Tracy's vs. Parker System

[Sho-ju]

Are they the same thing? What's Mr. Tracy's background?

[delta1]

Actually, there were three brothers: Al, I think Jim or George, and not sure about the last. At least two of them studied under Ed Parker in the early days of AK. At the time they left, they were among his senior students, and had some sort of business arrangement with Mr. Parker. They left early on over a dispute about marketing Kenpo. They wanted to more aggressively market the system, and Mr. Parker did not think the system was ready for that. It was nowhere near as complete as he wanted it before expanding to a mass market.

 

When they left, the Tracys' took Jimmy Woo with them, and several students, and started their own system based on AK. They also incorporated some traditional forms from Kempo. Tracy's people like to say they are more complete, and more dynamic than EPAK. As Mr. Parker discarded some of the techniques that were redundant and modified others to work better and teach basic principles better in fewer techniques, the Tracys' kept all the techniques as they learned them and added more of their own. They flow more like traditional Kempo as well. Their problem comes when they apply that flow to techniques that don't work well with it. They do have a prety good system, but their understanding is not up to EPAK in many cases. On the plus side, some of the things they incorporated from Kempo do have great, workable flow and are good for developing sensitivity. I obviously prefer AK, but I don't short the Tracy guys TOO much!