Kenpo

[golden arhat]

point is if someone says to me they do "kung fu" i have no idea what they do
because all styles of kung fu are very different.
if you cant see similarities between chinese martial arts and karate you are blind!

[David Jamieson]

Kind of. There are lots of different kempo styles. There's American kempo, which has a lot in it, most of which is from Ed Parker. Within Japanese kempo, the two main styles are both called Shorinji Kempo. One of these is Okinawan which is pretty cool and as old as most other Okinawan karate (110-120 or so) and the other is modern mainland Japanese karate, and the name was chosen literally because the founder thought it sounded cool, and has nothing but a fleeting relation to kung fu.

I know you said Japanese kempo is what it is, but just to clarify, neither shorinji kempo is a mix of karate and kung fu: Okinawan is an Okinawan karate style, which like any other Okinawan karate means it’s a mix of traditional Okinawan fighting techniques with elements of kung fu thrown in… that’s what karate is; and mainland shorinji is made-up karate with no relation to kung fu.

shorin ji, there are 2 kinds (one is quite recent and also quite culty), but "shorin" transliterates as "shaolin" so it is indeed realted directly to cma. other okinawan styles have been tied to fujien white crane style and when observed, the direct connection is there. mainland karate is an entirely different animal altogether and pretty much exclusively japanese in style and content.

goju is similar to the white crane, shorin is the shaolin japanese style, isshin is a mix of those too with a en extra kata of it's own, uechi is a hard style that shares some content with shorin and goju as well. The other okinawan families stem from these to the best of my knowledge and so, teh Okinawan karate is very much related to chinese martial styles.

also 'kempo' is basically the same as 'chuan fa' or 'fist law' or 'fist methods'.

[golden arhat]

isnt the japanese for "fist" "ken"

as in

hakkyoku-ken (bajiquan)

[David Jamieson]

isnt the japanese for "fist" "ken"

as in

hakkyoku-ken (bajiquan)

kenpo pronounced kempo.

i go with the phonetic pronunciation as it is the most common usage.

[Pork Chop]

When it comes to Okinawan styles, just want to make sure that there's an Okinawan Shorinji (少林寺) and an Okinawan Shorin-Ryu (少林流).
My buddy was pretty adamant that his stuff wasn't really Shaolin-based.
http://www.rik.co.jp/karate/english/dojyo.htm

In Japanese there's not really a difference between a terminating "n" and a terminating "m" - terminating meaning not immediately followed by a vowel, ie the character ん; this is especially true when the ん is followed by a "p" or "b" sound.
Proper romanization; however, is with the "n".

[Lucas]

ken can mean A LOT of things. Commonly knife or sword in regards to martial arts.


kendo for instance

lookie see

[sean_stonehart]

nonesnse. Good, authentic, Karate is fast and fluid.

Ditto ... what he said!!!

[Raipizo]

Lol well idk, karate seems a much more rigid brute force style more so than kung fu.

[David Jamieson]

Lol well idk, karate seems a much more rigid brute force style more so than kung fu.

at the beginning levels, everybody in every art sucks and is rigid and lame looking.

fact of life, you can't know until you know.

[Lucas]

at the beginning levels, everybody in every art sucks and is rigid and lame looking.

fact of life, you can't know until you know.

true that.

also a lot of people form a basis between karate and kungfu based on forms/kata

often a pretty different method between your standard cma and jma technique sequences.

watch a good cma guy fight and a good jma guy fight. pretty much the same thing.

[Lokhopkuen]

Well karate is slower and more rigid where as kung fu is flowy and fast.

Karate done correctly (not Americanized) is fluid as is TCMA. Any martial art must be fluidly adaptive IMHO.

k

[Raipizo]

well i haven't seen foreign karate, kinda hard when you live IN AMERICA XD

[Wood Dragon]

Karate kata are misleading, as 90% of practitioners perform them at the dreaded "competition pace", where the flow is artificially slowed so that the judges can clearly see the techniques (and the biomechanics). The techniques may be very fast, but they are performed at an interrupted pace (technique....pause......technique).

JKA (Shotokan) started doing that, by accident (folks who did it won more competitions, as the judges could see their techniques more clearly, and natural selection took over).

This isn't how they are meant to be performed. They are supposed to be a form of shadowboxing.

Judge Karate more by the kihon (techniques) than the kata. Kumite is also a good indicator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5AvC...eature=related

At the end of the day, given Karate's roots (White Crane, etc), it's just not going to look like taijiquan.

[Wood Dragon]

There is a movement afoot in the Karate world to get back to the "roots" (although that is sloppy terminology) of the first couple of generations of the karatekas, who were not exactly strangers to martial arts when they walked into the Shotokan (lots of Judo and Kendo practitioners).

The concept is that Funakoshi's (and Miyagi's) bootleg Kano-esque training syllabus was not responsible for the "legendary" karatekas like Nakayama or Oyama. Rather, it was layered over their already formidable Judo (or Wrestling, Boxing, Jujutsu, etc) skillsets. Which may partially explain the dearth of "x-ryu only" persons with legitimate fighting skills. As well as the success of the Kyokushin concept (Karate as a base of reference, with techniques stolen from Judo and MT to fill the weak areas).

So: looking at, say, Shotokan*...you may only be seeing 50% of what the original practitioners actually knew.


*- Shotokan has changed a lot since Funakoshi. Nakayama, a Kendo champion, was Chief Instructor for 30 years. Who do you think had more influence on the current product? Modern Shotokan includes Kendo concepts Funakoshi never heard of.

[Pork Chop]

While we're on the subject of karate, I'd like to add this:
part 1, part 2, and especially part 3.
Because every ma forum needs at least a little bit of Andy Hug on it.
Man, him and Bernie Mack - 2 guys I never met & never would've but genuinely miss.
Bet he's in heaven right now fighting in a tourney with Bruce Lee, Jigoro Kano, & Mas Oyama.
ossu