I am Khpra Senwosret. I am a writer and a martial artist — but in the fighting arts, first and foremost, I am a strategist.

I have spent more than forty years studying martial arts. I trained in Goju Ryu under Sifu Irving Sheffey, then under Sifu Keampa, in the art that became the foundation of Twi Chi West Boxing Art.

Somewhere along that road, I became something different from a martial artist or a teacher.

There are thousands of instructors and coaches. There are far fewer people whose primary work is studying the fight itself — distance, timing, position, rhythm, weapons, movement, psychology, and how one action creates the opportunity for the next.

That is where my work lives.

A punch by itself means very little. A kick by itself means very little. What matters is why you use it, when you use it, what position it leaves you in, and what comes next. That is strategy.

My approach was shaped by what Sifu Keampa taught me, and by Bruce Lee's insistence that a martial artist investigate fighting rather than be imprisoned by style. I have spent the years since continuing that investigation for myself.

The result is Twi Chi West Boxing Art — A Path Forward: my attempt to preserve what I was taught, and to document what decades of fighting, training, observation, and thought have taught me.

The same mind follows me into my writing. I am the author of MENKARAA, a supernatural story rooted in ancient Kemet, and my historical work concentrates on the African and African-American experience.

I am influenced by Pan-African thought and Taoist philosophy, but I don't believe any philosophy should become a prison.

At this point in my life, my work is increasingly about legacy. I am a husband and grandfather. I have lived long enough to understand that what we accumulate eventually disappears. What we teach can continue.

So I write. I document. I question.

Keampa was unlike anyone I had ever encountered. In 1971 Baltimore, a young Black man openly teaching martial arts outside of formal schools was already rare. But Keampa was something even more unusual. He wore dreadlocks at a time when almost no Black men around me wore them. He was a vegetarian before health culture became fashionable. He designed and sold African jewelry and handcrafted items with his own hands. He moved with calmness but carried an unmistakable intensity beneath the surface. He moved through the world like a man from another era — twenty or thirty years ahead of the environment around him.

His interpretation of martial arts reflected that same uniqueness. Keampa did not teach fighting as isolated techniques. He taught movement first. He believed movement itself was sacred. Before punches, before kicks, before combinations, he drilled balance, rhythm, posture, recovery, and positioning. He understood something many systems overlooked: a fighter who cannot move is already defeated. So he taught adaptability directly, through repetitive line work and sparring application, until flow lived in the body.

Keampa rejected undisciplined movement entirely. Sparring was not random fighting. It was applied structural testing. Could the student land the punches taught on the line? Could he defend with the interceptions he drilled? Could he keep his balance while kicking? Could he recover to On Guard under pressure? Could he flow without panic?

His defensive philosophy differed just as dramatically. Traditional martial arts leaned heavily on blocking. Twi Chi West emphasized interception, jamming, evasion, trapping, and catching. His TCW Hook Block shocked many martial artists in the 1970s because few systems in America used anything remotely like it.

— Khpra Senwosret