires careful observation, followed by explanation and support. But it can be done and it has to be if we are to create true Instructors to succeed us and to continue developing, not just merely teaching, the Art of Kenpo.  All of us need to take self inventory constantly, to see where we can improve ourselves in Kenpo.

To quote an old phrase:   "Time will either promote you or expose you."
Dennis Conatser
AP
Life Kenpo Student
11/98
Copyright © 1998
All rights reserved.

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Perpetrate My Fist!
                 Women's Self-Defense as
                 Physical Education for Everyday Life

                 Carrie Rentschler

                 Bad Subjects, Issue # 21, October 1995

                      Some men tell us we must be patient and persuasive; that we
                      must be womanly. My friends, what is a man's idea of
                      womanliness? Is it to have a manner which pleases him -- quiet,
                      deferential, submissive, approaching him as a subject does a
                      master. He wants no self-assertion on our part, no defiance, no
                      vehement arraignment of him as a robber and a criminal ... while
                      every right achieved by the oppressed has been wrung from
                      tyrants by force; while the darkest page on human history is the
                      outrages on women -- shall men tell us to be patient, persuasive,
                     womanly?
                      -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1870.

                 Marie was awakened one night to the sound of scratching. Thinking it was her
                 cat, she tried to ignore the noise, but the scratching continued. Marie got up
                 to see what all the commotion was. She entered her living room to find a man
                 struggling to get into her window -- he was stuck at the waist. The scratching
                 was the sound of the window sticking. Freezing in fear, she stopped and let
                 out a scream. The man had a knife, and, jabbing at her, told her to shut up.
                 Marie grabbed a potted plant by the window and smashed it on the man's
                 head. She became a madwoman, grabbing everything in sight and hitting him
                 with it. Despite her yelling, no one came to help her. Eventually the man freed
                 himself from the window and ran away, with Marie screaming after him, "You
                 motherfucker, don't you ever come to my place again!!"

                 This is a true story. Violence against women is an everyday reality. Its
                 possibility casts a shadow over many women's movements in public and their
                 safety in private. Violence against women is a systemic problem -- its
                 perpetration goes hand in hand with patriarchal, classist and racist structures
                 of power. The structures of society -- including family structure, sexual
                relations, and the valuation of men's and women's labor -- help reproduce
                 sexual violence as an everyday threat, and an everyday possibility. This
                 possibility of assault terrorizes women, to the point where many feel unable to
                 walk alone at night, ride a bus alone, or even to wear certain clothing. One
                 answer to this threat is women's self-defense. Women can either acquiesce to
                 the continuous threat of violence or fight back like Marie did. A physical threat
                 demands a physical response.

                 Women's self-defense offers possibilities for both reacting to and preventing
                 violent situations. It gives women physical and critical tools to respond to this
                 state of violence. I have taught self-defense for two years in
                 Champaign-Urbana, IL. Champaign-Urbana is home to the University of
                 Illinois, also known as the date rape capital of U.S. universities. This campus'
                 proclivity towards violence has to do with its large Greek population (40% of
                 undergraduates belong to a fraternity or sorority -- the largest Greek
                 population in the nation) and a general climate of tension, including political,
                 sexual, intellectual and racial tensions. Most date rape cases at the U of I are
                 reported in relation to Greek houses or dormitories -- both places where
                 many people live in close proximity, and where the reproduction of patriarchal
                 social relations is most concretely realized. On top of this, the campus is
                 geographically large and spread out -- many students have to walk home
                 from libraries and computer labs; campus staff and faculty must walk across
                 campus to catch buses and get to parking lots. Teaching self-defense in this
                 context brings a certain urgency to our task. Violence isn't only a problem on
                 campus -- rather, sexual violence within the University community intensifies
                 the already existing problem of sexual violence in Champaign-Urbana.

                 Yet, focusing solely on a particular community's violence tends to overshadow
                 the pervasiveness of sexual violence across social categories. Sexual
                 violence cuts across all categories, including class, race, ethnicity, and sexual
                 orientation. In other words, every woman becomes a "potential target."
                 Institutionalized structures of power pervade all parts of our lives, from
                 enforcement of laws, divisions of labor, familial sexual and labor relations,
                 even student-teacher relations. We come to understand violence through
                 everyday experiences, and the relationships we have with people around us.

                 Unfortunately, women cannot trust our legal and judicial institutions, not even
                 the institution of the family, to adequately respond to violence, if they respond
                 at all. Self-defense responds to institutional "neglect" of sexual violence by
                 giving women day-to-day fighting skills for taking care of violence on a
                 personal level.

                 Self-defense education addresses the pervasiveness of sexual violence in at
                 least two ways: through awareness and fighting back. The first step in
                 defending yourself is becoming aware of your surroundings, both physically
                 and politically. One of the first things we teach is how to present yourself as a
                 "hard target" -- making yourself appear confident and aware, in spite of how
                 you actually may be feeling. We signify confidence in several ways, such as
                 looking straight ahead rather than at the ground, standing up straight rather
                 than letting your body collapse in on itself, and walking with purpose.
                 Confidence means you project yourself out to people. It is similar to giving a
                 speech or performing in a play while your knees are knocking and your palms
                 are sweaty. You look confident, yet you may feel everything but confident.
                 Making yourself look confident often makes you more aware of the space you
                 inhabit, and the people inhabiting it with you.

                 Being politically aware of sexual violence means taking a critical look at the
                 responses to such violence. We are constantly presented with images and
                 narratives of sexual violence that portray women as passive victims. Rarely
                 are we presented with images of women fighting back. The threat of sexual
                 violence has created a climate of fear. Even my highly-educated women
                 friends, whom you would expect to be critical of popular representations of
                 sexual violence, question women's ability to fight back in assault situations.
                 These women know what violence is, and they are aware of its systemic
                 nature. Despite their understandings of violence's pervasiveness, they refuse
                 to believe that self-defense offers a way to respond to violence, physically
                 and politically. Many women still don't believe they have options in dealing
                 with violence. To the contrary, it is every woman's responsibility to take a
                 feminist self-defense class -- one which specifically addresses violence
                 perpetrated against women. If women refuse to take care of violence on the
                 personal level at which it's perpetrated, who will? No one.

                 Teaching and learning self-defense is political because it challenges the ways
                 we perceive women responding to violence. Women need to take action for
                 themselves. According to Debbie Leung, self-defense instructor, writer and
                 activist, police respond to only 1/2 of the calls they receive regarding
                domestic violence. In addition, court cases against rapists and domestic
                 violence perpetrators often put the survivor, rather than the attacker, on trial,
                 analyzing her behaviors, dress, occupation (especially if she works in the sex
                 industry or certain service industries), and fidelity. Social responses
                 compound the lack of institutional response. A survivor's friends and family
                 may not even believe she's been assaulted, especially when the assailant is
                 an acquaintance, friend, lover or family member.

                 Becoming aware of sexual violence and its socio-political context is only the
                 first step to defending oneself. Women need physical techniques to stop
                 physical attacks. Fighting back depends upon women's ability to act for
                 themselves. Fighting techniques can range from yelling, running from an
                 attacker, striking vulnerable body parts (e.g., knees, throat, eyes, nose), to
                 crippling an attacker. Again, resorting to more individualized responses to
                 systemic violence may seem counter-productive, but this is not the case.
                 According to Brooklyn Women's Anti-Violence Education Center, eighty
                 percent of women who yelled and ran from an attacker were able to get away
                 without physical harm. Sixty percent who either yelled or ran got away. These
                 are examples of women, acting by themselves, warding off attackers.

                 The key to fighting back lies in the transformation of fear into anger into
                 power. To move from fear to anger, women have to believe that they are
                 worth defending. When you realize that you have worth, an attack on your
                 person becomes unacceptable. In attack situations, a defender's first impulse
                 may be to freeze up -- this is a normal, but crippling reaction to fear.
                 Becoming angry allows a defender to relax and use adrenaline to demand
                 that an attack stop and to follow-up with physical strikes. Most women shy
                 away from yelling and using their full power at the beginning of our
                 self-defense courses. They tend to keep their power inside, almost as if their
                 strength is something to hide or keep secret. These students look surprised
                 when they yell "No!" and hit a padded target with exceptional force, throwing
                 the pad holder backwards by a foot (padded targets are foam-filled
                 rectangular devices that you can hit without getting hurt). Self-defense as
                 physical education means developing the strength that comes from combining
                 physical techniques. We educate women to do whatever is necessary to get
                 away from an attacker, while insuring that the attacker cannot continue the
                 attack.

                 Combining verbal and physical techniques increases women's strength. In an
                 attack situation, using your voice transforms fear into anger into power by
                 pushing energy out at an attacker, just as hitting a padded target and yelling
                 will be much more powerful than if you just hit the target. When we discuss
                 using your voice in our self-defense classes, I always like to tell a story of how
                 one woman verbally demanded that her attacker stop his attack, while using
                 only one other physical technique. Here's the story. An elderly woman in
                Chicago awoke one night to find an armed young man standing over her,
                 wanting to rape her. He was undressed. As he climbed over her, she grabbed
                 him by the testicles, refusing to let them go despite the man's requests and
                 called the police. She held him by the testicles until the police arrived. We can
                 safely assume that this woman was not as physically strong as her young
                 attacker, but she combined verbal demands that he stop attacking her with
                 one physical technique. In this way, she was able to stop an attack, and
                 insured that he could not continue the attack. Fighting necessarily requires a
                 combination of techniques: verbally demanding that an attacker stop
                 attacking, yelling loudly to attract attention of any people in the area, striking
                 the attacker to make him/her stop, and running to get away. All of these
                 techniques combined increase women's ability to become a hard target and
                 to stop an attack.

                 Teaching self-defense must be part of a larger political project. Self-defense
                 cannot eradicate violence. Ending sexual violence requires a systemic
                 response -- one which dismantles the very foundations of patriarchy and its
                 interconnections with other forms of domination. Self-defense cannot do this,
                 in part, because it criticizes patriarchy on an everyday level, not in its
                 constitution of the social order. Self-defense does, however, prepare women
                 for violent situations which threaten them until patriarchy is permanently
                 dismantled.

                 Self-defense education helps women demystify myths about sexual violence
                 and to act against violence. How many times have we heard that a woman
                 was asking for it, or that a woman was lucky that she survived an assault?
                 When a women survives an assault, she wasn't lucky, she was strong.
                 Self-defense teaches women to say "No!" to sexual violence in ways that
                 cannot be ignored.

                 As I continue to teach self-defense, I see how politicized and controversial
                 teaching women to stand up and fight for themselves can be. Self-defense
                 teaching is an activist pedagogy. Students leave our self-defense classes
                 with skills and information to change their perceptions of violence and their
                 responses to it. Self-defense education has both immediate and long-term
                 effects. I've spoken with women who took our self-defense courses a couple
                 of years ago, and they all have stories about how they've used self-defense
                 techniques when they were harassed in bars or grabbed by men wanting to
                 take them somewhere. The tools we give women endure, because these
                 women no longer accept violence in their lives. Our bodies remember what it
                 feels like to be strong, to hit a padded target with power. Physical agency
                 becomes political agency when women leave the classroom and disable their
                 attackers.

                 Self-defense education demystifies violence against women as a necessary
                 "given" -- as something we should unquestioningly accept. In this way,
                 self-defense is political on an everyday level. It gives women the ability to
                 cope with certain experiences of patriarchal control. For example, women can
                 learn how to respond to harassment, catcalls, unwanted advances of any
                 kind, domestic arguments, being followed, and physical attacks. Self-defense
                 gives women options for assessing a situation's level of threat and fighting
                 back. Despite the systemic nature of violence against women, we must
                 remember that people have always acted against domination. Self-defense
                 education physically dismantles the violent oppression of women.

                 For Further Reading

                      Caignon, Denise and Gail Groves, eds. Her Wits About Her:
                      Self-defense Success Stories by Women (Harper & Row, 1987).
                      Leung, Debbie. Self-Defense: The Womanly Art of Self-Care, Intuition
                      and Choice (Tacoma, WA: R&M Press, 1991).
                      Medea, Andra and Kathleen Thompson. Against Rape: A Survival
                      Manual for Women: How to Avoid Entrapment and How to Cope with
                      Rape Physically and Emotionally (New York: Farrar, Strauss and
                      Giroux, 1974).
                      Nelson, Joan M. Self-Defense: Steps to Success (Champaign, IL:
                      Leisure Press, 1991).
                      Strain, Peg. A Window to Freedom: Basic Skills for Personal Safety
                      (Open Way Safety Alliance, 1993).

                 I want to thank Jacq Madden, Katherine Coyle and Diane Long, without whom
                this paper would not have been possible, and Jonathan Sterne for his incisive
                 comments and keen editing.
 

                 In addition to being a self-defense instructor, Carrie
                 Rentschler is a graduate student in Speech Communication at
                 the University of Illinois. Her current interests are in
                 feminist political theory and the labor history of women
                 service workers. Her email address is: rntschlr@uiuc.edu

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"STICKING" - MAINTAINING GROWTH
-by Professor Joe Lansdale

Lansdale's Self Defense Systems
June 09, 1999
Volume 2, Issue 1
(reprinted with author's permission)

Shen Chuan Review

"... every repeated mental or physical action, whether positive or negative in nature, begins to build up in the subconscious to form a habit.."- - H.E. Davey (Unlocking The Secrets of Aiki-Jujutsu)
 

 "STICKING" - MAINTAINING GROWTH
Sticking is one of our principles of self defense. This is also a principle of many of the best martial arts, but there's another kind of sticking.

Sticking to task.

It's always easier to quit than to continue. Even if it's something you enjoy. It happens all the time. Even missing training now and then can lead to more missing. It doesn't take much to break the habit of training, because training requires effort.

Delayed progress can cause a student to quit. They reach a certain level, then feel as if they just can't break out of the box they're in, or fear they may even be slipping backwards, so they become discouraged.

I call this Plateau syndrome. All students and instructors experience it. Most students can't overcome it. Many instructors can't. Riding this wave up and over is the key to being a good martial artist. But before we discuss plateaus, let's discuss the kind of students you see in a martial arts school. Many are good, solid dedicated students, but the following are a variety that we encounter on a regular basis.

I've been a student and/or taught, or been involved with students of the martial arts all my life. I used to teach privately, or held small classes in semi-privacy, and eventually I began to operate a school. But no matter how I trained or taught, I encountered the same kind of students from year to year.

One of the most common is what I call the Fisher. He's fishing for what he wants, but he doesn't know what it is. First off, I'm a big believer in cross training, examination of other systems, but not for the hell of it.

You end up dabbling if you take a little Judo, a little karate, a little this, a little that. You talk to someone who is twenty-one and they've taken seven arts for a month or so each and dropped them, this is not cross training. This is fishing. They've most likely wasted a lot of time.

The Fisher doesn't know what he or she wants, but whatever it is, it always seems to be just over the horizon. I know of one student we taught for several months in Shen Chuan, who though pretty good, decided to quit, for whatever reason. But I had gotten several hints from him that he didn't want to do the Self-Defense system because it hurt. He wanted sparring. This hurts too, in a different way, but that's not the point here. We're talking about his perceptions. Well, we offer sparring, and he came in, looked over the sparring class, and decided that wasn't what he wanted either.

Wrong size gloves. Really? I said he could wear whatever size he wanted. No. He didn't like the rules, and quoted one to me. I told him that was no rule of mine or Sensei Metteauer's. He looked crest fallen. This was a rule he hoped we had because more sport-oriented systems did have it. He thought he had come up with a face-saving way out.

I offered him other options. He didn't want Combat Hapkido. Too many locks. He didn't like Aikido. Not practical. He asked if we had ground grappling. When I informed him we have it within the context of Shen Chuan and Combat Hapkido, but not as a separate art, I saw his eyes light up. A way out. He feigned disappointment and left me his phone number. He wanted me to call him when we finally had groundwork. I put the number in the trash.

We are working on developing more groundwork now, not for his sake, but what do you want to bet that the moment we have it, he'll want something else. He's like the goat who sticks his head through the fence and chews the grass on the other side, but if he somehow ends up on the other side, this isn't what he wants either. He wants another pasture.

Folks like this really don't want to commit to anything, because that requires effort, or, they're looking for magic, or that system over the rainbow.

Then there's The Ball of Fire. We've had a number of these. They come in, they're excited, they can't believe what we do is available. They love everything about it. They buy uniforms, patches, memberships, everything right away. They want to eventually teach. Maybe even open their own school. They stick around after class to talk about what they've learned. They work hard, and they're often very good. They show up at all the classes, jet through the first couple of belts, maybe in a couple of systems, then about the time they reach a level where it's harder, where they have to work the techniques over and over, they begin to look bored, miss classes, fail to listen to instruction, keep making the same mistakes, and fall off the plateau and into a trough, and disappear.

They've burned out. They've done it to themselves. They don't have the patience, the endurance, the pacing, required to stick with anything and really learn it. They're always of the opinion that their great knowledge is being ignored, or that they're not getting enough personalized instruction. These kind of folks will often come back at a later date, see students they started with wearing high ranks, and say:" If I'd kept at it, this is where I'd be." Sometimes this doesn't mean anything, but it's almost like the call of The Ball of Fire. When they rejoin, if they rejoin, and don't catch up with these people over night, guess what, they're gone again. And this time for good.

I think it's interesting that these students often have true ability and intelligence. They could be good. But their over inflated opinion of their self worth, measuring themselves against others, outruns their efforts.

Then there's the Drifter. They train hard at first, like the Ball of Fire, but pretty soon become content to settle at one level and drift. He or she is almost determined to make the same mistakes. No matter how many times you explain them, correct them, they don't want to make the effort to change. Perhaps, deep down, they believe their way is better. My opinion is this. It might be. But most likely, without training, your method is not better. It's just what you like to do. In time, after you've learned what's offered, then you may have the Judgement to make changes. But not before.

Anyway, this Drifter will float at this level for a long time. They will often attempt to teach what they don't know, (sometimes they'll take it on themselves to teach a partner they're working with, even if the partner obviously has more experience) or play at something other than what they're supposed to be practicing right then. Finally, they quit, come back months later, float back to this level again, and drift. They may in fact do this two or three times over a couple years, quitting, coming back, drifting, and finally, realizing they aren't getting better, and aren't likely to get better, and will not be given rank for just hanging around, (some schools will give rank for showing up year in, year out, but we won't) they disappear.

Showing up is fifty percent, talent about ten percent, and hard work make up the rest.

The Burrower is the sort of student who may in fact reach black belt, but he or she begins to measure himself against others. They always see themselves as deserving, but they get all the bad breaks. Life is against them. They see students getting better, reaching or surpassing their level. And instead of wanting to push to be better, they feel the progress of others alone should push them into a higher rank. They are in constant competition with others, but never in competition with the most important person of all; Themselves.

They take another tact. They worked hard to get to where they are, and by golly, they aren't about to learn anything knew. Punch and kick is good enough for them, or lock and throw. They burrow in where it's safe and stay there.

They like to say, "I'd just kick him and it would be over." Or "I'd just lock him and throw him and it would be over." Whatever their particular area of knowledge, that's where they wish to remain. They often don't lock, throw, or kick as well as they could either, because they've quit learning. They may even secretly suspect or know this themselves, therefore, the excuses.

Of course, the students surpassing them are doing so because they are expanding their knowledge. The Burrower, instead of admitting there are things he or she doesn't know, digs in deeper, becomes more determined to not learn anything new, least they fail at it. They want the tried and true, or at least what they perceive as the tried and true, because this way they never have to take the chance of failing. They may stay on this plateau for a long time, years even, but eventually they start finding excuses. The instructor just won't promote me. He doesn't like me. He likes the others better. He's jealous of me. My work keeps me from coming in. My family life. My age. My income. Boredom (no wonder they're bored). Some excuse or another. And finally, they quit.

The Tough Guy, always a male, usually big or strong, or both, maybe someone who views himself as a brawler, wants to come in and show how tough they are. They want to fight against learning the technique, slam their partner when it's their turn, and they want to make sure you know they don't need training. More often than not these are the guys wouldn't last thirty seconds with a good martial artist, and we've had to discourage a few of them.

Sometimes they are natural fighters, and you can see it in their sparring, or the way they attack a self-defense technique. But they feel so successful with their strength, their power, it never occurs to them that they'd be three times better with technique. It never occurs to them that there's always someone stronger, younger, and they are aging every day.

Concepts and principles applied to technique are more important as far as martial arts go, and are ultimately better than brute strength in the long run. This is not to dismiss strength. Strength can often override technique, but most of the time, technique is better. And if you're powerful with technique, well, the results are obvious. All else equal, a good strong man can beat a good weak man any day. However, a good, maybe not so strong man, can often beat a stronger man who has no knowledge of strategy or method.

   Also, there's a difference in being able to defend yourself quickly and escape instead of trying to consciously square off and show who's the toughest. That's not the same thing, but we'll save that discussion for another time.
 

   PLATEAUS:
Now, the discussion of plateaus. This is a constant problem in any creative endeavor, and I believe martial arts, or even martial science, as we sometimes call what we do, is a creative endeavor.

Understand, all of us have plateaus. They can be tough. They can seem like insurmountable obstacles. You can start to judge your worth by others around you. Always a mistake. Stay focused on the knowledge you're trying to gain, not on others. If you can do that, you'll be amazed at how fast you will move.

Beat the Plateau Syndrome. Don't fall into any of the aforementioned categories. Plateau Syndrome is often a feeling you get right before a major break through, a shift in gears, a new understanding. You quit while on a plateau, there's no telling what you might have found on the other side. And once you hit the other side, you're cruising again, taking in new ideas, and understanding old techniques with greater depth. The plateau will appear again, but if you go through it once, you can go through it again. Eventually you reach a level, as long as you train, you will not fall below. But there is still much more to learn. And more plateaus.

If you feel burned out, take a day off, a week. Fine. But not several weeks. Stay on task. When you take the pressure off for a day or two, it can help. You take it off for several days, a few weeks, you're Just looking for an excuse to quit. You forget the rush of saratonin you get from exercise, the psychological boost from performing a well executed technique.

In fact, often the problems you think are causing you to quit are the sort of thing martial practice helps you get through. Outside events can effect your training, and frankly if you're in a bad mood or want to come to the school and pout, stay home.

But the flip side of the coin, at least for me, is when I walk through the dojo door, all other considerations are dropped. When I practice, there isn't a yesterday or a tomorrow, just now. It is one of those things where you can truly live within the moment. As long as you're focused on the training, or teaching.

These plateaus pass. And the more you learn that, the easier it is to deal with them when they crop up. Because crop up they do.

Stay with it. Talk to your instructor if you think you've hit one of these plateaus. Any of the instructors here. We've all been there, and may even be on a plateau ourselves at that moment. A talk alone may break the dam and get the water flowing again.
 
 

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Statistics for Self-Defense
-Michael Billings (December 2002)

Recent Statistics:

Today in America:

• · 50% of women can expect to be assaulted in their lifetime.
• · 80% of high school girls are fondled or groped and 72% of high school boys believe forced sex is acceptable if they have spent money on the date.
• · 96% of all rapes are completed if the victim does nothing.
• · 98% of rapes are completed if the victim pleads with the rapist.
• · Only 25-48% are completed if the victim offers any type of resistance, and only 10% are completed if the victim is trained in some type of self-defense.

Statistically a woman should resist a sexual assault.  Realistically, unless you train to resist, until the moment is at hand, you cannot be confident in your response.  Please note that statistics can be manipulated in many fashions. The agency I obtained the above statistics from, did not indicate the number of women that were injured or killed as a result of resisting a sexual assault.  Each individual must decide for themselves whether they:

1) Can resist (are willing to attempt to damage or kill their assailant;
2) Can resist effectively (training);
3) Are willing to accept the consequences of their actions, legally, morally, physically, and psychologically.

Part of training for the martial arts is an implied Acceptance of the possibility that you will need to physically respond to some type of attack in your lifetime.  There are numerous reasons to come to the Martial Arts, such as increased flexibility - mentally and physically, increased self-esteem, improved self-image, conditioning, self-confidence, anger management, fear, but underlying all these reasons, is the concept of "Martial" or "Warlike" Arts.  Likely some of the other reasons for coming in the door will be satisfied as you train, but most important is the fact you have decided that you will not be a victim in an assault.

We train like we would respond on the street, if you take an aerobic focused class with some martial application (e.g. TaeBo, AeroKickboxing, Kickbox Aerobics, etc.), you may be deceived into believing that what you learned would stop or deter an attacker.  This may or may not be true.  You have probably increased your skill set to include some semi-martial types of movement, training muscle memory to react to some degree.  But often the training has no contact or minimal application value.  If you do Olympic style sparring, you may be limiting your responses on the street.  If you spar for tournaments, at some level you are pulling or controlling the amount of contact with your opponent, not to mention limiting the targets available in a real assault.  If you are in a school which has "no contact", as many do now days, you will not "know" your true ability in a violent confrontation.  Remember, we are trying to maximize the likelihood that we will survive an assault, given that no one "wins" a fight.

Needless to say, I am a proponent of using the appropriate amount of force for the given situation.  Unless you have trained physically, mentally, and spiritually / emotionally, you may not know what the appropriate range of responses are.  Common sense should come into play, that is, if a jury were hearing the case, would the reasonable and prudent man believe that blinding an attacker is the appropriate response against a grab attack.  Consider the following:

Was it a friend?
Was it during the day?
Were they armed? (holding you to stab you)
Gender differences?
Size differences?
Location?
Skills to defend yourself?
Mental Competence?

These are just a few of the factors that enter into the level of response you may utilize against an attack.  No, obviously we should not stick our fingers in someone's eyes if they grab our wrist when we are reaching for an item at the store, but what if they reach in our car and grab our throat and we cannot breath?  What if you wake in the middle of the night and someone broke into your house and they are holding you down on the bed, fumbling with your clothes with the other hand?  In a court of law, the latter could easily be considered self-defense, with a reasonable amount of force for the "Circumstances of the attack."   Courts look at the Totality of the Circumstances, and self-defense can be justified and is legal, so long it is what a reasonable and prudent man would use.  Will you be able to recognize that in the heat of the moment if you have taken one semester of Karate in college, or a 4-week seminar in a health club or gym?  I certainly hope so, but would not bet my life on it.

When teaching a Kenpo technique such as Sword and Hammer (Handsword strike to the throat followed immediately by a hammerfist to the groin), realize it is potentially lethal from the 1st strike.  The more you train in the Arts, the larger the number of potential responses available to you.  You learn to use your headfirst, the best weapon we will ever have, analyzing the situation from the moment of perceived threat.  Your responses could be anything from asking them to let go, releasing and running, to maiming and possibly killing the assailant.  Although I personally believe everyone should be trained in Martial Arts, if not Kenpo, not just for the ability to defend yourself, but also for your ability to judge the appropriate response against an attack and successfully execute it.

Proportional force is hard to learn if not practiced.  The repertoire of available responses must be maintained, and our Awareness and Acceptance of a possible or potential threat must be practiced rigorously.  While not everyone is comfortable in the Art, everyone should address and overcome the potential threat and train not be another "Statistic" ... another victim.

Yours in Kenpo,
-Michael Billings
Senior Instructor

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Graduated Force / Violence and Domestic Violence: (a work in progress)
-Michael Billings

Continuum of Force

Force utilized in a confrontation can be categorized as follows:

Insufficient

Equal

Reasonable

Excessive

Deadly

The first four categories could be verbal or physical responses.  They can be used to de-escalate or escalate a potentially dangerous situation.  The final category is reserved for physical responses only.

Often a Verbal Intervention or Removal of Stimuli are sufficient to defuse potentially violent situations and are thus reasonable amounts of force.  Law enforcement personnel are taught a common sense approach of graduated escalation to control potentially violent situations.  Most state laws include a "self-defense" or "mutual combat" definition in their penal codes which generally follows the reasonable and prudent man doctrine.  That is whatever force is utilized against you, and under Texas law, against another individual, you can use the same amount of force plus "a little bit" to defend yourself.  Prudent individuals would not blind, maim, or kill someone for calling them names.  Likewise a 6'4" linebacker could not trash a much smaller individual in unarmed combat and claim self-defense ... or if he did, there better be witnesses to go before the grand jury and testify for him as to the circumstances.

This places trained martial artists in the position of necessarily utilizing a judicious amount  of force following the reasonable man doctrine.  Kenpo is known for it's "over skill", and many is the time I heard Mr. Parker talking about in a true self-defense situation, that a doctor would have to inventory the injuries to the assailant.  It is incumbent on us as trained martial artist to teach our students more than how to kill or severely injure an opponent.  We must also ensure that the moral values precluding a misuse of our skill accompany their growth in the art.

Continuum of Violence

Emotional Violence

Isolating

Guilt / Blaming

Erosion of self-esteem

Verbal abuse

Threats

Physical Intimidation

Blocking a doorway

Tearing out the telephone

Throwing objects (not at the individual)

Punching holes in the wall

Physical Violence

Grabs

Pushes

Slaps

Punching

Kicking

Choking

Weapons

Multiple attackers

 

Cycle of Violence

The Cycle of Domestic Violence shows how domestic violence often becomes a pattern made up of three stages.

Tension Building
criticism, yelling, swearing, using angry gestures, coercion, threats

Violence
physical and sexual attacks and threats

Seduction / Guilt / Remorse
apologies, blaming, promises to change, gifts

It also explains how three dynamics, love hope and fear, keep the cycle in motion and make it
hard to end a violent relationship.

Love/Hope/Fear - keeps the cycle in motion

Love...
for your partner, the relationship has its good points, it's not all bad

Hope...
that it will change, the relationship didn't begin like this

Fear...
that the threats to kill you or your family will become reality
 

Michael Billings
Senior Instructor in the Arts

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POSITIVE AGGRESSION
- by Michael Billings (1986 Black Belt Thesis)

An exerpt from "In My Opinion" by Steven LaBounty 2003
See more of his writing on his home page "TheSigung.com"

                " Actually, only one of the articles is mine. The other is from Mr. Michael Billings’ Black Belt thesis “Positive Aggression”,   year unknown. It was required that all of the candidates for Shodan had to send me a copy of their thesis for approval. I have recently found some 50 or so of these and I would like to share a portion of his thoughts with all of you. The other is on the ego, my ego and probably your ego as well."
 

                    Psychologically it is imperative to arm ourselves, and our students, with a realistic world
                    view, allowing not only the physical training of our bodies, but also the mental preparation
                    for confrontive situations which would optimally be dealt with in a positively aggressive way.
                    To some extent Kenpo students have already acknowledged that we exist in a potentially
                    threatening environment, or we would not have sought out instruction in the martial arts. It
                    follows that a system of threat awareness and evaluation needs to be incorporated in any
                    martial art as part of the psychological preparation of the student. Sifu Swan’s
                    “green-yellow-red” threat evaluation system may be helpful example of a type of threat
                    awareness.

                    Condition Green = Sitting watching TV at home, an environment where we feel relatively
                    safe and secure.

                    Condition Yellow = Driving a car. This is a level where we are more alert and aware of our
                    environment and potential hazards. We are constantly re-evaluating the conditions around
                    us, and actions of others.

                    Condition Red = When someone runs a stop sign, or a fight breaks out around us. The fight
                    or flight reflex takes over, with the adrenal glands pumping adrenalin into our systems
                    preparing our body for action.

                    Through training and practice we hopefully reduce the likelihood of a panic reaction and
                    use the energy provided by our systems to give us control of the potentially dangerous
                    situation and ourselves. When the threat is abated we automatically go back to a yellow
                    condition. Miyamoto Musashi in his  A Book of Five Rings states, “…you must train day and
                    night in order to make quick decisions.” This does not mean crisis must be faced every
                    day. What is referred to is training ourselves to be aware of our environment, our response
                    to that environment, and how to make decisions based upon these two things. By training
                    these day to day we are more able to use them in a truly threatening situation.

                    Visualization is one of the tools we work with to improve our responses to hostile or
                    dangerous situations. This visualization is a component of the psychological preparation for
                    positive aggression as it trains an aggressive response to a simulated target. We imagine
                    an opponent facing us at all times, whether training basics, forms, or self-defense
                    techniques. This visualization lets us systematically desensitize ourselves from the panic
                    reaction, which may set in when facing an actual opponent. The same technique is used by
                    psychologists in working with controlling phobic reactions, by sports doctors in preparing
                    athletes for competition, and by Martial Artists in preparing for tournaments. Through a
                    series of successive approximations we become more able to face an actual aggressor
                    and have an effective response. The first approximation may be something as simple as
                    seeing a “target” mugger when doing basics. This should move to seeing an opponent or
                    opponents stepping in attacking us as we do forms or self-defense techniques. From here
                    we can work on the heavy bag seeing an opponent, but also learning what it feels like to
                    have actual contact. Working with a fellow classmate gives us some idea of what our
                    techniques do, but only with an aggressive fully padded opponent can we work our
                    techniques with some idea of what it would really be like on the streets. Using this concept
                    of visualization allows us to reach a point where we can be more effective in our utilization
                    of force.

                    Psychologically we also have to face the fact that in a combative situation, the odds are that
                    someone is going to suffer an injury. The flashy controlled techniques practiced in the dojo,
                    that work so effectively when we are trying to subdue a cooperative classmate, go by the
                    wayside when we are facing a drunk weighing 50 to 100 pounds more than us. If we are not
                    prepared to put out 100 percent effort, we may be opening ourselves up for serious injury.
                    There is a profound ethical and moral question here for each individual to answer for
                    himself or herself. How far are we willing to go to protect ourselves, our loved ones or our
                    fellow human beings from the aggression of others? Are we going to allow ourselves to
                    become victims? The way we train will answer these questions. If we do not train to the
                    fullest of our capabilities, then we are denying ourselves the choice of how to respond. As
                    training progresses, more options open in terms of the responses to a threat. If we deny
                    ourselves the training or are unwilling to give it the time necessary to make it effective, then
                    we are limiting ourselves in our ability to take care of ourselves and others. It is an issue of
                    choice and responsibility.

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