Patrice Samuel Robinson Phoenix Fighting Arts and Concepts

Phoenix Fighting Arts and Concepts

Instructor: Patrice Samuel Robinson, 2nd Dan

EDMUND KEALOHA PARKER SR.
10^TH DEGREE BLACK BELT SENIOR GRANDMASTER
March 19, 1931 - December 15, 1990

The Father Of American Kenpo Karate
&
The Evolution Of His Art

Known as the Father Of American Karate, Edmund Kealoha Parker began his martial arts training in Judo and Boxing then at the age of sixteen, found his way into Kenpo, under the instruction of Professor William K.S.Chow while living in his native land of Honolulu Hawaii. Having been a street fighter himself, Ed Parker quickly saw the benefits of Kenpo’s explosive power, action, minimal target exposure and the potential to ward of multiple attackers. Ed Parker has also been referred to as one of America’s Foremost Martial Arts Pioneers by having opened his first school at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah in 1954 and shortly after he opened his second but first commercial studio in Pasadena, California in 1956 and within a couple of years he began teaching many well known personalities and celebrities. He taught such notables such as Elvis Presley, Robert Wagner, Blake Edwards, Robert Culp, Robert Conrad, George Hamilton and Warren Beatty just to name a few. In 1961 Time Magazine referred to Ed Parker as the High Priest And Profit Of The Hollywood Sect. In recognition to his life long dedication and contributions to the Martial Arts, Ed Parker was the first to do many things. He was the first to teach Karate on a university campus, the first to open a commercial studio in the United States, the first authentic Martial Arts technical advisor for television and movies in the United States, the first to publish a rulebook specifically for Martial Arts competition and there are many others. Some of his most notable books include The Encyclopedia Of Kenpo, The Zen Of Kenpo and the five volume series of the Infinite Insights Into Kenpo.

In addition, through exchanges and interactions with other Martial Artists such as Bruce Lee, Dan Inosanto, James Lee and Professor Lau Bein, Ed Parker was able to experiment and formulate his ideas that would later become the Ed Parker System Of American Kenpo Karate. Ed Parker was the President and Founder of the International Kenpo Karate Association ( I.K.K.A. ). He was also the creator of the now famous International Karate Championships ( I.K.C. ) where Bruce Lee made his historic first public appearance. As the original developer of the art of American Kenpo Karate, Ed Parker was a very talented, gifted and skilled individual with an unbelievable mind to develop what became American Kenpo Karate. Through 40 years of experience, he built his system on concepts, principles and rules of motion that included Opposite and Reverse Motion, Tailoring, Focus and the use of Logic. He developed many tools to aid his teaching with the creation of the Universal Pattern, the Equation Formula, training manuals, videos and as stated before many books. Ed Parker was dedicated and was driven to create, as well as evolve, the art he called American Kenpo Karate. He dedicated his life to the perpetuation of Kenpo Karate. Kenpo Karate was one of his greatest loves and he wanted to make American Kenpo Karate become a household name. He built his system to incorporate linear as well as circular motion with devastating power, accuracy and intermittent burst of speed when and where necessary, with both major and minor moves. His idea was for the student to learn motion and then tailor it to fit their body and later create their own personal style of moving or fighting governed by concepts, principles and rules of motion. His extraordinary knowledge and skill of the art made him a very deadly man, yet these same skills empowered him to be a man of compassion, forgiveness, control, and self-discipline. Ed Parker also instructed many people from different styles and systems in the art of American Kenpo Karate, to elongate their circular motion and to round off their rougher, jerkier movements. Both traits are found in beginners and as one progresses they should hone their motion to tighter circles utilizing extremely explosive, accurate, continuous and fluid movements. This is what Ed Parker demonstrated for nearly forty years. Ed Parker devised his own philosophy of self-defense that he tailored to his own abilities and imagination. He analyzed what he was taught, dissected it and broke it down to its core elements and basics. He was blessed with an incredible ability to analyze motion. He was an astute observer and picked up many things from many people over the years. He took those ideas and then modified them to fit his vision of a complete Martial Art System. Ed Parker was also very humble and always gave credit to someone else's ideas, accomplishments, talents, skills and often acknowledging other Martial Artists. As mentioned before, Ed Parker added concepts, principles, rules of motion and innovations that were not being used at that time by any other Martial Artist, style or system. He updated and expanded on even his own ideas, always looking for better and more efficient ways of doing and explaining things. His system of Kenpo is about change and evolution. During his fourty years in the Martial Arts, it is evident by Ed Parker's actions, writings and evolutions to his own art that American Kenpo Karate was never meant to be traditionalized. Without Ed Parker questioning what he was taught, thinking for himself and breaking tradition, there would never have been American Kenpo Karate.

As mentioned before American Kenpo Karate began with Edmund Kealoha Parker. But American Kenpo Karate was not just a single system. As many know, Ed Parker went through about five transitions before arriving at what would become the Ed Parker System of American Kenpo Karate. But Ed Parker did not reveal this new system completely that early in his career. He was still using the term Chinese Kenpo, which he would later change to Ed Parker’s American Kenpo Karate. He recognized that his students would not be able to assimilate all of his new knowledge and theories immediately, so he gradually introduced his new concepts, principles and rule of motion and movements over the next several years and was able to prove them successful. Ed Parker often spoke in parables and reminded others that even Jesus Christ had said that you cannot put new wine in old bottles. Ed Parker knew that the future of American Kenpo Karate would not be with his existing students because they would resist breaking their ties to the past and most had already gone beyond Kenpo Karate to study kung fu, first under James Wing Woo, and then under Bruce Lee. And as a prophet of the new order, Ed Parker would rightfully foresee that most of his black belts and advanced students would either reject the new system, or forsake it after a few years. Ed felt no great bitterness toward this, because American Kenpo Karate was not created to replace the old school of thought. It was created as a way to advance to a new standard of Kenpo Karate. Ed Parker knew his existing students would not serve two masters. They would not learn a system that was designed to take them where they thought they already were, and most would go on to other systems where they could continue to develop there previous knowledge. What Ed Parker eventually created as American Kenpo Karate. It was like, and yet very much unlike, the Kenpo systems and his former styles. The differences were those of style and theory. But most importantly, this new system was the stairway to Ed Parker’s American Kenpo Karate. His new system would have its critics and while much of their criticisms may have been valid, no one could deny the genius of the man who was its father. Critics who do not understand Kenpo Karate have often asked why Ed Parker did not release videos or films of him personally demonstrating his system. There were several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Ed Parker would have to slow down so people could see his movements. Ed knew from experience that his students would mimic whatever they saw him do, and one thing Ed Parker was not, he was not slow. But more importantly, Ed Parker realized that no two people are alike and his new system was to be tailored to suit the individual. After all, it was the individual who would advance through American Kenpo Karate to where he met the standards of Ed Parker. There were also many different ways of doing a movement. Many of his black belts would find that the way Ed Parker taught them was completely different from all the others. To put a technique on film or video would freeze the technique for all time. The moves or techniques were only to be a framework within which the individual worked. A video would freeze-frame the moves or techniques, which would become the way the Master did it and the only way it should be done. The 5 foot, 98 pound woman would have to emulate the 6 foot, 220 pound Ed Parker. This would go against one of Ed Parker’s fundamental principles, that he would teach correct principles and let the individual govern himself. The way Ed Parker moved was right for Ed Parker. The way his students should move would not be the same. Thus, he taught his new system differently to each person, and each way was right for the student. Just as Ed Parker realized that there was only one Bruce Lee, or one Mohammed Ali, there would only be one Ed Parker. He did not want his students to mimic him, or to become puppets. He wanted them to become great in their own right. To this end, Ed Parker designed his new system as a method for teaching concepts, principles and rules of motion and not just as a way to teach techniques. Rather than teaching 30 techniques and an equal number of variations for each belt as he had done with the KKAA and early IKKA, Ed Parker reduced the number of techniques to 24, eliminated the variations and created the extensions. He also simplified each technique, teaching only the first part of the technique to the beginning student who could now concentrate on the concepts, principles and rules of motion of a movement or technique. No longer would a student practice move after move, time after time, like a boxer using the same move time after time to perfect it. He was to learn the WHYS AND HOW COMES of a move and concentrate on, why, as he or she practiced the move. When the student was prepared for brown belt and black belt he or she was to learn the extensions and the advanced applications and theories of the moves and when he or she was ready, he or she would move further on into Ed Parker’s American Kenpo Karate System. Not only was the student to learn the why of a move, but by simplifying the techniques, Ed Parker believed his new system could be tailored to the individual who would perfect it according to his own physical size and athletic ability. American Kenpo Karate forms were taught with hidden meaning so only the perspicacious would see what was intended. The system was designed to lead the student through tangled and obscure paths, where the instructor was to point out the meaning of each twist or turn. Then, when it all came together, the student was to emerge from the darkness into the light of new understanding. The black belt would only need to know about 100 applications of his new system, as Ed Parker believed his understanding of the why of the movement would replace all of the techniques of other Kenpo systems. This was in marked contrast to his original System of Kenpo, where a student was taught hundreds of techniques and hundreds of variations. There was over 400 for first degree black belt alone. This was the system Ed Parker no longer wanted to teach. It was the old way, the past, and breaking from this past was the very reason for the existence of the new system. Those who understand Ed Parker’s principles also understand why Ed Parker chose no one to succeed him. Ed Parker was the system. No one could replace him, and American Kenpo Karate was his legacy to the world. In the decade before Ed Parker’s premature death, he no longer taught as much as he did before, but rather he mostly taught through his writings. He had seen the failure of his new American Kenpo Karate, but it was not a failure of the system. Rather it was a failure and negligence of the black belts of his new system to apply the proper concepts, principles and rules of motion that he had established. Some of these black belts left him to found their own organizations where they would teach their versions of his new system, never realizing that they could never teach the principles that would bring a student to the standards of the Ed Parker American Kenpo Karate System. They took with them the techniques, but for the most part, they left the correct concepts and principles behind and also, they have abandoned Ed Parker’s system for their own systems. The result of this is that since the death of Ed Parker, his American Kenpo Karate empire has fragmented and shattered. The IKKA has floundered due to defections, internal politics and greed. Already American Kenpo Karate is being interpreted and reinterpreted by some of Ed Parker’s new system black belts. Yet as Ed Parker stated just three months before he died, very few of his black belts knew the meaning of the flower he showed them. In death Ed Parker has become a legend, bigger than life. His black belts first scrambled to fill the void in the system he created for them, by making themselves his successor. But American Kenpo Karate is not just a system. It is the visible expression of Ed Parker’s philosophy, a philosophy that holds that correct concepts and principles replaces style, a philosophy that allows the same move to be taught a number of ways with each way being the right way. Ed Parker lamented, some three months before his death that he had awarded black belts, but only a hand full had earned his philosopher’s cloak. Only a hand full had learned to think for themselves. Few were innovative because none of his new system students had ever questioned him. He wanted each student to prove or disprove every concept. He wanted them to think for themselves. And he most certainly did not want them to become the puppets they had become. Had his students understood the principles, they would have discovered that some of the concepts were little more than stumbling blocks put in the way to prove them and catapults to launch them into thinking for themselves. Ed Parker often lamented that many of his students knew what to think, but they didn't know how to think, and only a rare few would ever fully understand the completeness of his American Kenpo Karate System. For this reason, Ed Parker did not create American Kenpo Karate only as a system, but also as an idea, an idea that encompassed all of his teachings and styles, from his first students to his last. Some were a part and some were the whole of what he taught, but only those who continued to teach what he taught, the way he taught it either in the beginning or the end are American Kenpo Karate.

Senior Grandmaster Of American Kenpo Karate and 10th Degree Black Belt Edmund Kealoha Parker, Sr. left this earth on December 15, 1990. He was just fifty-nine years old. Those who knew Ed Parker will forever dearly miss him. There is a big void in the Martial Arts and particularly Kenpo, since his abrupt departure from this life. He was an extremely kind, religious and humble man. He took the time to make everyone feel important around him. He was a great human being.

Patrice Samuel Robinson - Phoenix Fighting Arts and Concepts

Back to Last Page