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Welcome to Kempo Made Easy
This site was created to help Instructors & Students of Shaolin Kempo to develop the Fundamentals, Material, and Skills necessary to become a Black Belt!
For the Instructor – Speaking as an instructor, given how vast the Shaolin Kempo Art is, it is so easy to forget to teach a student this principle, or that fundamental, and so on…. It is easy to overlook what exactly a student knows (and doesn’t know), and a student, at times, wouldn’t know what they don’t know to even ask for help.
This website (and the accompanying Belt Training Manuals) was designed to serve as a foundation to ensure everything applicable is taught to the student in the most comprehensive way possible.
For the Student – Do any of the following sound familiar?
-You went home from your lesson and were struggling to remember every detail of what your instructor taught.
-You are not sure what to practice while at home.
-You want to help your child with their training,but you do not know what they are working on.
-You would like to know what you need to learn/how long it will take to earn your next belt.
This list goes on, but the objective of this website is to serve as a reference and a reminder of all of the different things you learn within your Shaolin Kempo Training. Using the Belt Training Manuals, you can keep track of what you learned, and you can always go to the videos if you need a refresher!
Please check out the Getting Started section to see how to use this website to maximize your training potential
Categories of Training
Understanding the different Categories of Training is a key component to maximizing your training effectiveness, and enable your journey through the Martial Arts to be the most fulfilling!
Kempo Education (also referred to as Fundamentals or Basics) are the foundation to all Kempo Training. Without truly understanding every aspect of the fundamentals, the student can never develop into a quality Martial Artist.
Kempo Material is comprised of all the Techniques and Forms that the student has to memorize and perform at a competent level to attain each rank.
Skills Development is the natural extension of Kempo Education. As we all know, being able to strike well is nice, but being able to combine that with footwork & blocking is just that much more effective!
The best way to understand the relationship of all the training topics is with the following example:
- – The Kempo Education is like raw material (ex. Wood, Nails, Drywall, Paint, etc…). The raw material must be high quality, or anything built from it will not be dependable.
- – The Skills Development are like the basic building blocks created from the raw materials (ex. Walls, Roofing, Cabinets, etc…). The building blocks are only as good as its raw material. Additionally, if it isn’t put together well, the resulting structure will be fragile.
- – The Kempo Material is the finished product. It’s stability and integrity are completely dependent on the quality of the raw material and the building blocks. Kempo Material forged from strong Fundamentals and Skill Development is something truly wondrous to behold!
Animal Kempo Punch Techniques
Kempos are fighting techniques that allow us to build our Defensive, Offensive, and Counter-Offensive Strategies in our martial arts development. Kempos are the means for us to understand what our strengths and preferences are with regards to Self-Defense, and to grow and develop our strong points.
The 5 animals all have very different Strengths & Weaknesses AND they have very different ways of defending and counterattacking their opponent. No animal is greater than the other. They all have their individual skill sets and personality traits, and use that to overcome their adversary. You may find that you have qualities of multiple animals, and that’s fine!
The most important thing to keep in mind is DON’T emulate an animal, because you like its description and you think that’s how you want to be. A Crane can never be a Tiger… no matter how much it wants to be one… and it shouldn’t worry about it. There is beauty and effectiveness in all the animals.