Simonet, Hernandez Make Up DVD Debut in Blade Style!

Inside Kung-Fu
“Simonet, Hernandez Make Up DVD Debut in Blade Style!”
Dave Cater
February 2008
Pg 22-23

Inside Kung-Fu columnists Joseph Simonet and Addy Hernandez make their Unique Publications DVD debuts in stunningly deadly fashion with three offerings sure to improve your skill with the blade.
Hernandez’ first-ever DVD, called “A Cut Above,” show-cases her amazing speed and power with the knife. Simonet, one of the world’s foremost authorities on bladework, produces what many are calling his finest and most-advanced work to date: “Down and Dirty Streetfighting: Vol. 1 – Take-down Counters; and Vol. 2 – From Empty Hand to Blade.” All techniques and drills are derived from essential elements of the “KI Fighting Concepts” knifefighting system created by Simonet and Hernandez.
Each DVD retails for $29.95 each and can be purchased at www.up-publications.com or (866) 834-1249.


A CUT ABOVE
In “A Cut Above,” Hernandez displays a combination of elegance and grace with brutal finality with a blade. In step-by-step, easy-to-follow instruction, she begins by demonstrating one simple defensive blade technique for any attack. Hernandez teaches you how to combine superior footwork with hand and body positioning to immediately disable an attacker upon contact, and keep him at bay.
She then guides you through her no-nonsense brutal and deadly offensive knife skills. She demonstrates and teaches a variety of rarely seen techniques that will take any attack to its finality.
Hernandez changes directions and guides you through a step-by-step knife juru and/or knife manipulation drill. Finally, she’ll finish with a flow drill that will enhance your dexterity with a blade.

JOSEPH SIMONET’S DOWN AND DIRTY STREETFIGHTING—VOL. 1

TAKEDOWN COUNTERS
World-renowned author Joseph Simonet unveils his explosive insight on superior fighting attributes. See what thousands of martial artists worldwide have already experienced. Simonet’s dynamic attitude and hard-core streetfighting skills have elevated the martial arts combat field.
He begins by showing commonly known drills and techniques derived from wing chun, the Filipino arts and silat, then transforms them for a more hardcore street self-defense application. These techniques follow his formula of C.A.P.A. (Conceptual Analysis and Practical Application). Simonet then demonstrates never-before-seen techniques to stop any “takedown” in its tracks.
Finally, Simonet reveals the pentjak silat footwork and key aspects that have been shrouded in secrecy and politics for decades. Simonet describes in keen detail the 30-degree angle footwork that will completely transform the way you look at the own footwork in your combat art.

JOSEPH SIMONET’S DOWN AND DIRTY STREETFIGHTING—VOL. 2
FROM EMPTY HAND TO BLADE
Joseph Simonet continues his theme with explosive superior fighting attributes. First Simonet explores the “seamless transitional integration” between empty hand to blade. Simonet will show you in step-by-step fashion how explosive attacks can be translated into deadly knife techniques utilizing his “concussive aggression.”
Simonet guides you through detailed instruction on “closing the gap” between you and your attacker with superior footwork and trapping drill. Simonet then describes in detail a new fighting range he calls “body sticking” by showing you aspects of two-person full-contact stand-up drills, derived from his highly acclaimed system, “The Art and Science of Mook Jong – Slam Set.” Simonet teaches essential fight-stopping elements so you can reflexively respond with effectiveness in any defensive situation.

Way of the Blade

Inside Kung-Fu
“Way of the Blade”
By Addy Hernandez
August 2007
Pg. 24

My martial arts training began in the early summer of my 17th year. I was a bright-eyed, impressionable, high school senior ready to conquer the world. I wanted to leave my past behind and strive full throttle into the future. Paradoxically, fate had already intervened as my past and future were on a collision course in which my reality would be forever forged.
From the beginning, training with sifu Joseph Simonet was physically, mentally and emotionally challenging. Intuitively, he seemed to know my limitation – real or imagined. Sifu Simonet introduced me to several training methods. We boxed, grappled, weight-trained, ran, hiked and worked endless rounds of focus pad combinations. I learned aspects of wing chun, silat, kenpo, doce pares and Yang-style tai chi. Each art offered a unique and challenging expression of fighting dynamics. My passion for the martial arts was insatiable as several years of training ensued.
One day during a private lesson, sifu Simonet handed me a training blade and asked me to show him my knife fighting skills. I assured him , I didn’t know any knife fighting techniques or methods. “Actually, it’s everything you know,” he replied. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said. Unbeknown to me, sifu had specifically taught me techniques and methods of movements, which were translatable to knife application. My jurus from silat, my kenpo techniques, the stick drills, everything became knife. My astonishment soon turned into delight, as I realized edged weapons had already been an integral part of my life.
I was born in Mexico in 1976. I was just four years old when my mother died while giving birth to my baby sister. With five very young children, my father packed up and headed north to America in search of work in the orchards of Washington State.
My father is a hard-working man, proud of his craft and Mexican heritage. He grew his own vegetables and butchered livestock to feed his family. Of all the children, I was the one who did not shy from the process of butchering our animals. Very early on, I would learn the skills by watching my father kill, skin, gut and clean animals. For me using an ax, knife and machete became a natural and necessary part of growing up. I would cut off the head of chickens using an ax and then clean and bone them with the sharpest knife my father owned. I have cut up rabbits, pigs, turkeys, deer and even a bear. It was not unusual to see my father and me side by side cutting down alfalfa and corn stocks with a machete. The use of edged tools has always been a part of my Mexican culture.
Growing up, I wanted to be like all the “American kids.” Being young and immature, I was sometimes embarrassed that we slaughtered our animals for food. Now, as a woman and martial artist, I have come to appreciate my heritage with pride and renewed respect.
It was when I was six or seven that I first witnessed an underground Mexican pastime –cockfighting. During harvest every fall my father would hire dozens of workers to pick apples. This was a time of excitement as well as long, hard hours in the orchard. At night the men would gather to drink, play music and gamble on cockfights. The scene of men gathered around a circle of rope yelling and cheering during these cockfights is both surreal and vivid. These vicious rituals would often end with dead or several injured roosters.
Unfortunately, there were some mean who would cheat to win at any cost. In cockfighting, the cheaters would secretly attach thin razors to the cock’s feet, which of course would destroy its opponent by slashing it into a bloody mess. On one particular night, the crowd was loud and frenzied. Apparently, two cheaters had been caught. In punishment, they were forced to arm each rooster with razors and fight. Here I was, a young girl, witnessing a vicious reality of contesting with blades. My recollection of the night ended in chaos, spurting blood and yelling men.
The next day, I asked my father about the cheaters and the fighting, “Papa, I don’t understand. Who was the winner of the fight?” In a somber voice my father replied, “Hija, in a real cockfight with blades – the winner is the second one who dies.”
Through my father and our culture’s necessity to survive, killing and cutting up animals taught me respect in the blade and a strong value for life. Through sifu Simonet and my passion in the martial arts, I understand the lethality of bladework through osmosis and practical self-defense application. The philosophy of these two men has merged and allowed me to forge my own way of the blade.

The KI to Fighting Supremacy Part 1

Inside Kung-Fu
“The KI to Fighting Supremacy Part 1”
Interview by Michael Janich
June 2005
Pg 34-39, 95

Joseph Simonet has taken 30 years of conceptual study and turned it into one revolutionary martial arts system.

For years, Joseph Simonet has been one of the best-kept secrets in the American martial arts community. An exceptionally talented practitioner and instructor with high-level ranking in numerous Chinese, Indonesian, and Filipino martial arts, he is best known for his ability to cross-reference and synthesize the common elements of individual arts into universal concepts and physical principles that transcend style.

KI
This universal body of knowledge forms the foundation of his revolutionary KI Fighting Concepts curriculum and its wooden dummy-based, state-of-the-art training methodology, the Art and Science of Mook Jong. In this two-part interview, Simonet explains the method behind his uniquely visionary madness.

INSIDE KUNG-FU: When did you begin your training in martial arts?
JOSEPH SIMONET: I started training in 1972 in Japanese karate. At that time, I as already a competitive power lifter and was looking for other ways to challenge myself physically.
IKF: When did you get involved in kenpo?
JS: I switched to kenpo in 1973 and met Al Tracy in 1975. Although I have studied many different arts since then, I am still associated with Al Tracy and Tracy’s kenpo and am probably the highest-ranked practitioner of that system no teaching that art exclusively.
IKF: What ranks do you hold and in what arts?
JS: I am currently an eighth-degree black belt in Tracy’s kenpo; a fourth-degree in doce pares under Christopher Petrilli; a second degree in eskrido under Cacoy Cañete; a second degree in pentjak silat tongkat serak; and a black-sash level in wing chun gung-fu. I also have an instructor’s certification in Yan style taiji.
IKF: What do you mean “black-sash level” in wing chun?
JS: I’ve trained in both classical wing chun and its non-classical variants for over two decades and had the opportunity to study with some of the best wing chun instructors in the country. I learned the classical wooden dummy set from the great Wang Kiu and ultimately mastered all the skills of the system on my own terms.
IKF: But you never received a formal rank?
JS: I trained with people who had their black sash and could do everything that they could-usually better. That taught me that individual accomplishment is always more important than formal rank or certification. If anyone doubts my skills in wing chun, they are welcome to stop by anytime and “stick” with me.
IKF: What was the significance of each of the arts you studied and how did they give you the tools to develop as a martial artist?
JS: I consider kenpo to be the most complete encyclopedia of physical motion in the martial arts. If you want to catalog a movement, you can find it in kenpo. The Filipino arts taught me the importance of flow and the fact that spontaneous application is more important than rote technique. Through wing chun I developed an in-depth understanding of physical structure and the advantages of skeletal alignment over muscular strength. Silat taught me forward enerfy, taking an opponent’s space, and the secrets of body leverage and angles in throwing. And from taijiquan I learned the power of fluidity and relaxed movement.
IKF: Which arts were the most revolutionary to your development as a martial artist?
JS: At the time, every one of them was revolutionary to me, because I immersed myself completely in that art while I was studying it. I wanted to make sure that I understood the totality of the art in its pure form first. Then, I stepped back and looked at the art with a critical eye to draw the best elements and concepts from it.
IKF: Which arts were least beneficial?
JS: I have learned something from every art I’ve studied-even if it was what not to do. Once you discover that, you reverse-engineer your training to focus on the stuff that does work.
IKF: What is KI Fighting Concepts?
JS: The KI in KI Fighting Concepts stands for “karate innovations.” I founded it in 1979 as a hybrid system designed to fill in some of the blanks that I found in kenpo, but it’s grown far beyond that. The way I see it, every martial art presents a specific model. Although every model works fairly well at a basic level, the more I challenged them, the more their limitations became apparent and the models broke down. To fix them, you have to look outside the model and draw from something else.
Over time, what began as a hybrid system of kenpo has become and eclectic blend of pre-eminent martial arts systems, unified at the conceptual level. The development of KI Fighting Concepts has also paralleled my personal development in the arts, filling in the blanks in the totality of my own training, knowledge, understanding, and training methodology.
IKF: So KI Fighting Concepts follows the model of “absorbing what is useful?”
JS: Absorbing what is useful is a nice start, but more important that that is extracting what is essential. A “useful” skill set that doesn’t include the really critical skills that you need to fight well is a guaranteed way of getting your butt kicked. It’s like having a survival kit full of “useful” items that doesn’t include matches or some other way of making a fire. Without that essential element, you die.
IKF: There are a lot of styles and systems out there that claim to have extracted the best of all the arts. How is KI Fighting Concepts different?
JS: Most people who claim to have created eclectic systems have done nothing to integrate their arts at a fundamental level. If you duct tape a wrench and a screwdriver together, you haven’t invented anything. By the same token, duct taping a bunch of tae kwon do techniques onto jiu-jitsu ground skills doesn’t produce an integrated fighting art.
The “concept” in KI Fighting Concepts reflects the fact that it is a synthesis based on total integration of the component parts, not just a buffet line of different martial arts techniques. So many styles are actually defined by the minute difference that set them apart instead of the 99 percent of the content that makes them similar. That’s ridiculous.
By understanding the core concepts and mechanics that are common to all systems, you can achieve total integration at the foundation of the art and flow to any technique you choose. This approach also helps you appreciate various styles for what they contribute to the whole, rather than blowing them off because “their stance are wider than our stances.”
IKF: You’ve got some pretty impressive martial arts credentials, but what qualifies you to create your own martial art?
JS: After 30 years of training, six black belts, and years of seeking the truth from other people, I decided that I was qualified. Who told Yim Wing Chun, Mas Oyama, Morehei Uyeshiba or any other founder of a martial art that they were qualified? Nobody. Because of all the tradition and ritual that surrounds the martial arts we forget that men developed all arts. In most cases, they were developed to overcome the shortcomings of the systems they already had, which were also developed by men. Well, the same thing applies today.
It amazes me that when it comes to every other field of human endeavor-science, medicine, technology, education-we constantly strive for progress. But when it comes to martial arts, most people are convinced that someone else figured it all out and created the ultimate fighting art hundreds of years ago. I don’t think so.
If I have the knowledge, the skills, and the insight to create a superior system, I’m not going to hold back because it’s not traditional. The telegraph was a great invention, but I don’t see anyone trading in his cell phones for one.
IKF: So you no longer see much value in the traditional martial arts?
JS: All living things are evolving, dormant, or dying. When viewed in this way, most traditional arts are at best either dormant or dying. As cultural experience, as a form of fitness, or as an off-the-shelf basic self-defense, they’re fine. But as a state-of-the-art fighting system, no art that values tradition above function is worth betting your life on.
IKF: What about the instructors who claim to have adapted their traditional arts to the needs of modern self-defense?
JS: If they’re still restricted by the limitations of their tradition, they’re going to come up short. Training in traditional martial arts is like restoring an old car. You bust your butt for years to get everything to look exactly like the original. But when you’re done, you’ve still only got a 1973 Pinto. Granted, it’s a beautiful, historically accurate Pinto, but it’s still a Pinto.
IKF: Do you consider yourself in the same league as people like Mas Oyama, Ed Parker or the founders of other well known systems?
JS: That’s not for me to judge, but that’s certainly my goal. They were great men and great martial artists because they started with the martial tradition that they learned and continued to analyze, innovate, and build upon it. That tradition-a legacy of innovation and progress-is what I really value.
If you think about it, the biggest difference between me and the founders of other arts is that I’m still alive. As strange as it may sound, in the traditional arts, being dead is a great qualification. Your followers will spend years interpreting and re-interpreting everything you said or wrote like your grocery list somehow holds the key to martial enlightenment. I’m here to answer questions and provide guidance to my students now. I’m also continuing to grow and learn along with them.
IKF: What has been your most satisfying experience or accomplishment in the martial arts?
JS: Realizing that I was in control of my own destiny and didn’t need validation from anyone else.
IKF: What has been the most frustrating?
JS: Waiting so long to realize it.
(In part two, Simonet explains his fighting philosophy, the role of wooden dummy training in the quest for personal martial excellence, and his plans for the future.)

The Blade Set

Inside Kung-Fu
“The Dynamic Blade Set”Interview by Dave Cater
July 2006
Pg. 90-94

ONE OF THE CORNERSTONES OF THE KI FIGHTING CONCEPTS APPROACH IS ITS DYNAMIC BLADE SET.
INSIDE KUNG-FU: Please explain the blade set’s connection to your highly successful KI Fighting Concepts Slam Set?
JOSEPH SIMONET: First, let me explain what the Slam Set entails. The Slam Set is about 60 seconds of a high-impact, high-intensity form done on the mook jong (wooden dummy). So far, the Slam Set has taken about 25 years of research and development. Fine-tuning and recalibration of the Slam Set is a lifelong evolution.
The Slam Set is my database. Every single movement I train can be found in the Slam Set. Bruce Lee’s book, “Chinese Gung Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self Defense,” states that “a good gung-fu man is a simplifier.” I’ve simplified nearly 35 years of training and study into a 60-second database. From the Slam Set I’ve derived five major new models of training methods. These are the Skill Sets, Two-Man Set, Club Set, Club and Blade Set, and the Blade Set. The Blade Set was created using the empty-hand Slam Set form.
IKF: Are you saying that the blade set is just doing the Slam Set with a knife in your hand?
JS: At first that was my intent. However, one day I was watching my partner Addy Hernandez working the Blade Set in the air and I had an epiphany. Watching Addy I realized a metamorphosis had taken place. The blade set had become its own entity.
IKF: From what arts were the Slam Set and Blade Set taken?
JS: I built the Slam Set predominantly form Tracy’s kenpo, wing chun, pentjak silat, doce pares and tai chi. The blade set came out of the Slam Set. As previously stated, all my movements at this point are from the Slam Set database.
IKF: I didn’t realize that kenpo was a knife-based art. Where’s the connection?
JS: Al Tracy was teaching me a blade/knife interpretation of kenpo as far back as 1975. Kenpo is an art rich with lethal and crippling blade applications. However, it’s not always known or taught.
IKF: How did you decide which movements to leave in and which ones to discard?
JS: Over the years I’ve developed a formula for defining value of the material I keep, and to ascertain its function and practicality. The acronym I use for this process is CAPA or Conceptual Analysis and Practical Application. When building a martial arts modality, one must adhere to the strict law of physics, anatomy, philosophy and intent. In my pursuit of developing an art of the 21st century, I am not bound by tradition, dogma, religion, culture or any other futilities. It is my intention to rid martial arts of moronic vacuities.
IKF: Using your own acronym, it sounds as though you’re expressing your conceptual analysis. So tell us your practical application of the choosing and discarding of various martial arts material.
JS: After studying in m aforementioned arts for years, I began seeing them as inanimate physical structures. These structures being analogous to let’s say the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge and so on. I broke down these arts to their simplest forms and components. Filtering through these disassembled arts I gathered what I discerned as universal truths and/or essential characteristics. Someone once stated we should, “Absorb what is useful…” I would suggest we “Extract what is essential.”
After unifying these common and essential parts, I went back to the disassembled arts and connected secondary parts as well. These universal and secondary components became the elements of the Slam Set-Art and Science of Mook Jong.
IKF: After training for 35 years, you must have left thousands of parts in these piles. Are they of no value? What did you do with them?
JS: To continue the metaphor, I dug a mass grave and bulldozed all the unnecessary material and covered it up. The last I heard was that a herd of sheep were grazing over the grave as they chewed the last decay off the traditional martial arts carcass.
IKF: Why was it important to incorporate a blade set into your system?
JS: In my view, martial arts in general is in need of a paradigm shift. I’ve been burdened with the obsession of designing a truly new and necessary hybrid martial system. In pursuance of a weapons art, I once again address CAPA.
My conceptual analysis leads me right to the kitchen drawer. If one were not restricted by frivolous doctrine or mandate, knife/blade training is the most natural and accessible of all weapons. Every house, condo, apartment, mobile home, palace, tepee or cave worldwide has knives in them. It seemed reasonable to create a weapons system based on a weapon everyone has access to.
To elaborate on the paradigm shift, let’s look back at the tournaments of the 1970s and the 1980s. Regardless of what “martial art” everyone trained, their sparring pretty much looked the same. So I’m thinking, why train in such and such an art but fight completely different than the art itself? I’ve always felt that every movement one trains must be functional fighting. If not, the practitioner is overloading the nervous system with superfluous motion, all of which equates to being a waste of time, money and opportunity. Martial arts should be based on practical, functional and simple movement. Even today’s students are learning worthless kata, technique and history, all in the pursuance of worthless rank.
The translation of the Slam Set (empty hand) into the blade set is an expression and application of a “Seamless Transitional Integration”-from empty hand to blade to empty hand, regardless of order. Thus, form and function are indeed synonymous.
IKF: Most of your Blade Set moves are practiced on the mook jong. Why is that?
JS: Actually, all the Blade Set movements are practiced on the wooden dummy. As I stated earlier, the Slam Set is the template for the Blade Set. So wooden dummy training is an essential expression of the Blade Set. Also, the Blade Set is practiced with an opponent/training partner as well as in the air.
IKF: How does the mook jong work translate to real-life combat?
JS: The wooden dummy is one of the most versatile training apparatuses in martial arts. It allows the practitioner the ability to generate full-force attacks, trapping options, precise limb destruction and rapid-fire flow with adhesion and spring-loaded attacks. These are essential training attributes necessary for the development of a true combat fighter.
IKF: If someone were left-handed, would that hinder his Blade Set development?
JS: Absolutely not. Within the Blade Set, both the right and left hands are utilized. I designed the Blade Set to be effective with a standard right-hand grip of a standard left-hand grip. Also, one could use an ice pick grip with either hand. If someone wanted to, the Blade Set could be performed with two blades at once with any grip on either hand.
IKF: The Blade Set appears perfect for women to learn. Why is that?
JS: Actually, the Blade Set is perfect for anyone to learn if he is serious about truly surviving a brutal attack. However, that being said, the blade is the ultimate equalizer when it comes to self-defense (other than a gun). Women can level the playing field against stronger and/or larger opponents with functional blade application. Knives are easy to carry, conceal, affordable, legal and lethal.
IKF: What knifefighters/practitioners out there today are you impressed with and why?
JS: There are three blade experts in the United States that I would consider world-class. I’ve personally spent time with each of them. So, my opinion is based on first-hand experience. They are Kelly Worden, Jim Keating and Mike Janich.
IKF: What particular skills and/or accomplishments do you perceive inherent in these knife experts?
JS: Let’s start with Kelly Worden. Kelly is the most skilled and toughest student Remy Presas ever had. He’ll bring it, and bring it hard. Jim Keating is a knifefighter’s knife expert whose skills are exemplary in every sense of the word. Mike Janich is the smartest knife expert I’ve ever met. Mike has successfully translated his massive intellect into surgeon-like precision with his blade.
IKF: Give me three examples of unique and/or essential elements of your Slam Set-Blade Set series that differentiate it from other arts?
JS: 1. My entire database is a 60-second form. I can focus on honing a relatively small amount of information as opposed to cluttering my nervous system with unnecessary junk. 2. Space. The Slam/Blade Set can be done in a very confined space (4x4 feet). Being effective in so little a space is perfect for airplanes, security, crowds, between parked cars, etc. 3. A Slam/Blade Set practitioner can deliver a lethal dose of knees, elbows, blades and attitude in fractions of a second in a “Seamless Transitional Integration.”
IKF: How do you plan on propagating your art?
JS: Several ways, actually. First, Addy and I own a gym in Wenatchee, Wash., and have about 175 students. Secondly, we have teamed up with Unique Publications and we’ll be releasing our Blade Set book later this year. Thirdly, Paladin Press will be releasing DVDs on our Slam Set curriculum later this year as well.
And finally, we will be teaching the “Blade set” at out 7th Annual Wind and Rock Training Camp in Lake Chelan, Wash., July 7-9. Come and join us. Check out our Web site at www.kifightingconcepts.com for more details.