18 Facts About American Kenpo

American Kenpo, is a unique martial art founded by Ed Parker Sr, a Polynesian man from Hawaii who studied and earned a Black Belt Shodan in the Martial Art of Judo and learned Western Boxing from his father before starting his training with William Kwai Sun Chow a Hawaiian born and raised Chinese martial artist who had received training in Southern Chinese Martial Arts from his father who had grown up in Canton, China before immigrating to Hawaii.

American Kenpo often took on security, bodyguard and debt collection jobs and was highly sought after even by the criminal underworld in Hawaii who needed his fighting skills.

American Kenpo was a common Ryukyuan and Japanese pronunciation of the original Kuen Fatt or Fist Law, .

American Kenpo was joined by Mizuho Mutsu and Kamesuke Higashiona who were both students of Choki Motobu.

Chow eventually developed his own unique style of American Kenpo Karate that blended his Chinese Martial Arts training with the more focused Ryukyuan American Kenpo Karate methods popularized in Hawaii, it was a blend of linear and circular motion, and emphasized practical fighting techniques designed to outperform the various martial arts in the melting pot of Hawaii.

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American Kenpo then studied western boxing from his father, a boxing commissioner in Hawaii, before eventually training and earning a black belt from Chow in Kenpo Karate.

System which came to be known as American Kenpo was developed by Parker as his Specific System, and featured Parker's revisions of older methods to work in more modern fighting scenarios.

American Kenpo heavily restructured American Kenpo's forms and techniques during this period.

American Kenpo moved away from methods that were recognizable from other arts and established a more definitive relationship between forms and the self-defense technique curriculum of American Kenpo.

Since many instructors had gone their own ways and didn't continue with Parker's updating, American Kenpo today has several different versions of techniques.

American Kenpo should be tailored to fit each individual student by a competent instructor.

American Kenpo emphasizes fast techniques to disable an attacker in seconds.

American Kenpo contains a wide array of kicks, punches, open-hand, elbow and knee strikes, finger strikes, some throwing and joint locking techniques, as well as club and knife training.

Physically, American Kenpo develops environmental awareness, structural stability, balance, coordination, flow, speed, power and timing in that order as the student progresses through a step by step curriculum.

All American Kenpo students are taught not only how to execute each basic movement in the system, but when and why to execute each basic movement.

American Kenpo did not want his students to mimic him but rather to tailor his American Kenpo system to their own circumstances and needs.

However, if a American Kenpo Instructor starts his own association, he or she is free to select his or her student's base curriculum as they see fit.

American Kenpo has a graded colored belt system consisting of white, yellow, orange, purple, blue, green, 3rd degree brown, 2nd degree brown, 1st degree brown and 1st through 10th degree black.