Thursday, November 12, 2009

Lavallees - a blended school

I'd like to better understand the blend of systems that makes up my martial arts training. As I understand it, we have blended different systems for our kata, curriculum, and bugo. Here's what I know: I'd like to know more, please chime in...

A Kenpo Base - The first few kata, Short One, Long One, and Short Two, are derived from the US Kenpo tradition . Our versions of the katas are shorter than the originals. Bookset too is kenpo based. And I quote from KLS68 who commented on Youtube about the bookset kata...Very good form, it is much differant than the original bookset. its much shorter....this is a kenpo style kata.Steve Lavallee trained under Lee Thompson which is tracey style kenpo... i believe william chow introduced it to the US through Ed Parker and his first students the Tracy brothers. Al, Will and Jim Tracy who then started the Tracy system.

Extreme Martial Arts - We do two open kata, XMA Form One and XMA Form Two, which are XMA-based. The XMA Sword Form 1 also is from XMA.

We often work in our drills and curriculum on Muy Thai kicks; MMA grappling and takedowns; and JuJitsu and in our drills and curriculum.

The chuck is a Japanese weapon. Our Chuck Form One and Chuck Form Two were developed in house.

American Bo Form- The American Bo Form was provided by Jason David Frank, a sixth degree black belt who has his own blended style of karate, Toso Kune Do, with four schools in Texas. Jason is well-known for his years as a Power Ranger.

The Kama Set is from Taekwondo as is kama set two. Kama Set Two is a form that was created by Roland Osborne and is a creative form (not from TKD). Roland was originally a student under Jason David Frank (both are lineage of Red Dragon Karate) and now runs his own schools. (thanks to Mr Dan Walsh for this addition).

Some of our
self defense techniques were derived from Kenpo which while very effective, requires real precision to use the right moves from the right position. Lavallees has shifted during the last three years to a reference point-based approach which is derived from Israeli Krav Mega. There are three posts about our self defense. One is a demo of BJJ Standup Self Defense by Kyoshi, one collects many of the Rear Choke Release , and the other Bear Hug Releases from Behind.

Our bugo is kickboxing. When sparing, we mostly don't grapple or use knees, elbows, or leg kicks.

Logar Shin is kung fu inspired.

The Ki Chung Kata is fromf tae kwon do origin. It's nearly identical to kama set but uses open hands


One note - I am just a student at Lavallees. This is only my personal opinion and thoughts, it is in no way an official statement by the school or Kyoshi. I hope you all understand that. The thoughts and misunderstandings are all mine. Feel free to correct me.In fact, Correct Me. If you are my friend..

3 comments:

Rich Holmes said...

Thanks for this, nice to know a little more about where some of this stuff comes from. More details would be nice if you ever get them, e.g. who specifically the kenpo katas came from, how far back... Are you familiar with the generations of the lineage before what you quoted here? Chow's black belt certificate was signed by Thomas Young, who was a student of James Mitose, although Chow may have studied directly under Mitose too. Mitose is interesting; Google for information. He claimed he learned his martial arts from his family in Japan, near Nagasaki, and that's the story Jim Tracy tells on his web site, but some other authors say Mitose's style (as documented in a book he wrote) is definitely an Okinawan style, and that in fact Mitose's book was, erm, heavily influenced by a book written by an Okinawan karateka. So there's a bit of a mystery there.

BBat50 said...

Doctroid, I don't know as much as I'd like about our lineage or Kyoshi's. I wrote about Kyoshi's instructors on an earlier post.It's based on a little web research to track down the signatories on Kyoshi's certificates.

I have a post by Jeff Fasoldt about the early days in Liverpool.

I'd like to find a history of Kenpo. Any recommendations?

BBat50 said...

Here's an article which discusses the origin and theory of the original American Kenpo self defense: 50 Ways to Sunday. And here's an article with a History of Kenpo by Will Tracy.