What I Learned from The Study Of Bruce Lee:

What I Learned from The Study Of Bruce Lee:

Published: June 12, 2010

By Spencer Sensei

I began teaching martial arts in the early eighties, and after awhile I began to hate Bruce Lee. Ten years after his death every young male karateka, I trained, wanted to know more about this iconic figure. No matter how many times I told them I had never met the man it did not matter. I was asked more questions about Sifu Lee than any other aspect of the martial arts. Why they thought I should know all facets of his life and the nuances of his kung-fu eluded me, but still, they ask more and more questions. His name became synonymous with martial arts perfection. The real kick in the pants was this occurred at a time when the VCR was a high-priced luxury, so they must have devoured every magazine article with his name attached. It got worse when the VCR became affordable, and students gained access to Bruce Lee films. Admittedly, Bruce sold more karate lesson than any other person in history, and for this I am grateful, but I always felt I was being compared to this superhuman character. How do you compete with a legend? In the early days I felt every student measured me on their personal Bruce Lee scale, so I began to hate Bruce Lee. I cringed at every tedious question, and realized I could never be Bruce Lee, but I could research him and his methods.

I too was susceptible to the Bruce Lee mythology. Like most young boys I was mesmerized by the character of Kato in the Green Hornet television series. In a small way he may have influenced my decision to begin my study of the martial arts. Oddly enough, I did not see a Bruce Lee movie until I was in my twenties. His acting, I thought, was a little stilted at times, but the fighting choreography was other worldly. I was fascinated by this young man’s intensity, and the movie experience reaffirmed it was impossible for me to compete with his legend.

What made him appear superhuman? In my mind I knew his moves could not all be simply attributed to movie magic. In karate we are taught the concept zanshin (zahn-shin) and kime (kay-may), and I sat there in the dark watching it play out on the big screen. I began my sojourn by reading the Tao of Jeet Kune Do to gain some insight to the man, but I only gleaned some rudimentary understanding of fighting from the cryptic text. Thirty years later, when I pick that same book up, I am amazed at the depth of that young man’s understanding. My research did unearth some truths about Bruce. He was not superhuman. He was a father, actor, husband, and martial artist. Sometimes he could be very impatient. He was a very driven man with a maniacal training regiment, yet today we understand that the road to become a champion takes this type of commitment. In the area of training here too he was ahead of the curve.

I mentioned earlier the concept of zanshin and kime. It takes a lifetime of training to begin to understand these ideas. Zanshin is being aware of everything around, yet not getting driven to distraction by sensory overload or developing tunnel vision fixing one’s gaze on any one thing during combat. Kime is the other piece, and it is necessary for the development of power. Kime is striking or blocking in a relaxed manner and bringing all muscles involved into tension, as one’s weight transfers from the rear leg to the lead leg, and the hip rotates into position. When the blow is delivered everything stops at the same time. This must be done in one synchronized motion, so the muscles become rigid like a battering ram. If any aspect of this strike or block’s timing is off power is lost. The key to kime is focus. If you lose focus, the technique falls apart. Bruce said he did not believe in traditional martial arts, but he was the living embodiment of zanshin and kime on the silver screen.

Bruce Lee taught when practicing any strike or block, emotion must be removed from the equation, Anger or fear impedes your movement. These two emotions must be controlled in fighting. He was right because the mind cannot focus on two tings at once. If you’re angry or afraid, you’ve placed the brakes on your defense. Anger slows you down. When executing any block or strike, the body must be relaxed until the moment of contact. This simply is part of kime. Hip rotation and every movement must be timed to stop at one focused moment for the maximum transfer of power. This is true of the mind as well.  Your mind must remain in a relaxed state to minimize resistance to performing any strike or block. Removing emotion, during execution of technique, is part of the package to understanding kime.

In Bruce’s personal life, according to Bruce Thomas’ book the Bruce Lee Fighting Spirit, he did not control his anger. If one of his students tagged him while sparring, Bruce would shift gears and the student would pay the price. Listening to interviews, of those that trained with him, leads one to think that this may have been his only weakness in the martial arts arena.  I’m certain that this cognitive dissonance was like a splinter in his mind. Being the perfectionist on screen that he was, leads me to believe that he would have worked on this and would have eventually overcome this flaw with age. Although, he could have gotten swept up in the Hollywood adulation and lost touch with reality. We will never know. Humility defuses anger and allows the mind to relax. We chose to become angry because we do not ask ourselves why we are getting angry. Anger comes from others not meeting our expectations. I agree with Bruce Lee’s philosophy in that the martial artist must remove fear and anger from their emotions when training or in combat.

Bruce liked to use the old adage that goes, “Be like water.”  He spoke in interviews as if this were a foundational component of Jun Fan kung-fu (Bruce Lee kung-fu). Water flows and adapts to any situation.  This means the martial artist must adapt and conform. This is mental as well as physical. You cannot let your adversary get inside your head. See the terrain you’re fighting on and use it to your advantage. In interviews Bruce would say,”Be like water. When poured into a cup it takes the shape of the cup. When poured into a teapot it takes the shape of the teapot. It is soft and cannot be grasped. Be like water.” Bruce might get credit for this insight in his television interviews, but Miyamoto Musashi used this analogy in the Go-Rin-No-Sho, or Book of Five Rings a few hundred years before Bruce was born. Ironically both Musashi and Bruce would leave their mark on traditional training and enhanced their martial art, so I don’t think Musashi would mind Bruce’s use of his concept. Be like water is part of kime.

In the Jun-Fan school there were signs extolling the virtues of Jeet-Kun-Do (Way of The Intercepting Fist) and slurs on traditional martial arts like karate. Bruce was trained traditionally, but after long study and one brief fight, he decided there were flaws in the traditional way. I will admit, being an old traditionalist, this ruffled my feathers, but it did not stop me from trying to understand why he would think this way. After decades of study, I formed a conclusion. This is without doubt subjective, but I believe that there are no fixed stances in karate or kung-fu. All stances in someway or another are simply transitional movements. We teach beginners these fixed stances, so they will know what the stance should look like at the end of the technique to develop proper kime. Karateka were never meant to fight from these fixed stances. Bruce was right they’re too rigid. An example of this transitional stance is experienced when students step from Hachiji dachi to Zenkutsu dachi. Most styles teach Hachiji dachi as one stance and Zenkutsu dachi as another. There are however three stances that make up this one transitional movement. In Okinawan Isshinryu there is an intermediate stance referred to as Seisan Dachi. Some Japanese systems call this Hangetsu dachi. All three of the stances are taught independently but they can morph into one single fluid technique. Seisan stance is a balanced stance similar to Zenkutsu dachi, but the back leg is bent creating more balance for greater mobility. This transition can best be seen by executing a chudan zuki or middle punch from a ready stance. Stepping forward from Hachiji dachi you pass through Seisan dachi. As this is happening, the karateka is moving into a balanced stance that allows the back leg to push the hips forward. As the student continues forward into Zenkutsu dachi, the back leg locks, hip rotation stops, shoulder rotation stops, weight transfer is complete, and the body centerline drops as momentum moves the body forward pushing the punch into the opponent’s middle. Zenkutsu dachi is the end of technique and is not a vehicle for fighting. This transition can be shortened if the karateka is already in Seisan dachi or a balanced stance. Traditional martial arts tend to focus on the stance and not the process. Learning stances is good, so the student develops muscle memory, and knows how it feels when they’re in the right position. It is hard to find your way if you don’t know where you’re going, but many karate schools teach these stances as if the stance in and of itself were a complete technique. Most karateka never fight from Zenkutsu dachi because the straight back leg impedes movement. Funakoshi, so the story goes, was asked by a student why he used taller and more balanced stances than his students were allowed to use. He simply replied that they had not trained long enough to use tall stances. If the traditional stances are too rigid, should we throw them out? Bruce railed on fixed stances believing they were useless. Traditional stance training can be use in a transitional sense to help guide the student to executing proper kime, or it can become part of the fancy mess Bruce called kata.

Martial arts tradition has its place. Without tradition and discipline martial arts training becomes boxing. Boxing is a sport by nature and teaches very little personal discipline. Tradition and philosophy keep karate from becoming just another way to knock someone out. Bruce grew up in the sixties where everyone was questioning everything. Being disciplined was outdated. Being a rebel was cool, so it was natural for him to rebel against any institution that he had been exposed to for a long time. Yip Man was Bruce’s Wing-Chun instructor. Yip Man had begun his training at the age of thirteen and was an old man when Sifu Lee began his training. Bruce was twenty-something when he decided it was all bunk. Bruce called traditional martial arts a fancy mess. In some ways he was correct. Kung-fu was so deeply entrenched in tradition it had lost some of its effectiveness. Being locked into tradition is like buying a computer made in 1987 and expecting it to meet your business needs in 2010. It will probably work, but it is not as good as it could be. Bruce left tradition behind and became a student of all types of fighting and discovered a fluidity in American boxing and fencing that was stifled by traditional kung-fu. Personally, I believe we can drown in tradition if we are not careful. Doing something just because that was the way I was taught is stupid. Doing something without reason is like having a toolbox filled with tools and no idea how to use the majority of them. If your sensei’s answer to your questions about why you do something runs along the line of that is the way I was taught, then you need to question why he is your sensei. Know why you’re doing something. Tradition for tradition sake is like riding a dead horse; you’ll not get too far.

Bruce had very little good to say in his writings about the block then hit aspects of a martial art like karate. He was right to note this, but his interpretation was off. Without in depth research, making this assumption, is like seeing an elephant’s trunk and assuming that the animal must have a good sense of smell. Only low-level beginning students use a stop then hit concept when fighting. I understand why he came to this conclusion. This type of training is a major part of a karate workout and is done all the way through black belt. In karate when you get to higher level of understanding the karateka learns that blocking and striking occur simultaneously. Too many people never train, in karate, long enough to develop an understanding of conservation of energy and simultaneous blocking, breathing, and striking. There is a difference between martial science and martial arts. Martial science is block, stop, and punch and that approach is taught to beginners. A study of martial arts, on the other hand, is the fluid seamless adaptation of the countless techniques taught during the karateka’s education. This fluid simultaneous striking and blocking can be found in Bruce’s books. An examination of kata bunkai shows this concept too. When you see two limbs moving at the same time, you can sense simultaneous attack and defense. Bruce believed in the simultaneous strike block philosophy, and it was part of his system. This concept has been around as long as martial arts have existed, but Bruce gets credit for this idea because he wrote about and implemented it.

Well, this has been a winding path leading to my answering the question what did your sensei learn from Bruce Lee. I admire Sifu Lee and respect his contribution to the marital arts. He no doubt changed our martial arts thinking. If by nothing more than causing us to think about why we do what we do. He forced us to dig deeper into our training. His influence was not only on kung-fu, but all martial arts. I no longer hate Bruce, and like most of my peers have stolen or adapted many of his philosophies into our personal martial art. I disagree with Bruce Lee on many things. As far as classical movements go, I don’t believe you throw the baby out with the bath water. All of Bruce’s ideas on fighting came from the traditional witch’s brew of martial arts he received growing up. To simply dismiss a thing like a fixed stance without exhaustive examination is a questionable practice. I am like Bruce in when it comes to temper, after three decades of training it is still something I must work on daily. Bruce was right controlling your temper is vital to becoming a true martial artist. Where tradition is concerned, I, unlike Sifu Lee, still hold to the belief that much of the traditional martial arts remain relevant, but I can understand Bruce’s frustration too. Too much tradition can choke a martial artist’s creativity. On the other side of the coin, too little traditional influence and you teach sloppy technique or simply instruct students in street brawling. Bruce believed that if a technique didn’t work you should dump it. My problem with that concept is what does not work for me could be become the single most effective technique in one of my student’s arsenal, so to dump it in my opinion is a little selfish.  After three decades of training, age has given me an appreciation and greater understanding of the long-taught techniques. I am not as driven as Bruce, and because of that fact I will never match him in physical ability. I cannot compete nor should I try to compete with a legend that at times dwarf superman. This lesson Bruce taught me unintentionally through my students. Bruce Lee did not change all my core martial arts principles, but he did give me material to think about. Bruce was not all talk. He left us a body of work, so we can examine his core martial arts beliefs. We can hold them up to the light to see if they’re empty or a prize of great value. Any martial artists can do this simply by reading his books, watching his interviews, or training with one of his former students. Bruce had a sound foundation in the martial arts before he developed his philosophies. I could not have learned anything, of depth, from his books, without decades of training and developing a high level of understanding in at least one system first. You need a foundation to understand Bruce Lee’s concepts. Yes, I have learned a lot from this movie idol. Martial artists can promote him or paint him a crazy radical but, countless martial artists have learned from his work. My hope is that future generations will study this icon’s lessons and teach me their insights.