BRUCE LEE'S JEET KUNE DO

THE BASICS 101

Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco 1940; the year of the Dragon. He would move back to Hong Kong with his dad and begin to study Kung-Fu at the age of 8. Bruce would practice many different types of the art, but would later settle on the Wing-Chun style. After a fight with Wong Jack Man, Bruce Lee won the fight, but he begun to rethink everything he had learned. He believed that it took too long for him to win the fight, and he shouldn't have been all out of breath afterwards. He believed that the traditional martial arts had too many fixed positions and movements. He would begin to study all different types of fighting styles; from Tae Kwon Do to American-style boxing and would absorb anything useful. Bruce would then develop his own fighting style called Jeet Kune Do - the way of the intercepting fist.

The expression of JKD is like DNA, similar to all humans but not exactly the same from person to person. The are as many expressions of Jeet Kune Do as there are practicioners. They all abide by the basic structure and guide lines set by Bruce Lee, but each adds his one individual twist to his form of Jeet Kune Do.

You cannot put JKD in to a catagory like Tae Kwan Do for instance, you can say that they are feet fighters, but what is the Jeet Kune Do street fighter? HE IS THE UNKNOWN.

Jeet Kune Do is not a new style of Kung-Fu or Karate. Bruce Lee did not invent a new art composite style, nor did he modify a style to set it apart from any existing method. His concept was to free his followers from clinging to any style, pattern, or mold.

The total picture Lee wanted to present to his pupils was that above everything else, the puplils must find their own way to truth. He never hesitated to say, "Your truth is not my truth; my truth is not yours."

Bruce did not leave a blueprint, but rather a series of guidelines to lead one to proficiency. In using training equipment, there was a systematic approach in which one could develop speed, distance, power, time, coordination, endurance and footwork.

But Jeet Kune Do was not an end in itself for Bruce - Nor was it a mere by-product of his martial studies; it was a means to self discovery. JKD was a prescription for personal growth; it was an investigation of freedom - freedom not only to act naturally and effectively in combat, but in life. In life, we absorb what is useful and reject what is useless, and add to experience what is specifically our own.

No art is superior to any other. That is the object lesson of Jeet Kune Do, to be unbound, to be free. In combat to use no style as style, to use no way as the way, to have no limitation as the only limitation. Neither be for or against a particular style. In other words, Jeet Kune Do just is.