SPOTLIGHT : SAVED BY THE BELT : Kicking Around Self-Defense, Discipline? Martial Your Forces

Late one evening, a panhandler approached 4-foot-9 Kathy Murphy in a mini-mall as she was about to step into her VW and drive home.

“He asked me for money,” Murphy recalled, “and I told him I didn’t have any money for him and to leave me alone.”

All that did, however, was provoke the man--twice Murphy’s size--who began to curse loudly, wave his arms wildly and come closer.

When walking away didn’t stop him either, Murphy, who has four years of karate training under her black belt, made a decision.

“He got a little too close for me,” she said, “so I turned around, threw my stuff down on the ground and put my hands up” in a standard defensive stance.

That worked.

“He backed off immediately,” said Murphy, a 37-year-old Anaheim resident who describes her pre-karate self as a painfully shy couch potato who lacked the confidence to look people in the eye.

“Had I not had this training,” she said emphatically, “that man would have had everything in my car and in my purse.” Through karate, “I have become a different person.”

Murphy, a metal company comptroller and part-time karate instructor who practices seven days a week while raising two kids, is one of a score of martial-arts devotees across Orange County who extol its virtues with vehemence.

Many such enthusiasts may show up at the Long Beach Convention Center on Aug. 20 and 21 for Ed Parker’s 31st Annual International Karate Championships (for information, call (714) 450-3166). It’s the nation’s biggest martial-arts competition of the year, said Murphy, who will vie for trophies along with at least 5,000 other contestants.

And, the number of new followers is likely to grow when “The Next Karate Kid”--the film series’ fourth installment--opens next month.

“Every time a marital-arts movie comes out, or there’s a big news story, more calls come in” and enrollment jumps, says Tom Muzila, owner of a Los Angeles branch of Shotokan Karate of America, which has a school in Garden Grove.

In any case, be they proficient at karate, kung fu, jujitsu or any of the discipline’s other myriad so-called systems (see accompanying box), martial-arts advocates rave about the benefits they reap beyond the ability to defend themselves in a pinch.

Of course, their dedication demands sacrifice. Hard-core students can easily spend 20 hours or more each week at the dojo , the place of practice. Exercises can be exhausting and numbingly repetitive, and the ache of sore muscles can be compounded by bruises, or, when mishaps occur, black eyes or worse.

Like all die-hard enthusiasts, however, these fans see the time, energy and money they spend doing what they love as a matter of getting, not giving.

Like Murphy, they talk about newfound self-confidence and self-respect that seems to swell from some inner source they never even knew they had. They rave about the physical and mental conditioning, the camaraderie and the stress reduction the pursuit affords.

Many women adherents attest to a greater sense of gender equality, in large part because mental acuity and technical mastery, not brute strength, are what it takes to take an opponent out.

“It used to be a man’s world,” says the petite Murphy, who regularly wins tournaments against men who generally stand a foot taller and weigh at least twice as much. These days, she adds with a chuckle, hubby Michael--who spent 21 years in the Army--relies on her to find out what goes bump in the night.

“Now he tells me to get up and find out what the noise is.”

Most martial arts practiced today originated in China, Japan or Korea.

Many of the countless differing systems, created hundreds of years ago for combat, exercise and health or inner harmony, share common philosophies and techniques involving blocks, kicks, punches and stances.

“There is no one system that is the best for everyone,” said James W. McNeil, owner of Nine Little Heaven in Placentia, where he teaches kung fu. “The best system is the best system for you , the system that you can put 110% behind.”

Recent visits to local martial-arts schools--all teaching skills applicable to street self-defense--provide a glimpse at three systems.

Shotokan Karate

The room temperature rose palpably minutes after warm-up exercises began at Shotokan Karate of America in Garden Grove.

“ Ichi! Ni! San! Chi! Go! “ barked teacher Don De Pree, counting to five in Japanese as about 30 students, dripping with sweat, lurched down the floor with a series of lunges like a battalion of barefoot samurai warriors. Grimacing and glaring dead ahead, they spit out a staccato chorus of unintelligible grunt-shouts. Lunge, “Eeyaaah!” Lunge, “Eeyaaah!”

These loud “ kiai ,” said the school’s owner and head instructor, Greg Scott, are part of “learning to express yourself without being intimidated by your opponent,” be it a potential rapist, your boss, your insecurities or your environment, such as Los Angeles during the 1992 riots, where Scott worked his other job as a paramedic for the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Shotokan was founded by Gichen Funakoshi, who brought the aggressive karate style he formulated in his native Okinawa to Japan in 1922, said Muzila, of the L.A. Shotokan school.

It is characterized by low stances, linear leg and arm moves (rather than circular motions common to Chinese self-defense forms, hand techniques favored by the Okinawans or high kicks of Korean styles) and economy of effort, Muzila said.

The idea is to “knock out your opponent with one attack: one strike, one kick,” he said.

“Other styles emphasize trying to attack your opponent eight, maybe 10 times, and at different points--the throat, the eyes, the groin--bab, bab, bab, bab, bab! Real quick.”

Felizardo S. Camilon, a pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, says the mental discipline he learned first studying Shotokan years ago helped him through medical school.

“If I got sleepy when I studied, instead of drinking coffee, I did katas (Shotokan exercises), and it would wake me up,” said the 45-year-old first-degree black belt. “You need a lot of concentration to do it correctly.”

Today, despite his long, intense schedule in the operating room, Camilon so enjoys his twice-weekly evening Shotokan classes that he rearranges his schedule to make room for them: He takes a late break for class, then returns to CHOC for another two or three emergency surgeries before calling it quits at midnight. He loves the exercise and stress release.

“You should see my karate uniform after class; it’s soaking wet, like you put it in water. Yet, I feel so energized. And my wife tells me I’m a better person at home. I’m happier; I don’t complain. If there’s a problem, I say, well, we’ll take care of it.”

About one-third of the Garden Grove school students are women, and they spar with men, who after all, are the attackers these women most likely have to face, Scott said.

“Life is not fair, and it’s not even,” he said, “so in practice we keep that idea. Women need to learn to fight guys.”

Suyin Young, 24, didn’t feel intimidated by the male-female ratio when she began training at the school in 1992, nor has she since.

But, “a lot of people are better and stronger than me,” said the Cal State Long Beach physical therapy student, “and sometimes you get kind of scared that you’re going to get hit.”

Indeed, Young said she was once bopped, hard, on the nose (accidents happen), and a punch to the stomach nearly knocked the breath out of her. But, she said, that goes with the territory, and the life lessons she learns through Shotokan are worth it.

“It teaches me not to be a quitter,” she said. “When things get tough, I just try to push a little harder. I think, ‘Yeah, maybe I have to suffer now, but eventually there will be benefits.’ ”

Kenpo Karate

When 7-year-old Jerett Wasserman executes kenpo karate moves--sharp, forceful kicks or incisive fist blows that slap the air then snap back like rubber bands--he suddenly looks as fierce and determined as any adult at Steve Spry Karate Institute in Stanton.

But, like many other schools, defense, not offense, is this academy’s chief emphasis.

“It’s better to hurt than to be hurt, to maim than to be maimed, to kill than to be killed,” said Kathy Murphy, who teaches there. But, “you don’t hurt someone if they don’t intend to hurt you.”

Indeed, Jerett and his sister Taylor, 5, practice their moves aplenty, but they have not turned Terminator on the playground or at home, says mom Terryl Wasserman. “They’ve learned a lot of self-restraint. They’re taught that this is only for self-defense.”

American kenpo karate is an amalgamation of several systems developed by the late Ed Parker, who came to the mainland in the 1950s from Hawaii, where he had trained in an Okinawan karate style, said school owner Spry.

In kenpo, which means “law of the fist” in Chinese, “we use our hands more than we do anything else,” said Spry, who has hung his large color portrait on one trophy-bearing wall of his spacious studio. And, as in other systems, common sense, logical thinking and street awareness--to avert problems before they start--are stressed.

He tells students, whether in the mall or on Beach Boulevard, to walk with an air of confidence, remembering that they are “something special.”

Student Nancy Hirschman, 36, who had never much liked any type of sport, said she took to kenpo almost immediately, despite the trepidation she felt before taking her first class 10 months ago. Visions of Bruce Lee movies danced in her head.

“I was a little apprehensive, thinking ‘I just know someone’s going to throw me, and I’m going to quit,’ ” Hirschman said. “But they don’t push you any farther than you can go, and if they’re doing something in class that you don’t feel ready for, you’re not forced to do it, not unless you’re comfortable, and then they’ll walk you through it very slowly.”

Students are also encouraged to support one another, and in fact, during classes, repeatedly applaud and cheer others on.

“If any one here ever booed somebody else, they’d be sent out,” said Wasserman, whose husband also studies at the studio. “It’s almost like a family here.”

Kung Fu

McNeil’s Nine Little Heaven in Placentia is about the size of a roomy garage and boasts about as much flash. No wall-to-wall windows or plush front office here. A Chinese scroll painting, a potted plant, a yin-yang symbol suffice for decoration.

Some of its kung fu students, however, are arguably among the most dedicated around. Besides year-round weekly classes, the studio twice a year offers an intensive, three-month course consisting of four hours of training a day, six days a week.

On top of that, most students put in an additional six or eight hours a day practicing on their own, says studio owner McNeil.

“It’s for the person who wants to learn a lot in a short period of time.”

McNeil named Nine Little Heaven after one of the ancient Chinese kung fu systems he teaches. All of which, he said, essentially stress economy of force and simplicity of style.

“We don’t have very difficult moves, big jumps or high kicks because they don’t work in the street,” McNeil explained. “Simple things work.”

He further described a focus on physical health or “healing” and internal strength--breathing techniques and mediation are used to channel energy to internal organs--and body alignment. For instance, a punch isn’t powered by the fist or arm alone, he said, but with added force from the lower abdomen and leg and hip movements.

“With proper alignment,” he said, “you can throw anybody, I don’t care how big they are.”

Taking a short practice break while other students continued to grunt away, Lory Lacy, 27, said she enrolled in this summer’s intensive course because she eventually wants to enter competitive tournaments.

“I like to fight,” said Lacy, who owns a bike store in Irvine. Also, kung fu’s internal focus is appealing to her, she said, as it is for Alex Garcia of Laguna Niguel.

“I like strengthening myself from the inside,” said Garcia, who says the method is the sort he can keep up for a lifetime, exactly what he, at 25, plans to do.

“When you’re older,” he said, “you can’t rely on physical strength alone.”

A Look at the Different Styles

* Aikido (eye-kee-doe): A Japanese grappling and throwing style that has gained popularity from the movies of Steven Seagal, a black belt in the system.

* Goju-ryu (go-joo ree-yoo): An Okinawan karate style influenced by China and featuring a blend of hard and soft fighting techniques.

* Judo (joo-doe): A system similar to jujitsu, but mostly taught and practiced as a competitive sport--as in the Olympics--not as a form of self-defense.

* Jujitsu (joo-jit-soo): A Japanese grappling, throwing and choking art virtually devoid of punching and kicking techniques. Brazilian forms of jujitsu have become increasingly popular of late.

* Kenpo/kempo (ken-poe/kem-poe): A karate style heavily influenced by China and known for its lengthy combination attacks, almost to the point of overkill.

* Shotokan (show-toe-con): A Japanese karate style known for its emphasis on discipline and traditional training methods.

* Tae kwon do (tie-quan-doe): A Korean fighting system noted for its kicking techniques, particularly high and jumping kicks. Tae kwon do was a demonstration sport at the 1988 and ’92 Olympics and will appear in that capacity again at the ’96 Games in Atlanta. The sport has been voted full medal status for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

* Tang soo do (tong soo doe): A Korean art nearly identical to tae kwon do, but with more emphasis on traditional training and self-defense than tournament competition.

* Wing chun (wing chun): A kung fu style that emphasizes protecting the body’s center line. Wing chun was the system of choice for the late Bruce Lee when he first took up martial-arts training.

* Wushu (woo shoo): An acrobatic Chinese art noted for its aerial kicks and gymnastic-like movements.

Source: Jim Coleman