Jeet Kune Do Basics. David Cheng
disagreed with the traditional idea of teaching gung fu only to persons of Chinese descent, and this upset the traditionalists. They sent a newly arrived Chinese gung fu teacher to Lee’s school to present an ultimatum: either stop teaching non-Chinese or fight the teacher.
Not one to back off, Lee refused to budge on the issue of teaching non-Chinese, and he accepted the challenge. At first, the representative and his entourage wanted to set up rules, such as no hits to the groin. However, Lee insisted on having no restrictions. The fight occurred behind closed doors. Lee adhered primarily to his modified Wing Chun style during the confrontation, which he eventually won by chasing the challenger all over the room, then keeping him subdued until he gave up.
While there is some dispute as to how long the fight lasted, there is no question that Lee was unhappy with his performance. Even though he won the fight, he felt tired and winded. Lee also found that the close-range fighting techniques of his modified Wing Chun were too limiting, because they did not allow him to end a fight quickly, particularly when his opponent fled from him. Lee realized that he needed to greatly improve his conditioning and that he needed to include other weapons in his art, to deal with opponents when they were farther away.
As a result, Lee started to incorporate more aerobic training, such as running, into his personal program, to strengthen his conditioning. Also, he added intermediate-range kicks from French Savate and Northern gung fu, as well as medium-range punches from Western boxing. He modified the stance so that his strong side, the right lead, was placed forward. Moreover, he made the stance more mobile by incorporating boxing- and fencing-style footwork. While Lee kept some of the trapping techniques and principles that he inherited from Wing Chun, he discarded others. In order to be incorporated into his approach, a particular technique, whatever its source, had to fit in with the other techniques and represent an efficient way of accomplishing its purpose.
In his research into ultimate combat, Lee also realized that it was best not to defend passively. He concluded that striking as an opponent prepared to attack represented a more efficient and effective way to defend. This idea of intercepting one’s opponent became the most significant change in Lee’s thinking during this time.
In 1966 Lee and his family moved to Los Angeles after he signed a contract to appear in a television series that never got off the ground. While on retainer to the studio, Lee had freedom to continue researching and training in martial arts. He spent time teaching Dan Inosanto, a Kempo black belt, who had studied with him ever since he served as Lee’s escort a few years earlier, when Lee gave a demonstration at Ed Parker’s Long Beach International Tournament. During a discussion with Inosanto about his approach to combat, Lee came up with a new name, “Jeet Kune Do”—“the way of the intercepting fist”— which he thought best characterized the essence of his art at this time.
After Lee had been teaching Inosanto and a couple of others for a while in the back of a pharmacy in Chinatown, Lee and Inosanto launched the third Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, in February 1967, in a nondescript building in the nearby area. Inosanto became Lee’s assistant instructor at the Institute. Lee himself taught at the school, and in addition, he took on private students, some recruited from the school. These private sessions gave Lee a chance to experiment with new ideas that he researched, with his students acting as willing guinea pigs. Lee also began to study grappling and wrestling with some of the best practitioners of the day.
As the 1960s drew to a close, Lee’s skill in speed, power, and closing in on an opponent increased so much that no one could stop him, even when he told opponents what he intended to do. Because no one could stop his strikes, he found it unnecessary to use his trapping skills, although trapping continued to be part of the curriculum at all three Institutes. In 1970, while recuperating from a back injury, Lee recorded many notes and observations on combat, and on Jeet Kune Do in particular. That same year, Lee decided to close all three of his Jun Fan Gung Fu Institutes because he was concerned that it was too easy for a member to take the agenda as “the truth” and the schedule as “the way.”
In 1971, dissatisfied with the lack of progress in his acting career in the United States, Lee traveled to Hong Kong in hopes of establishing himself as a martial arts film star. Also, he believed that the best way to showcase his combative philosophy to a wide audience was through motion pictures.
His own thinking about martial arts continued to evolve as well. He saw that interception, while important, was not necessarily the answer for all situations or for all students. Lee began to look at Jeet Kune Do as the “way of no way,” in which a martial artist was not bound by any particular style or method, but could use all ways and all methods to adapt to any kind of opponent.
Nowhere was this view more graphically displayed than in the fighting scenes he managed to film for the unfinished movie Game of Death . In that film Lee had to fight a Filipino Escrima master, a Hapkido stylist, and a seven-foot freestyle fighter in the form of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He had to adapt his own fighting methods and tactics to deal with the particular challenges presented by each opponent. Lee showed how one must be proficient in all ranges of combat and with all kinds of tools. The few sequences that he filmed showed a martial artist who was equally adept at kicking, punching, trapping, grappling, and weaponry. This was perhaps the highest evolution of Jeet Kune Do that Lee achieved before his untimely death in July 1973.
When Lee passed away, the world lost one of the century’s greatest martial artists. Moreover, some thought, and still believe, that his art of Jeet Kune Do died with him. Although undoubtedly Lee took some of what he knew with him to the grave, much of what is now regarded as Jeet Kune Do has, fortunately, been preserved through a combination of several sources. Lee’s surviving assistant instructors, Taky Kimura and Dan Inosanto, continue to pass on the knowledge that Lee gave them. Other first-generation and later students are also active, to different degrees, in propagating Lee’s art as they learned it. Lee’s notes, in which he documented many of his thoughts about combat, also provide important knowledge about Jeet Kune Do. Finally, Lee’s martial arts films show different aspects of his fighting philosophy in action, providing further insight into his art. The compilation of this knowledge will allow future generations to learn about, and to perpetuate, Jeet Kune Do.
JEET KUNE DO contains a definite structure and specific principles that have guided its development. As Lee examined different martial arts, he used these principles to evaluate whether or not a particular technique should be included in the art. A technique had to fit into the existing structure and work efficiently with other techniques in order to be included.
The maxim “Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own,” characterizes the “research” and “experimental” aspects of Jeet Kune Do. In his research Lee tried to identify techniques that could enhance his fighting style and to understand how other stylists fought so that he could develop ways to counter them. He critically read thousands of books on judo, boxing, wrestling, fencing, and other arts, often underlining the text and making notes in the margins when a particular idea struck him as significant. Lee also attended demonstrations and martial arts tournaments, carefully watching participants in order to understand the essence of their style. He sought out and trained with martial artists from many disciplines so that he could learn from them.
Lee concluded that kata, or forms, had limited usefulness because they bore little resemblance to real combat. Recognizing that fights did not fall into established patterns, he regarded these exercises as “swimming on dry land.” Lee believed that to become an effective fighter, one