Larry Tatum Seminars

This past weekend Grandmaster Larry Tatum came to Southwell's Kenpo to teach American Kenpo seminars. Myself, and five of my students attended the event. The seminars were awesome. For the Friday night seminar, Mr. Tatum taught how to counterbalance your kicks, and he also covered Leaping Crane, Shielding Hammer, Fatal Cross, Destructive Twins, and Delayed Sword. For the Saturday morning seminar, we did a graph sequence of Thrusting Prongs into Crashing Wings and then into Tripping Arrow. We also went through Locked Wing with the extension. A large part of his seminars also focused on striking the weak point of the opponent. Mr. Tatum has a knack for detail and his power and speed are mind-blowing.

Congratulations to Scott Southwell on his promotion to 4th Degree Black Belt (Senior Instructor).

Here are a couple of pictures from the event.

February 2014 Belt Promotions

February was a big month for belt promotions at Seabrook Martial Arts Academy, especially because I had several children move up to Junior 3rd Degree Brown Belt (we have separate programs for children and adults). In my school, it takes children one year per stripe for all Junior Brown Belt levels, which means that the minimum time-frame for a children's 3rd Brown Belt to be able to test for Junior Black Belt is 3 years since his/her promotion to Brown Belt. This equates to an approximate total time of 8 years for a child to be able to test for Junior Black Belt since beginning American Kenpo. When a child reaches Junior Black Belt (we only have 2 in our school, one of whom is my oldest daughter Morgan), he/she then has to learn all 154+ self-defense techniques that are required in our adult program to be eligible to test for 1st Degree Black Belt. Although this may seem like an insurmountable task, the reality is that a Junior Black Belt would already know many of the techniques required, especially the beginner techniques and those already contained in the American Kenpo encyclopedia forms.

Here is a list of all of the students that I promoted in February:

Brandon D: Advanced Yellow
Alex K: Orange
Ben K: Orange
Cameron V: Orange
Nathan V: Orange
Anya F: Purple
Ethan B: Advanced Green
Luke N: Advanced Green
Maxim F: Advanced Green
Chloe B: 3rd Degree Brown
Christofer L: 3rd Degree Brown
Claire H: 3rd Degree Brown
Joseph L: 3rd Degree Brown
Maia G: 3rd Degree Brown
Madison S: 3rd Degree Brown
Michael L: 3rd Degree Brown
Nathan T: 3rd Degree Brown
Reese W: 3rd Degree Brown
Brennan W: 1st Degree Brown

Great work all of you!