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Historically speaking and for tournament competition, there was sort of an unwritten rule that competitor's forms should start and end in the exact same location. And, in some styles, this was just standard practice. This custom was used as a helpful guide for the tournament judges (or instructors) to determine whether the participant's stances were symmetrical and consistent, while (from a tournament standpoint) also adding the ability to be able to tell whether the form was executed correctly or not, without knowing the actual form. Over time many systems deviated from this practice. Sometimes just because that was how the form was designed to be executed, but other times it was specifically done to purposely bypass this internal check on the practitioner. By ending a form a large distance from the start, this removed the judge's ability to determine consistency and correctness. This was sometimes purposely done to help improve scores, by removing a criticism on which a judge that did not know the form, could rely.

 

In American Kenpo, most of the forms start and finish in the same relative location. None of them start at one location and finish a large distance away from that initial point. This does not mean that, by rule, every American Kenpo form MUST finish in the EXACT same location from where it started, even though a majority of them do.

 

Long Form Three is the exception to this standard. If executed with consistently standard stance dimensions, Long Form Three will end up exactly one (1) stance distance width from where it started. But, since it is so close to the starting point, some practitioners like to add a variation to the form, this variation is added to manipulate the stances in such a way as to make it finish in the same place as the start. This practice is typically not considered part of the idealized execution of the form, but rather a variation; although some American Kenpo lines consider it the standard execution.

 

For more information about this variation, refer to the "Variations" section of this guide.