The Physics of Kenpo

A few months back I was on an exam board in Fresno, California at Graham Lelliott's studio. Two of the candidates were brothers from Pennsylvania, Eric and Matthew Podchodzay. They are students of David and Suk Yee Smith and the Smiths are students of Mr. Lelliott.
The guys are young, strong practitioners and the Smiths did a fine job with them.What was a bit unusual is that they both submitted a written thesis for their black belt test. This used to be a requirement for all candidates, along with with a form thesis as well as all the standard material.
It took me a while to get around to reading them, but I did, and I'm glad I did.
Matthew wrote on "The Opposite Side" and Eric wrote about "The Physics of Kenpo".
What's interesting about reading a student thesis is that we get to see what came out of what we put in. How the student sees the information and how we see it is often two quite different things. That's not a bad thing. Remember that Socrates said "By your students you will be taught".
I was particularly interested in the physics thesis. Eric did a nice job of boiling down some of the essentials that kenpo people should be familiar with. While he did get into the symbology and so on, it was simple enough that most anyone reading it could understand it. And if you came away with nothing other than understanding that physics works on you no matter what kind of karate you do, you're ahead. My first kenpo teacher simply made up his own physics. While I didn't know what was wrong I knew something was. At least with the Parker system the physics are there and when the system is taught correctly a student should have a rudimentary grasp of what makes what work and why. That will take you a long way in making the art yours.