KEMPO FUNDAMENTALS - STRIKING

These strikes are your foundation for developing good technique with all of your future strikes.

The intermediate strikes start to incorporate more circular strikes along with more open handed variations.

The advanced strikes tend to target more vital areas.

Striking combos help develop dexterity of the hands.  With enough practice, you will develop the ability to target different areas in rapid succession.   

Similar to the Level 1, this combination develops dexterity and speed of striking with all open hand strikes rather than closed fists.  Precise targeting and differentiating the strike vectors is one of the keys to this skill. 

In this combination you will be mixing closed and open hand strike variations.  This is the true test of your dexterity in being able to go from an open hand to closed hand in rapid succession.  

In this combination you will be doing a four strike sequence now.  It starts with a front two knuckle punch followed by alternating leopard paw strikes and finishing with another front two knuckle.  In Levels 4 through 8, the format of the videos will remain the same.  Each combo will start by learning it to the air, then doing it against a partner.  Next, we’ll add movement and then blocking and finish off by adding a kick to the mix.  

Series 2 starts and finishes the same as Series 1 with the front two knuckle punches.  The middle strikes, however, are now different.  You will now do two backhand strikes instead thus working a more dynamic difference and angle between the strikes.  

You guessed it!  This is a hybrid of Series 1 and Series 2 in that you will throw one of each of the middle two strikes (eg-leopard paw then backhand).  

This combination consists of a thrust punch to the ribs followed by two palm heel strikes to the nose and finishing with another thrust punch into the ribs.  

In this combo you’ll make a very subtle change in the hand position to a trigger finger for the middle two strikes.  The difference in technicality is significant when you are using a strike to a soft target.  

Yes, once again, we are blending the two middle strikes so you will do a palm heel and a trigger finger with the thrust punches still starting and finishing the combo.  

This combo starts and finishes with a back to knuckle punch and the middle two strikes are spear hands to the throat.  It should go without saying that when working with a partner, it is of utmost importance to use control when striking toward the throat.  

The middle two strikes here are vertical leopard paw strikes to the nerve bundle on the front of the shoulder.  

Same deal here…blend the two middle strikes.  Back two knuckle to the solar, spear to the throat, vertical leopard paw to the shoulder nerve bundle, back two knuckle to the solar.  

The final initial strike in this series of combos is the hammer strike.  The middle strikes will consist of downward tiger claw strikes to the face.  

In this one we are trading in the tiger claw for a tiger’s mouth strike to the throat.  

This is going to come as a shock, but you are going to blend Series 1 and Series 2 for the middle two strikes in this level.  

This one is finally different…sort of!  Level 8 is blending Levels 4 through 7 meaning you will do Level 4 right and left, then Level 5 right and left and so on.  You’ll notice that when we add the blocks, blocks 1 and 2 combine with Level 4, blocks 3 and 4 go with Level 5 and the pattern continues all the way through the 8 blocks.  

This is the same set of drills as Level 8 – Series 1, but obviously using the Series 2 striking sets.  You’ll notice that we did not do a Combination Striking – Level 9 (Series 1 & 2), but you could certainly do this as an additional challenge to truly test your mastery of these striking combinations.