Understanding Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do
When we talk of martial arts, one of the first things that would come to mind is the discipline and structure that comprise the practice of each movement. From this discipline and structure grows the art from which both defense and attack movements are based on. According to Bruce Lee, a master of Jeet Kune Do, one need not learn an art to the letter. What is important is to understand how the system itself is delivered. What he meant is that a student must know how the delivery of the attack gets from point A – the attacker, to point B – the person who is attacked.
During his time in the 1960’s, a person’s style was given the utmost importance. This meant that if you were a Jujitsu practitioner, you didn’t have to study Karate or Taekwondo. All a Jeet Kune Do (JKD) student did in those days was to practice against other fighters who studied the same martial art. Martial arts tournaments during that time were also limited because they were mostly non-contact in nature.
This has drastically changed after Bruce Lee’s time. Today, Jeet Kune Do is frequently incorporated into a free-form style of fighting, together with other forms of martial arts, best demonstrated in the octagon ring of the UFC.
Even so, despite the revolutionary changes introduced by Bruce Lee, a lot of misconceptions surrounding Jeet Kune Do remain. One is that this particular form of martial arts has no discernible techniques or concepts. This is misinterpreted due to the precept of “using no way as way”. There are however very specific value sets and structure models in the art of using JKD in combat. What Bruce Lee did was to simply liberate practitioners from the strict confines of its particular style. While one fighter’s style may appear different from that of another practitioner of JKD, it is merely each person’s utilization of the technique that spells the difference. A person with longer arms may choose to fight at a longer range away compared to a person with shorter arms, for instance.
Another misconception is that Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do is merely a combination of other martial arts and forms of defense such as Wing Chun, western boxing, and even fencing, among many others. This myth grew from the time when Bruce Lee, in order to expand his own understanding of martial arts, started researching and examining other forms of fighting. In fact, his book, and other works he wrote that were published after his death, contained many references to other forms of martial arts. He looked at each method from every angle and studied each technique and strategy in the quest for understanding. Bruce Lee believed that fighting was a universal thing, and his intention was not to put together all the best fighting techniques from the different forms of martial arts, but simply to learn the truth of each, and what made them work best.
One cannot call Jeet Kune Do a mixed form of martial arts, culled from different techniques, structures and disciplines. It merely shares some elements of the different fighting styles while evolving on its own through the years.
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