Hapkido
student Rocco Napoli earned his black belt ranking from Palm Beach Combat
Hapkido in Wellington last Thursday after a test including fending off a variety
of attackers.
Hapkido is a Korean martial art primarily for self-defense
that employs joint locks, pressure points, throws, kicks and other strikes.
Napoli demonstrated his skills in self-defense against a number of opponents,
some of them armed with weapons.
The 29-year-old Napoli will now teach as
an assistant to instructors Ramon Voils and Gil Levin, who conduct Palm Beach
Combat Hapkido classes at the Wellington Recreation Center. All three studied
under Randy Kirkby, a combat Hapkido master instructor with 33 years of martial
arts experience.
Kirkby still instructs students occasionally in
Wellington, where Voils and Levin moved the studio at the beginning of this year
because of demand for classes. Kirkby said combat Hapkido isn’t a dazzling
martial art involving tournaments and competition, but a practical self-defense
system for ordinary people.
“It’s personal self-defense,” Kirkby said.
“It’s not flashy. It’s hardcore self-defense. We apply scientific principles to
make people aware of predators and avoid confrontation. We train you to go into
automatic when everything else fails.”
Kirkby studied under Grandmaster
John Pelligrini, who created the Combat Hapkido discipline after years studying
Korean hapkido styles.
“I started with him around 1990,” Kirkby said. “We
had joint schools together. He developed his system on a worldwide basis. There
are 15 countries that teach his style. He’s been recognized by the Korean
government.”
Of about 100 schools teaching Pelligrini’s methods in the
United States, there are about five in Florida. “We’re the only one in West Palm
Beach, and the next closest one is in Coral Springs,” Kirkby said.
Combat
Hapkido teaches people how to confound their attackers using the element of
surprise. “We teach people how to run away,” Kirkby said. “We teach them how to
use a surprise strike to buy time so they can leave the scene. We teach them how
to take an opponent down so he won’t have the capacity to chase you. You drop
him to the ground and momentarily disorient him.”
Kirkby said Combat
Hapkido stresses teaching people how to disarm their attackers of traditional
weapons such as knives, guns and everyday objects. “How many people are killed
today with non-lethal weapons? The number of baseball bats or sticks being used
against people is increasing,” he said. “Kitchen knives and other household
items are used every day to hurt people.”
The discipline’s focus on
defense and not aggression is also practical, Kirkby said, because someone who
acts in self-defense but takes it too far may be perceived as the
aggressor.
“Unless they have a weapon, you will end up in court, and that
is not what this is about,” Kirkby said. “It’s about protecting yourself. You
should only be applying the amount of force to stem the situation from
accelerating into something out of control. You don’t want to hurt someone. You
want to make them back off. If you need to break someone’s arm, wrist, foot or
shoulder joint, we teach you that. It’s not something you want to do unless you
have to.”
Hapkido classes often attract a lot of women and children,
Kirkby noted. “One of our favorite topics is women’s self defense,” he said.
“Why should women be more victimized than men? They don’t have to be. I used to
teach abused women’s programs in Palm Beach County. It leaves a mental
scar.”
For more information about Palm Beach Combat Hapkido classes, call
Wellington Recreation at (561) 791-4005. To reach Instructor Gil Levin, call
(561) 818-5537. To reach Instructor Ramon Voils, call (561) 644-1605. For more
information about hapkido, visit the International Combat Hapkido Federation at
www.ichf.com.