My Journey In Kenpo

My interest in kenpo began long before I ever stepped foot inside a kenpo dojo. In junior high school I started taking karate lessons at a dojo close to my house (shotokan). I really got in to the whole martial arts thing. Every magazine, every book, every movie that had anything to do with the martial arts I bought, watched, read, and generally soaked it all up like a sponge (yes, I even put good money down to watch several Jean Claude Van-Damme movies). It was around this time that the Jeff Speakman movie The Perfect Weapon came out on VHS. I saw it at a video rental store and it looked interesting. So I rented it…and was totally blown away by the martial art style of Jeff Speakman.

I was a little bit familiar with kenpo due to reading about in the various martial arts magazines I bought. But, I had never before seen kenpo in action. So I began to study up on kenpo (that is when I first came across the name Ed Parker and his books). I seached my area for a school that taught kenpo. Alas and alack, there were none. Most of the schools in the area (at that time) taught taekwondo, shotokan, judo, etc. So, I continued my studies in shotokan until high school…where I was forced to choose between football and the martial arts. After carefully considering my options I found that I got far more dates after a football game than I ever did after a martial arts tournament. Thus, my raging teenage hormones, and a few cheerleaders, compelled me to lay my martial arts training aside. But, martial arts (and kenpo in particular) stayed in my mind.

Flash forward 10 years later. I moved to Alabama to attend graduate school at the University of Alabama. While driving around town one day I heard an ad on the radio for a local karate dojo. I thought about that ad all day. I got home and still could not get the ad out of my mind. I remembered how much I had loved being in the marital art community. I missed it. I looked around and saw my young sons playing. I wanted to share something with them that I had once loved so much. So I decided to sign us up for karate lessons.

We looked around at various schools. There are some good schools here. But, some were not kid friendly and some that were kid friendly wanted just too much money. I had almost given up finding a good school here. But then, as we were driving home, out of the corner of my eye I caught a sign that read “The Kenpo University.” Kenpo. Here. Close. I made an immediate u-turn and went into the school. To make a long story short, when I left that studio not only had I signed up for kenpo lessons, but so had my oldest son and my wife.

Finally, 15 years after watching Jeff Speakman and developing an interest in kenpo, I was going to be a part of the kenpo community. I could not wait.

(To be continued)