Category Completion

(recently posted on Facebook by Mr. Ron Chapél)

Early on when Mr. Parker decided to do something extraordinary by writing "manuals" for his instructors to keep everyone generally on the same page, he noticed that the bulk of the attack scenarios tended to be for some kind of right punch. Naturally, because most people are right-handed, that's the way we think. 

Others who were copying Ed Parker did the same. 

Realizing there were so many attack scenarios that needed to be addressed he, in conjunction with others came up with the idea of "Category Completion." 

He would take a base attack, and there would be a defense created for it. But, then he would "complete the category" of say a right punch. The base might be to go "outside" the right punch but to complete the category to ensure he didn't miss any possibilities, he would now do "inside" the right punch. Then, "over" the punch, followed by "under" the right punch, and you can see these variations represented in the Modern Manuals. 

As he got deeper into the material and the technique scenarios became more diverse and complex, he could see this approach wasn't going to work. Looking for another approach, he ultimately came up with the "Web of Knowledge." 

Based on a circular spider's web, as you moved around the web, it touched upon specific attacks and specific belt levels and even explored the differences between active versus "dead hands" as well as weapons, etc. This was to cover reasonable possibilities in order of priority of occurrences without ignoring belt levels and realistic possibilities. 

"Priority of Examination" is major. This has become even more significant as time has gone by because of the competitive nature of the business of martial arts that has forced people into "Martial Identities." This is a necessity to separate themselves from the competition, thus creating unrealistic subculture-focused arts and disciplines that ignore the realities of street self-defense. 

This has blurred the lines of "art," and "disciplines," over true street self-defense to drive priorities. This has given us "arts' that focus on just knives or sticks, etc. whose relevance in street self-defense is very low in Modern American Culture in the frequency of occurrence. 

Mr. Parker felt that greater time and energy should be spent on the most likely attacks over short-sighted focused anomalies. So you see at each belt level an examination as need of "grabs and tackles," "pushes," "punches," "kicks," "locks and chokes," and finally "weapons" in that order. 

By examining this it should be obvious the order of importance Mr. Parker placed on certain assaults according to time commitment to self-defense training in the modern American Culture for most people