 Hi everybody! Today we're going to be answering some viewer questions, both from our channel as well as our Patreon and YouTube memberships. Now, before we get started, if you haven't already, I'd really appreciate it if you hit that subscribe button down below. Your support really helps us out and we really kind of appreciate this feedback so that when we can go back and forth, we can kind of talk about the topics you guys want to talk about. And if you have any further questions, please feel free to leave them in the comment section down below or also on our Patreon and YouTube membership pages if you want to remember. So, let's get started. So, the first question comes from Bryce Keeney and he asks, Follow through or snap techniques? Which is better? I say both have their place and use. Bryce, I have to agree with you that they both have their place and their use. And as far as determining which one is better, really depends on that use or your intent, your intended result. They've got very different applications. You know, snapping strikes are usually in terms of like jabs or quick snapping kicks. They tend to be faster, but they don't have the power behind them as knockouts would. Typically speaking, especially in the case of the jab, the jab tends to be the hand closest to the opponent. So, it's closer. It's got less distance to travel. So, it's a really good option to use, a good tool to use for a quick snapout strike which may distract them or set your opponent up for that knockout shot. Now, follow through techniques would definitely be things along the lines of you're putting your whole body alignment into your striking weapon, whether it be a cross punch or a hit to the body or a kick to the body. Basically, you're putting all your energy into your opponent. So, the way I like to view it as snapping strikes or more setup strikes that sit you up for those powerful knockout shots or the step-through shots or the follow-through shots. So, like you said, it definitely depends on the time and place and the intended result that you would like to get from those strikes. Adam28171 asks, Would you agree that Kempo is a percussion striking art and doesn't have the KO power strikes like boxing? Yes and no. It's an excellent question. Actually, it's a very observant question. Kempo does have a lot of percussion striking in it. A lot of vibrating strikes, a lot of close range rebounding strikes. But I would not agree that it has that instead of knockout shots or follow-through shots. I would say it's pretty even balance of both. We do have a lot of strikes that you strike and recoil a lot of body strikes, a lot of body shots. And the way we describe it as, I've heard it described as, it's kind of like a piano key. You go up to a piano, what's the difference between if you hit the piano key and you hold the key down? It just kind of goes, it holds the note versus you hit the key and let go. That's when you get that rich vibrating sound. You're allowing the energy to recoil or reverb through the piano strings. Striking is very much a similar concept. So if you were to drive all of your body weight, all of your power into a strike, that energy's got nowhere else to go but reverberate inside of them. And I know I was at a seminar once with Jeff Spiekman and he was explaining this concept and he was showing us a particular strike. It was like a downward hammer fist that you struck to the pelvis. And the way, the angle he was teaching it, the way he was describing it was, you wanted to hit it in such a way that you've got that rotational power. You've got that dropping rotational power and you're doing your strike and you're reloading and that energy is going to reverberate around the inside of the pelvis and do a lot of bruising. And you can be skeptical of this but we've seen him in class actually do strikes. He hit my instructor in a demonstration, hit him on one side of the body and the bruise showed up on the other side. So there is a lot of focus on percussion because that could be a very devastating effect. I mean, if you really want to rebound an energy into a person's body, you can absolutely do so. As far as the knockout shots, absolutely. We have a bunch of driving shots, especially right to the body designed to crack ribs, close up elbow strikes. We do have driving punches, cross strikes to the face. So I would say Kempo is an even mix of percussion strikes and follow through or knockout penetrating strikes. It's got a mixture of both. And it's really just about knowing which one to use at which time. Speaking of Kempo, Spencer Ord asks, I'd love to hear more about the different methods of footwork within Kempo karate and if they differentiate from shatokan, kyokushin, gojuru, shitoru and more about the methods of forward motion. This is an excellent question Spencer and I think we're gonna have to circle around back this one for a full in-depth topic because there's a lot that can be said about this. But for a quick summary, for a quick answer at this point in time, there's a lot of difference actually in Kempo stances and I like to view Kempo not as just a karate system. I think it's its own category. You've got karate, you've got kung fu, you've got jujitsu and you also have Kempo. These are categories and there's a lot of overlap but Kempo stances do differentiate while they look similar in some aspects, have a lot of differences from your standard karate stances. One being they're typically not as deep as the Japanese stances. You won't usually see a lot of Kempo's go super deep into their stances if you do or if they are. There's either a reason for it. They're trying to demonstrate something or it's for a tournament or they're performing it incorrectly but our stances are not meant to go super, super deep. Just to give you a really quick rundown of the stances that we do have in Kempo, these are our standard common stances. So first we have the horse stance and this is used for isolation and training for the most part. It does show up in some certain techniques but basically what we do is we go into our horse stance, we are locking our lower half of our body so we can focus on the upper half of the body whether it be a striking set or a blocking set or any number of different ideas but basically we are not worried about the lower half of the body but we're not just standing there casually we're locking it out into a solid solidified base so that we can focus on the upper half of our body. It will show up as a transitional stance in certain techniques but for the most part it is a training stance. Our neutral stance is our default fighting stance. Basically weight distribution is 50% of the weight on the front leg, 50% on the rear leg. Now this stance is not dissimilar from a karate fighting stance but one of the key differences or one of the more notable differences is that we try to close off our centerline by bending that front leg kind of blocking an entry for groin strikes. It might seem like a small detail but believe it or not I've actually had it come in handy quite a few times inspiring. So that is our default stance but that is from that position we can throw just about every technique, every strike, every block that we have in our arsenal that is just our natural neutral fighting stance. And then we come to the forward bow stance this is probably one of the more common striking stances. The forward bow basically is used for rotational power and it's got a weight distribution of 60% of our weight on the front leg and 40% on our rear leg so we're kind of leaning into it very very similar to a karate front stance or a zenkutsu dachi stance. The purpose that we have it is for really three main reasons. The first one is that rotational power, that rotational twist gives us power for our rear hand strikes. So as we mentioned earlier front hands are usually used to apply jabs because they're quick and they're snappy when we set up for that rear hand. For that rear hand power you want to put your hips into it, that rotation. So the forward bow stance gives us that transition into that rotation and when you settle into it the same time as you strike there's a lot of power that can be administered through that stance. The other two reasons that we do that is besides power is actually neutralizes our reach. Because if you notice if I were to stand in my neutral bow stance my general finding stance my front hand has more reach or closer reach to the opponent than my rear hand. I cannot reach with my rear hand at the same distance until I do that rotation so that also gives me that reach and the third reason is a bracing angle. A properly applied forward bow stance with the heel planted can actually sustain quite a bit of resistance and being pushed back and you're not going to stand in the fight and do this so it's usually a quick transitional strike and go back but if you want to practice just how strong the stance can be go to the ocean, go to the beach, stand in the ocean as the waves hit you and stand in your forward bow stance and just kind of regain your balance and see how well you can fight against those waves it's actually a really really powerful bracing angle when applied in the right applications. We also have the reverse bow which is basically our forward bow but we're looking over the other shoulder. It also has the same 60-40 weight distribution but it's just reversed and this stance comes into quite a bit of a use when we're doing like lower strikes if we're going to strike to the groin or for those who are familiar with Kemple and have seen Kemple we have that buckle, that leg buckle. It's a very distinctive Kemple technique that leg buckle when done properly is a nicely done forward bow stance that can buckle and pop out your opponent's rear leg and sets them up for the strikes. It's a very very useful stance again when applied in the right scenarios. Then we have two stances that lower our body height the wide kneel stance and the closed kneel stance and real quick basically the reason we have two of them is they serve two different purposes. The wide kneel stance is basically our neutral bow so if you take our fighting position and just bend your knees and drop your height so for whatever reason you need to drop your height and deliver a forward strike or you're doing a groin strike whatever but you're just bringing your stance down that is the wide kneel stance. So if the wide kneel stance is basically our neutral bow just lower it onto a lower plane the closed kneel stance is our forward bow doing the same thing and this is used typically when we're doing like a downward strike say we've got our opponent on the ground we want to drop down and deliver a nice punch to the face or a strike to the body. This stance by bending that rear leg and driving downward actually aligns our body with our weapon and it gives us that bracing angle on a downward path and in addition to that though is especially if you're striking the opponent on the ground that knee is really good as a check or even dropping down low to apply pressure on the ribs or on the body or whatever you want them to do. So two different stances used to lower heights with slightly different purposes. Our neutral bow stance basically lowered is our wide kneel stance and our forward bow lowered is our closed kneel stance. We have a bunch of other stances we've got the cast stance, we have twist stance, we have the crane stance and they've got specialized applications I don't want to get into too much right now because like I said we can do a whole episode on stances we do have the back stance or rear bow but it's only in one technique as far as I'm aware of it's not common at all in Kempo you see it a lot in traditional karate we don't have it very much in Kempo there I think basically just kind of complete the existence of different types of stances but you won't see it too often but we do have a lot of stances in Kempo they're pretty distinct to Kempo sometimes they look like karate stances sometimes they look like Chinese martial arts stances but they definitely have their own flavor now as far as the forward motion that you're talking about our movement we do have several foot maneuvers that will allow us to advance or retreat because one of our big focuses is on gaining and decreasing distance so if we want to get closer to the opponent for whatever reason we've got maneuvers for that foot maneuvers and the basic foot maneuvers are we have our crossovers so if you just kind of want to keep your guard up you want to advance forward but you would keep your centerline protected we do crossovers you could do step-throughs which is also advancing you see this a lot in our freestyle sparring techniques we also have twist stances and we've got shuffles and we've got different methods of you know taking a step and dragging up or dragging and stepping different timings of that so basically the general rule with our foot maneuvers is you put them wherever you need them so you have to gauge on the spot your distance from your opponent whether you want to close the gap or you want to increase the distance that's going to determine which foot maneuvers you use but we definitely do have maneuvers that drive forward and also retreat and like I said you'll see a lot of these in our temple freestyle techniques next question is from Tom Tom he says hey Daniel would you consider letting your subscribers choose the next martial art you learn this is a very thoughtful and excellent question it's kind of a cool idea but the answer is a hard no and not because I don't want you guys you know involved in my training the reason is the material I'm looking for is very specialized for my own personal needs and everyone's needs is going to be different so whatever art you know you choose or he chooses or she chooses or I choose they're going to be different because we're looking for different things in my case my background is Kempo so I'm going to look at my own training and see what the pluses and minuses are where I feel the advantages are and then I'm going to look for arts that kind of fill in the gaps that kind of fill in the gaps of the disadvantages so for example that's why I started training in Jiu Jitsu and Judo so I wanted to learn stand-up grappling and throws and more joint submissions and blend that into my Kempo training and I'll be also a little bit of BJJ years back so without really knowing my background what my goals are it'd be hard for you guys to choose arts for me just as it'd be hard for me just to say hey Tom Tom you know why don't you go do XYZ I don't know your goals I don't know your background or your current experience so no I'm not really considering letting people choose for me but I am happy to share and I am planning more arts to get into and I definitely want to share that journey and ask for feedback and demonstrate and just kind of explore the whole world of cross-training and that brings us to the next question and I really sorry if I pronounced your name incorrectly I know you're a regular on our channel but this question comes from Camilo Eriberin I really hope I pronounced that correctly and he asks what is one style of martial art that you would like to practice but you haven't gotten a chance to yet excellent excellent question and I actually have a few I'm interested in learning a little bit of Japanese karate I've explored just a little bit I've looked in the show to come a little bit I haven't formally trained anything yet but I kind of wanted to go that route just for a little bit of taste of cultural tradition I would like to see a traditional Japanese martial art or Okinawan martial art Muay Thai has got some great strikes we did a little bit of some Muay Thai striking when my instructor taught MMA but if I had to choose right now to jump into it honestly it probably would be something as simple as boxing we've done a little bit in class but I think it would be valuable to do just a boxing training for a little bit do a stretch just to build mechanics just to work on timing get more powerful strikes I think boxing is one of the most powerful striking arts that's out there and I believe that that can only enhance training so if I were to go choose a specific discipline to get into right now it probably would be boxing if I was going to devote any amount of time to it and then take that and blend that in with my other material that I've already learned David Burns asks I'd love to see you cover Shorinryu which is the modern name of Shuritay Karate this one's interesting and yes, I'm actually very interested in Shorinryu it is a very old Karate system it's one of the earliest ones Shuritay is one of the three primary Okinawan systems that arrived that arose from different training in the villages of Okinawa there were the three main villages Shuri, Tomari and Naha and you've got the different branches of martial arts that came from that and of course those branched off to other arts Shuritay it's got a root in a lot of different arts because it's in Shorinryu Shorinryu is one of the base arts to Shodokon which is one of the base arts to many other arts out there so you could pretty much expand out quite a bit of generations and still find a way to trace back to Shuritay so that really interests me we haven't done a history episode yet I would like to at some point we're producing a bunch of YouTube shorts so we're going to touch on it real quick for YouTube short but for now for those of you who have not seen it we did an interview with Sensei William Christopher Ford that is his art we talked about it a little bit just a little bit of the training aspect of it so if you have not seen that episode I highly recommend you go check it out he's got an awesome awesome channel he's got some great content but Shorinryu is definitely an art I would like to come back to and explore further if that's something that enough people have interest in and the last question is from Landau Bishop instead of what martial art is most powerful which martial art is most changed or affected since the debut of the UFC which martial art has evolved the most wow this is a great question it's kind of hard to answer quickly but which martial art has changed the most I'm going to have to say probably the answer is a little bit twofold one, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu because that was the world stage of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu I mean it wasn't around before that but that's when everybody really got to see it and I think as an art that was an explosive point and it proliferated so I think the art really changed in terms of its popularity and its focus and now you got different it's starting to branch off with its own its own evolutions and its own schools so I think definitely that saw a growth and boost I think a lot of traditional systems had to update to address it because fighting is, you could say the second half of fighting and a lot of Okinawan karate systems they had some of this already they had some of the grappling that was removed later on so you either see systems bringing it back in or you see a lot of schools, a lot of traditional schools now adding grappling and MMA classes or grappling and BJJ classes into the curriculum to kind of address that Kempo definitely did it with Jeff Spiekman's Kempo 5.0, if you have not seen that episode we did an interview with Mr. Spiekman I definitely highly recommend that one he's got a lot to say about the topic that need was there so to answer the question I think a lot of traditional arts in general had to change and evolve to address BJJ and address the new MMA trend because it popularized it and it kind of showed that hey this is a style that's it's you know we shouldn't neglect the ground fighting it's here but if I had to pick a martial art that evolved the most honestly I'm going to kind of just kind of go outside the box a little bit and say MMA now MMA is not an art it's mixed martial arts but I do think we're starting to see a flavor of mixed martial arts specifically because of the UFC a particular blend I mean most fighters have some sort of grappling, striking arts in there and it's usually BJJ Muay Thai boxing, some Taekwondo karate we're starting to see the same mixes and while there's other flavors thrown in there's still the core that we're seeing in the UFC so I believe over time we're going to see that that mixture start to congeal into a core core curriculum and already already is starting to do that and I believe we're going to see that eventually tighten up and become its own system I think UFC style MMA will eventually become its own martial arts system even though there's a bunch of arts out there that are MMA because they're mixes and they're hybrids I think we're going to see this continue to evolve and go in direction and become its own thing so because of the UFC I think the UFC will be an art that evolved the most so that's just kind of like my observation thinking off top of my head with this one so thank you everybody who sent in questions I really love that people are asking these because it makes us think it makes everybody thinks and it provides a lot of good talking points we really love interacting with all of you and we cannot wait to bring more content to you in the horizon we've got a lot more coming so stay tuned and be sure to check out our episode with William Christopher Ford who talks about his show and your training and a little bit about the karate kid lure because he did play Dennis in karate kid part 3 so if you're interested in that please go watch that interview he's such a great guy I highly recommend his channel and thank you all for watching and we will see you next time