Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do - C.A.A.M./ARTICLES 2002

JEET KUNE DO DEVELOPMENT

Many people think that Bruce Lee learnt many different martial arts from many teachers and so he would have developed Jeet Kune Do by selecting the best techniques from each art.
On the contrary, Bruce Lee had only one teacher, Yip Man, from whom he learnt Wing Chun Kung Fu, from 1954 to 1958.
In Hong Kong Bruce Lee took also part in the Boxing team at St. Francis Xavier School , and in 1957 he won a tournament.
In the USA he had the chance to meet artists of many disciplines.
Among the others he became friend with Ed Parker, the founder of Kempo Karate, Jhoon Rhee, who is referred to be the father of American Tae Kwon Do Americano, the Ju Jitsu Master Wally Jay, Hawyard Nishioka, National Judo Champion at the Panamerican Games and Black Belt of Karate Shotokan, Fred Sato, Judo Master, the famous Judoka and Wrestler Jene Le Bell, Karate Champions Mike Stone, joe Lewis, Louis Delgado and Chuck Norris.
Bruce Lee had the chance to exchange opinions and knowledge with these people, but this doesn't mean that he spent his time practicing every martial art he came in contact with.
There are many witnesses to Bruce Lee's value as a teacher and as an opponent.
Hawyard Nishioka, who is still wondering today how Bruce Lee made him fall with his "One Inch Punch", discussed a scientific work at California University that showed that Jeet Kune Do's punch is more powerful than Karate's.
Louis Delgado said that, even though he had fought against many Champions, Bruce Lee had been the only one who astonished him and made him feel uneasy.
Ernest Lieb, Black Belt 5th dan and American Karate Association Director, trained many times with Bruce Lee and said that his speed was faster than the majority of black belts that he knew. He didn't even consider himself a good enough opponent for Bruce Lee.
Jhoon Rhee, one of the most famous Tae Kwon Do masters, declared that he would never climb into a ring against Bruce Lee.
The unbeaten Heavy Weight Kick Boxing Champion Joe Lewis, who tested Bruce Lee's learnings at the first full contact matches always recognized what he owed his Master.
Bruce Lee was never very impressed by the techniques of the majority of the oriental fighting systems.
This doesn't mean that he had no respect or admiration for some teachers or athletes, for he always thought that there are strong and prepared men in every discipline, but he was always critical about the different arts's techniques.
Jeet Kune Do's evolution was influenced by Boxing and Western Fencing.
Bruce Lee constantly refers to these disciplines in the thousands of pages that he wrote, while the other methods are discussed in a few lines, in which he jots down their strong and weak points.
He found it important to know the strong and weak points of the different systems.
To be adaptable meant to be able to confront with every discipline without being conditioned by them.
So Bruce Lee developed Jeet Kune Do with the essentials of his technical approach and of his principles.
Wing Chun was the beginning, but Jeet Kune Do is not a modified Wing Chun, and not even a sort of Kick-Boxing.
At the beginning Bruce Lee tried to compensate for what he thought were the limits of Wing Chun, introducing new elements to make it more complete. These modifications made him refer to his Art at first as Jun Fan Gung Fu, or Non-Classical Gung Fu by Bruce Lee, but afterwards he understood that he was teaching something so far from Gung Fu that he felt it was necessary to give a new name to it, so it became Jeet Kune Do.
Some people believe that Bruce Lee was forced to compensate for his not complete knowledge of Wing Chun, but this explanation is not reliable, since his decision to abandon that style was definitely a conscious one.
The confusion about the relationship between Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do is consequent to the fact that Bruce Lee's Seattle (from 1954 to 1964) and OaklandStudents (from 1964 to 1966) learnt techniques which were discarded by him afterwards.
1967 was the turning point in Bruce Lee's approach, and it was the year in which he gave the name Jeet Kune Do to his Art.
He had abandoned all traditional training methods, like the Wooden Dummy and Chi Sao, for a more intense athletic preparation and Sparring, with more and more emphasis on mobility.
Bruce Lee maintained Wing Chun guidelines, like the notions of structural economy or of central line, that are the same of Boxing and Fencing.
In the Hand Immobilization Attack (HIA) of Jeet Kune Do movements from trapping of Wing Chun are used, but they are very simplified, and the emphasis is not on the trapping but on hitting.
Bruce Lee spent his whole time training and perfecting Jeet Kune Do's simple, Direct, Non-Classical Techniques, and he was sure that a thorough preparation would permit his students, and anyone else, to use the same techniques, if it's true that all human beings have two arms and two legs.
This was thanks to the fact that his study was founded on physical laws and mechanical and technical functions of the human body.

DAVIDE GARDELLA