The San Diego Kenpo Karate Dojo (school) is a Kenpo Karate school that focuses primarily on the self defense aspect of Kenpo Jiu-Jitsu (our root system). What that means is while some schools teach sparring for sport karate, kick boxing, and even other martial arts – our school will primarily focus on the self-defense training students need to protect themselves in most situations.
Our style has evolved over the last few years to focus more on a blended self defense fighting method. We have added to Kenpo some Lima Lama and Historical European Martial arts for a good blend of Kung Fu, Karate, standing Jiu Jitsu, Polynesian martial arts, Italian sword and dagger methods as well as Eastern weaponry. This style is called Kenpo Buki Senjutsu (translates roughly to "fist law" "weapons" "strategy"). Read more about our style here: https://kenpobukisenjutsu.wordpress.com/ or at the link to the right.
At the student level our Kenpo Karate comprises of 240 self-defense techniques (or ways of escaping an attack with effective counter attacks), 17 katas or forms and basics. Upper belt levels (brown and black) also test for sparring (with protective padding) that would also be effective for sport karate.
The information below is more for new students to Kenpo Karate but that is not longer our main focus but rather a blended self defense fighting style. We will keep the traditional information below for historical information.
Check out our Kenpo Karate Belt System page to see the belt levels. At the elementary levels a student must learn 40 self-defense techniques, two katas, basics and successfully pass a test to achieve each belt ranking.
Our school is geared to teaching group lessons at the community group’s location. If students desire private lessons there are plenty of professional schools around that can meet your needs. One such school in San Diego is the American Kenpo Karate school at the first bookmark.
A typical group lesson will consist of teaching some basics, techniques, kata, review and some free-form self-defense application – applying some of what the students just learned.
While Kenpo Karate includes Jiu-Jitsu in the self-defense techniques, you will not be learning the Brazilian variety of Jiu-Jitsu but more of a Japanese style quick joint twists, breaks and locks.
If you are looking for ground fighting – this is not it. Ground fighting does not lend itself to self-defense because it is only one-to-one fighting. Any bystander could skew a ground fight by kicking one of the fighters. So it is better to fight standing up for self-defense where you could fight multiple opponents effectively.
I hope you enjoy our flavor of Kenpo Karate and welcome any queries.
