why jeet kune do is limited

crosstrainer1

Ive been studying martial arts for 25 years and over the past 4 ive been studying jeet kune do. like other martial arts it has its limits. In the 60s and early 70s bruce lee had great vision of how all the martial arts should progress but i fell that to many jkd students are locked in the past. In the jkd world there are to many bruce lee philosophers saying bruce would do this or thats not the way bruce would teach blah blah blah. these people i feel are holding back what jkd is about, but in the words of ufc present Dana White why learn one thing when you can learn every thing to me this is jkd for 2011 and beyond

biko

It's the eternal struggle between "evolvers" and "purists" - one wants to move on and incorporate others things while the other wants to keep it old school.

MMAIRELANDFAN

biko wrote: »

It's the eternal struggle between "evolvers" and "purists" - one wants to move on and incorporate others things while the other wants to keep it old school.

Yes and purist's are against the evolutionary point of JKD made by Bruce therefore not teaching real JKD

Stephen_King

It's kind of an oxymoron to say JKD is limited when it was never a specific style as opposed to a philosophic approach to martial arts. Lee never meant it to be a system that could be thought per se-all his writings suggest the base of JKD is simply taking high percentage techniques from many different martial arts and blending them into a functional fighting system unique to its practitioner.


The problem is that most JKD teachers simply study a few of the arts that Lee started in (Wing Chun and Kali being some of the more popular), make some slight adjustments and sell it as a JKD package. Modern MMA (i.e. plenty of cross training and sparring) is far more inline with Lee's original concept and theories than what most JKD schools are peddling.


From about 4:00 in he talks about martial arts, its pretty interesting..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pIEKv_Tyno

yomchi

bump

pearsquasher

Nice BL interview.... really like his way of expressing his ideas. The guy is very comfortable and passionate with what he talks about. I like his idea of Martial Arts being an expression of "control and instinct in harmony".

Parts 2/3 are fantastic.

Nothing he talks about goes against the art I study "bujinkan" either - another art that seeks to become "styleless/formless" and an expression of mind/body as one.

Stephen_King

pearsquasher wrote: »

Nice BL interview.... really like his way of expressing his ideas. The guy is very comfortable and passionate with what he talks about. I like his idea of Martial Arts being an expression of "control and instinct in harmony".

Parts 2/3 are fantastic.

Nothing he talks about goes against the art I study "bujinkan" either - another art that seeks to become "styleless/formless" and an expression of mind/body as one.

Indeed. I don't think his principles conflict with any art being honest-anyone with an interest in martial arts should be able to appreciate them.

The only problem I have with his legacy is that (and this is through no fault of his own) for some odd reason it popularized a lot of the dafter Asian martial arts in America-many of which Lee himself said were a wasted effort. I think in Tao of Jeet Kune Do or one of his other books he said something along the lines of a years training in wrestling and boxing was better than 10 spent in many of the Asian arts, yet a lot of people stateside flocked to learn the Asian fighting systems as a result of watching his movie performances-which were obviously choreographed to be over the top and flashy. His actual fighting style was supposedly very compact and efficient, with not much fanciness at all.


His books are well worth a read-obviously a lot of the techniques are very dated but its interesting to see where he took a lot of his inspiration from-for instance his jab (the straight lead with the power hand forward) was derived from a fencing technique he had adapted.

lukeyjudo

Bruce Lee was the man, wasn't he sorry he put a name to his style after a few years anyway.

His MA philosophy is timeless and something I go back to reading time and time again.

KathleenMcCabe

I've only done a small bit of JKD so far and am looking forward to doing more.

My understanding of JKD is that it's a concept rather than a martial art with techniques. And that Bruce Lee, if he was still alive, would have evolved the art with his philosophies.

Niall Keane

I have never read anything by Lee that doesn't come directly from the Tao Te Ching or the Tai Chi Classics, not surprising as his dad was a "Wu" stylist. This borrowing from old authors is of course seen positively by the Chinese.

His ideas on "formlessness" again are a common goal in any "Daoist" gung Fu system. And he was right, too many become slaves to the training methods, "missing all the heavenly glory" .
Even today many Gung Fu people have specific counter techniques to problems and rigid ways to apply such.

Of course what many don't realise I that traditional techniques are designed to train specific "jin" or "educated forces" ie they really get into mechanical and structural detail, but even the Tai Chi Classics state:
"we train technique to acquire principle, once we understand principle we abandon technique"

Saddly many have taken his opposition to "rigid" thought found in "bad gung Fu" to mean traditional systems have no relevance, throwing the baby out with the bath water so to speak.

I can see this in some students of mine who only wish to be able to fight and won't spend time on exercises that would actually train their nervous systems and therefore responses to be far more skilful and difficult to counter. They usually rely on speed and power, bulldozing their way through technique in a linear manner. I think we can all recognise sweet moves from brute force.

Why bother if it works? Well the shelf life of speed and power is limited and there are always those who do train sincerely, who can deal with such aggression. So though natural ability might carry you so far, to reach a state of proficiency whether that means good self defence or international competition, eventually speed meets a wall and force its match, and skill is required to beat the best!

As for mixing the best techniques of many systems, again history repeats itself, General Chi, writer of the "Chuan Ching" (cannon of boxing) in the 1600's did exactly this distilling hundreds of styles down to 32 techniques to teach his troops. Guess he was the first MMA man in recorded history? Though i doubt the first, real Gung Fu evolves! 24 of these techniques can be found in the 72 sanshou methods of Tai Chi Chuan, I'm not sure about other styles, but I expect likewise they would have been just as infulenced or to put it another way - evolved with contribution from the Chuan Ching.

In all I think Lee did Gung Fu a service in two ways, bringing it to peoples awareness in the west, and shaking it up a bit. Unfortunately he didn't manage to cut out the bull**** masters, indeed many more sprang up in the west, cashing in on public ignorance. They still thrive!

One must remember that he was a man who actually trained in various traditional styles (eastern and western) to gain his skill, it did not come to him through the "dark emperor" (Zhen Wu) in a dream, and he made his decisions on what worked for him based on direct experience, so many nowadays arrogantly and lasily put down ALL traditional systems and methods, without ever understanding the relevance of the training, often they are basing this on personal experience, this is the fault of their less than skilful "masters". But it's a bit like refusing to practice capitals before learning to write joined, you end up with scribblers!