Friday, May 11, 2007

The Rearrangement Concept

Rearrangement is really what Kenpo is all about. Since the self-defense techniques in American Kenpo Karate are ideas (as opposed to rules that offer no other alternatives), these ideas or movements can be rearranged to fit the situation or circumstance. Essentially rearrangement allows one to add, delete, adjust the choice of weapon you are striking with (i.e. heel palm, vertical fist, half-fist, hammerfist), adjust the target you are planning on hitting, rearrange your sequence of moves, and insert extra moves on the opponent when necessary.

Rearrangement eliminates the word “assume”, the latter of which is common in some “traditional arts” that emphasize a “one strike, one kill” methodology. As Grandmaster Larry Tatum noted in an October 2004 Black Belt magazine article, “Depending on one technique would be like betting all your worth on one spin of a roulette wheel.”

One of the simplest ways to work the rearrangement concept is as follows. Have a training partner execute a right punch towards your head. Counter the punch by stepping back and executing a right inward block to the right hand punch. After the block, immediately counter with a right handsword to the opponent’s neck, and then fold your arm so that it becoming an inward elbow (or elbow sandwich if you wish) to the opponent’s head. Finish with a right hammerfist to the groin. Therefore, you should have four simple moves: (1) a right inward block (2) a right handsword (3) a right inward elbow and (4) a right hammerfist.

But now try this. After executing the right inward block (1), have your partner block your right handsword (2) to the neck. As a result, you will find it is necessary to alter your next target. For example, after your partner blocks your right handsword (2), try to next hit him with the hammerfist to the groin (4), and then go back to the handsword to the neck (2), which would mean you would then finish with the right inward elbow (3). This is but one way of altering the order of the same sequence of moves and you can change it up any way that you would like. Note, however, that it was NOT necessary to create new techniques to get the same desired effect. Instead, we kept with the same basic four moves, and simply rearranged them to fit the situation. What you will discover is that four basic moves rearranged can produce 24 combinations.

The problem is that too many instructors introduce the rearrangement concept way too early in their students’ training. A beginner/intermediate student needs to work on mastering the required self-defense techniques in the ideal phase. When taught the ideal phase techniques properly, the student will eventually recognize how to graft into other ideal phase techniques, and deal with the “what-if” of self-defense techniques when learning the extensions. Through consistent and diligent practice, a student will reach a stage of spontaneity, whereby the rearrangement concept becomes “second nature”.