We would like to extend a warm welcome to all our new students. Thank you for joining our karate family. We look forward to getting to know you and learning this art with you.

We have a few special events coming up.

On April 30th at 7:00 pm, many of us will be joining Mr. White’s students for a fun time watching the classic karate movie, Billy Jack at Mr. Bob White’s Studio in Costa Mesa. Admission is free. This movie is not recommended for younger audiences. The movie was rated “GP” in 1971 but would be closer to a “hard” PG-13 or R rating by today’s standards for profanity, violence, and some very extreme subject matter. For more information about this movie (and one scene in particular), please ask Mr. Kellogg.

Second, coming soon is Karate Con (the name has been changed to Kellogg’s American Kenpo Kids Charitable Foundation). We will have more information as we get closer. This year we are not only raising money for our kids to attend Seminars, buy gear, and go to Tournaments such as next year’s Bob and Barbara White Invitational Karate Tournament, but we will also donate a portion of every event we have to the RFKC (Royal Family Kids Camp), so abused kids can go camping. We will write the donation check next year around February. Please be a part of this awesome community. The price of seminars will raise $5.00 this year with the extra $5.00 going to RFKC. Let’s do this so we can all help send kids to camp. For more information on the camp, you can go to bwkenpo.com or to the Royal Family Kids website.

Kenpo Karate BASICS

The philosophy behind karate is vast and complex. It stems from thousands of years of armed and unarmed combat. Techniques that were perfected hundreds of years ago are still being perfected over and over again by each new generation. Buddhism, Taoism, and the code of Bushido have all played parts in the development of the martial arts philosophy.

There are three stages of learning:

#1 Primitive: you still don’t know anything however you are beginning to learn the basic movements that appear in techniques and forms.

#2 Mechanical: You understand the mechanics involved in the execution of the techniques, but not necessarily the flow between techniques. You can neither react very instinctively to an attack or adapt the techniques to variations in the attacks (force of the attack, height, and weight of the aggressor).

#3 Spontaneous: You understand both the execution of the techniques and how they flow together. You react appropriately to an attack without having to think. If you do not have a solidly based stance, you will easily lose balance and nothing will work correctly.

• Keep distances: stay clear from the attacker and get off the line of attack.
• Control, disarm and execute the technique: The priority in an attack is to not get hit then control the weapon the aggressor may have. Once this is done, we can run the technique to eliminate the threat of a new attack.
• Strike and check: When we strike we must control and avoid, be it with an arm, hand or leg, the possible cons of our opponent. The check avoids vital areas to be exposed to the aggressor.
• An economy of movement: You must not squander energy with unnecessary movements and displacements.
• Action-reaction: Each action of the opponent must be followed by a reaction.
• Instantaneous acceleration: You must be relaxed right until the moment of the impact so that the power is maximum.