On Wednesday, August 5, 2009, I conducted a special sparring seminar in London, Ontario, with the aim to improve students’ knowledge on how to bridge the gap between freestyle and street self-defense. Utilizing the equation formula, I taught how one could prefix, suffix, insert, delete, alter, adjust, regulate, and/or rearrange a given sequence of sparring moves and adapt it as necessary to fit a street self-defense encounter. On a personal level, and as I have noted elsewhere (http://jamieseabrook.blogspot.com/search?q=equation+formula+kenpo), I believe that the equation formula is important for students to learn and develop, but not too early in one’s training, since it can bring confusion to the already large quantity of material that beginners have to learn. Fortunately, I was able to cover the equation formula with much detail given that all but two of the seminar participants were in advanced levels of learning. Seminar participants included: Craig Cote, Chris Harvey, Jacob Katz, John McDonald, Chris Newsome, Rick Robson, Paul Tohat, Matt Trejo, and Evan Wiley.
For the first two hours of the seminar, I taught the Kenpo Karate Yellow Belt, Orange Belt, and Purple Belt Freestyle techniques, and had participants do the techniques on partners with varying degrees of contact. During the last 30 minutes, I had all of the seminar participants “put their theory into action”, as each participant had the opportunity to fight against one another utilizing all of the skills they had learned during the seminar.
