 Okay, so basically you've got your clock principle, you've got your basics, and you've got your normal principles from there. I think training becomes a lot easier, and we have our self-defense techniques, and this is where the biggest controversy comes from. It's funny because people will be like, oh, how come we never see techniques used in sparring? Well, one, they're not meant for sparring, but two, you do see them sometimes are parts of them. Self-defense techniques are designed to be sample scenarios, so you can see the concepts, and you can see the basics in an application. It's a sample sentence. A technique can be done a thousand different ways. You know, you take five swords, and you go to one temple school, and they're going to teach it one way. You go to 10 of the schools, there's going to be 10 different variations, and that's fine. A person throws a round punch, you step in with a belt, you know, with a block, then your arm, you're going to chop to the throat, palm heel strike, uppercut, chop, chop, depends on the version. It's a complicated sequence. Does it work in sparring? Not the greatest, and I'll get back to that, but it's teaching a lot of different concepts. It's teaching you how to cut the, you know, using the line to cut a circle. They're coming at you with a round attack, a round punch attack. You're coming in with a straight block. It teaches you fitted weapons. You're setting yourself up for other strikes, and you see pieces of five swords. You'll see its counterparts, reverse motions, other pieces, and other techniques showing you how it can blend. The reason I don't think it works in sparring as well is because typically when you're sparring in class, you're fighting someone who's experienced, and I found that when you're sparring someone who has some fighting experience, these wild round punches aren't that common. You know, there's more jabs and crosses, and maybe there's a hook, but it doesn't really work against the hook so much because they're too quick and too tight. A round punch, I've noticed, comes more from people who aren't as experienced in fighting that might be throwing wild haymakers. What'll work in that situation? I believe that it would. But that being said, I have used five swords in sparring, but in completely different ways. I've used them against kicks. I was sparring a guy several years ago, really good kicks. He liked taekwondo level, ground kicks, and hook kicks, and he came at me with a spinning hook kick, and I actually was able to step in, do that same block, and instead of doing the chop palmial strike, I did jab cross, same motion. So I used the same first three motions of five swords because I had done techniques so much that I recognized just from this position what I was able to do, and I just kind of didn't think about it, and I flowed with it, and I realized later, I'm like, I just did five swords, but in a completely different way. We have techniques that are based off of wrist grabs. I've done one crossing talent. I've used this several times. I've used this one in real life, never off a wrist grab, off a shirt grab. I've been able to pin the hands and come in and do an arm arm with it, and it's worked beautifully. So once you can break the mold or break the conception that techniques have to be done a specific way, and that that's the rule, that that's the law, get past that and realize they're just ideas. They're teaching you individual concepts and free forms, and recognizing the position so that after you've learned 150 techniques, the position starts to feel very familiar, and then you start getting this flow, and when you really understand how they relate to each other, then the grafting comes into play, and grafting is when you take part of this technique and part of this technique and merge them together and start making your own freestyle combinations. When you get to that point, it starts to become spontaneous. That's when Kemple really, really starts to work well for you. In our white belt level, and the white belt is a very good curriculum to look at this as, is we've got sister techniques right off the bat. We've got the lathe sword, which is based off of basically a straight attack. Someone's coming into a grab, push, or punch, and you step back, you block, you knock the arm away, you throw a front kick to the groin, you land with a chop to the side and neck. Simple, basic technique for the beginner to learn. Two techniques later, we have sword of destruction, which is very similar, but it's off a right, right round attack. So we step back, we do an outward block instead of an inward block, we do the same snapping front kick that we land with a chop, but this time the chop is coming inward versus the other chop was outward. So at face value, you're like, it's the same technique, but what's the difference? Well, they're almost mirror image of each other. One is showing an outward block, one is showing an inward block, one is showing an outward chop, one is showing an inward chop. So right away, and then the straight punch versus the round punch. So right there, you get the idea of, the idea is how you can alter them and how the same concepts can work, and also how every move and every, every constant has an opposite and reverse. And once you start to piece that together, it starts to open a lot of doors. In the same belt level, we have, or it depends if you're in the curriculum, it's been removed from some curriculums, but intellectual departure, person comes in with the front kick, you're going to step back, do a downward inward block, kick to the groin, come back with a snapping back fist. You start to see, you look at it, you're like, huh, that's the late sword, but now it's upside down. You know, we're using the lower half of our body. So once you start to open up your perception on that and start to realize that a lot of techniques are the same as other techniques, but they're either flipped, they're upside down, they're rearranged, or they're what ifs of each other, then it starts to get exciting. And that's where your free flow and your grafting and your spontaneity starts to come from. And since I've been doing this for the past year or two, this re-exploration, I have found an increased flow. I'm not thinking as much when I do a technique. And when I'm inspiring, parts of these techniques are coming out and sparring. You know, we've got deflecting hammer, downward, front kick, downward block, deflect the kick away, check the front arm, come in with an elbow strike. That's working sparring. And the techniques are taught in three different phases. There's the ideal phase. And this is where everybody gets hung up on. I do believe this is the source of much of the criticism of Kempo, is that people see a demo, these technique lines. You go to trade shows, you do these demonstrations where there's a whole line of people, and they do these flashy fancy techniques on each other and the person standing there. Yes. When you're seeing it at a demonstration, it's exactly that. It's a demonstration. When you do these technical lines in class, what you're doing is you're learning the ideal phase. It's basically that saying that everything goes right. Everything goes perfect. They react exactly how you want them to react to. This is how their reaction should be. It never works out that way. But now you're applying these techniques on a body. You're feeling what it feels like to strike a person and try to get those reactions. It's also good for the other person to get conditioned and take a hit. Eventually, you start doing the what is. Oh, how, okay, how would I adjust the technique if something goes wrong? Because something is going to go wrong. Or what if you only do part of the technique? And eventually, you get to phase three, which is the formulation phases. Once you understand the principles, once you understand what is teaching, and you start to get that free flow, somebody grabs you, somebody comes to push you, they pinch you, they push you, they want to, they bring them for something they want to fight, that you're not so much trying to memorize techniques and trying to remember what to do, you're going to react. And you're going to, you're going to recognize positions and you're going to do what feels natural in that moment. And it's all going to kind of come together into some sort of a free form reaction. Oh, and one thing I wanted to bring up with the techniques is there's something called the equation formula. The equation formula teaches you eight different things you could do a technique to make it work. The first thing is you can alter a weapon or you can alter a target. So you know what, it's a good example. It's five swords that instead of doing the block off of a round punch and following up with the chop and the palm hill strike, well, I altered it. I didn't, I didn't, I did the block, but like, you know what, the chop and the palm hill aren't going to work well. So I did a jab and a cross. That worked. I altered my weapon to the technique. You can prefix and you can suffix. Those are two other things. So you can add moves before you can add moves after. So, you know, you can do a technique. It doesn't have to be exactly ABCD. You can put moves in the beginning, you can move moves at the end. You can also insert, put moves in the middle. Oh, you're transitioning. Well, maybe I can clip them with a hammer fist or maybe I can get a slipping elbow in there. You can insert techniques. You can also rearrange. So you'll see this too. A lot of techniques in Kemple as you go up, you're learning, you're like, oh, okay, well, that was just a late sword, but now we rearranged the order. It teaches you that it doesn't have to be in that set order. You can rearrange techniques. You could delete stuff. So maybe you might not have to do that strike, or maybe you feel like you're sufficient in doing just the first two moves. You can delete the rest. You can adjust your range. And this is a good example. We have a technique and this goes on along with the forearm comment we had before. There's a technique called thundering hammers. First comes in with the punch. You do a block and you're going to shuffle in and do a forearm strike to the body with lower body growing, if you can, with the ideas. Hopefully you bend them over, cancel their height zone. We have another technique later called flashing wings, which is basically thundering hammers is the same technique, but it's close range and it's using elbows. And but it's got very, very similar mechanics. So you can always adjust your range. And there's a lot of techniques to call for a kick, but they say, well, if you're too close for a kick, shoot a knee strike, or if it's supposed to be a knee strike, we'll fire a kick. You can adjust your range. And the final thing is you can regulate, regulate your speed, regulate your power based on the reaction that you want. Once you have all that in mind, then you realize tempo is nothing more than a bunch of Legos. Then once you learn how the pieces fit together and you've in each each technique is its own little play set that you've built. Well, then you can build anything you want after that, because now you know how the pieces fit. Now you know how to build what you want. You want to build the car? Well, you don't have to build it the way you did in the kit. Make your own car with your own pieces. Now you know how it works. So in a nutshell, I feel that that's how tempo techniques should be taught and should be understood and should be practiced is that they are so much more flexible than what people think at face value. People see a technique line, they go, they'll never work. That looks great. It looks fancy. They're just sitting there slapping themselves. Guys never going to react. Right. Cause they're seeing only the beginning book work phase of it. The rest of the phases you see in a classroom at a good school.