Tracy Kenpo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article, especially its section layout, and relevant internal links. (help)
This article has been tagged since March 2007.

[edit] Tracy Kenpo

Tracy Kenpo is a Kenpo martial arts style with historical roots back to William Chow and James Mitose.^{[citation needed]} William Chow lived in Hawaii in the early to mid 1900's and began teaching Kenpo there. This system of martial arts caught the interest of a young American named Ed Parker, who is primarily credited with bringing his style of Kenpo to the continental 48 states in the early to mid 1950's. Ed Parker helped introduce Al & Jim Tracy to Kenpo in the 1950's, and they were both promoted to Shodan (first degree black belt) in January of 1962.

Wherase Ed Parker created American Kenpo, a variant of the original Kenpo he studied under William Chow, the Tracy brothers are the only Kenpo style claming to teach the authentic, original version brought over from Japan by James Mitose.^{[citation needed]}

The Tracy brothers founded their first school in the 1960's in San Jose, California and it quickly became a tremendous success across the country.

The Tracy’s, along with Ed Parker, are credited with pioneering the Americanization of karate^{[citation needed]}. Jim, Al and their students took karate and opened schools across the country.

Today, the Tracy’s organization is one of the largest martial art franchises in North America.^{[citation needed]}