Unlike systems that suggest you only need a single punch or kick to defend yourself, Kenpo suggests that there is no "one way" to defend yourself.
On the surface a technique may look like it's teaching you to block, kick and chop. But in actuality it's teaching you an alphabet of motion and how to formulate self-defense techniques from this alphabet, so you can spontaneously create techniques (as needed) for any given situation.
Ed Parker on Techniques:
I teach Kenpo, not for the sake of teaching the techniques, but for the principles involved in them. And even then, these principles must be altered to fit the individual.
The reason I give my techniques names is because there are certain sequences associated with these terms. If I told a student tomorrow that I was going to teach him a counter version to a double hand grab, it's not as meaningful as when I say I'm going to teach him ‘Parting Wings.’
You’ve got to know how to vary things. A lot of the techniques I’ve worked with, they’re ideas, they’re not rules. At any given time, any of my moves can change from defense to offense, offense to defense.
Martial artists, and Kenpo people especially, become so involved in doing the techniques exactly right in such and such amount of time, that they get caught in a pattern that they can’t break. That’s not what they’re for. Specific moves, specific techniques are based, like the ABC’s in the English language or standard football plays. You have to have a point of reference and from there the combinations are endless and limited only by universal laws, laws that you can’t change.
The Ed Parker system of Kenpo has 154 self defense techniques. Each and every one of them work. But what is it that they actually do?
The techniques of Kenpo teach you the principles of motion and how to use these principles to defend yourself. Although the techniques can work out on the street, any street altercation will change moment by moment. Therefore, an effective technique is one that has trained you to adapt to the moment, without relying on any one predetermined sequence.
In class you learn techniques in prearranged sequence, similar to learning how to speak a language through practicing sample sentences.
However once a language is learned, you no longer depend on sample sentences to have conversations. We simple converse in the language we have learned. The same is true in Kenpo Karate.
