Why Learn Five Animal Kenpo?

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Five Animal Kenpo teaches grappling, power striking, kicking skills, speed hitting, and soft, yielding techniques. However, in any one of the above categories Five Animal Kenpo is not the best martial art. Ju-jitsu is superior in grappling, Okinawan Te is stronger in striking power, Tae Kwon Do has better kicks, Arnis trains faster hands, and Aikido is excellent for learning yielding techniques.

You may be wondering why you should learn a style that is "not the best" at any one skill? Five Animal Kenpo is great at being good at the totality of self-defense. In general, being good is all you will need in any one area of combat to be effective. However, being great at one method of fighting and being ignorant in another area can be a disaster if you are matched up against your weakness. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. One invincible link of the chain will not compensate for the weak link. Five Animal Kenpo offers two significant advantages over specialized styles of fighting: Diversity of skills and an overview of knowing which style of fighting will by nature achieve victory.

Five Animal Kenpo is the "rock, scissors, and paper" of self-defense. Rock smashes scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper smothers rock. If your opponent is paper, you need to apply your scissors. World class scissors are not required, just average scissors will do. However, if you were to counter with rock, even if you selected a diamond, you would still lose to the paper. Thus, having skill in each area is important, but so is having the understanding of when to apply which strategy. Each animal controls and defeats another animal. Identify the strategy of your attacker, then choose the animal style that will achieve victory.

You don't have to learn five animal kenpo to have this well rounded skill of fighting techniques. For example, if a student trained to a Black Belt in Aikido, Karate, and Arnis, they would actually have the same breadth of skills, with perhaps higher skill in each range of combat. Would, however, the student trained in three different disciplines seamlessly move from art to art as strategy dictates? Also, the time factor of earning three Black Belts in three disciplines is much greater than training in one art.

Why learn Five Animal Kenpo? Because you will have well rounded skills and know when to apply them spontaneously in combat. Imagine a wheel. You have a hub, the spokes, and the tire. There are many martial art styles, each we shall place on the tire. Through training, you follow down the spoke. Any point on two different spokes will be similar, but will also be different. It is not until you arrive at the hub that all the spokes share a common unification. This hub is the point you want to arrive at in martial arts, and in life. For myself, the Five Animal approach has been the most direct path to the center, directing you to naturally select the strategy that controls your opponent's intent. A good pair of scissors will cut a great piece of paper!

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