Jeet Kune Do

I teach some Jeet Kune Do core techniques & principles.

Since Tai Chi emphasises the graceful side of Wing Chun, which is ideal for a pacifist approach, for avoiding & de-escalating conflicts and maintaining composure; it’s good to also explore the sharper, more reactive side of Wing Chun, which is emphasised by Jeet Kune Do (JKD) – the style of Bruce Lee’s own creation, which was originally based on classical Wing Chun, but became increasingly divergent as he matured.

There are several prominent Kung Fu teachers around the world today who base their system on this great trio of styles – Tai Chi, Wing Chun & JKD – because they blend together so well, and the combined system covers all levels of aggression.

Compared to Wing Chun, JKD is more suited to assassination and battlefield tactics, as well as combat sports.

JKD restores the potency of the coiling & darting Snake side of Wing Chun, considering Wing Chun is said to have once been a combination of Snake and Crane systems from Shaolin. JKD makes Wing Chun footwork more agile, freeing the feet from the defensive back-foot Crane-style stance, taking example from Boxing, Fencing and other martial arts.

Bruce was also helped on his way to doing this, when he learnt Red Boat Wing Chun from his father’s friend, Fook Yeung (from 1959 till the mid 60s), considering the Red Boat Opera was once a cover for the Red Flower Society (Hung Faa Wui 紅花會) which was a group of assassins loyal to the Ming dynasty long after its collapse.

Bruce Lee’s journey

Bruce was one of the greatest ever exponents of classical Wing Chun, which he learnt from many teachers – initially from Ip Man and his teaching assistant Wong Shun Leung for a couple of years in Hong Kong, then from Fook Yeung in Seattle from the age of 18 onwards. Bruce was also well versed in Tai Chi principles, which he learnt initially from his father from a very young age.

But he didn’t just learn these arts, he mastered their fundamentals and took ownership, not replicating the mistakes he saw his teachers making. Practically every demonstration Bruce Lee made, especially towards the end of his life, is a near perfect example of how a technique can be executed, so if you spot any differences between my style and his, I have no problem with you following his – both ways should work fine.

Bruce also did Fencing as a child, Western Boxing in High School, and Judo at Uni. He continued to practise all these arts until the year he died. So this course is packed with demonstrations and words of wisdom from Bruce himself – every style of Kung Fu taught in this course is supplemented with examples from Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee’s skill dramatically improved, continuously from his mid teens when he began learning Wing Chun in Hong Kong, until the age of 32 when he was eventually murdered back in Hong Kong. Since his 20s he was never prone to making serious technical mistakes on a move by move basis – he picked up individual techniques quite quickly and began teaching them in a very polished way in his early 20s. But his development massively affected his full-body balance and his choice of stances & postures, as well as his technique selection to optimise relaxation, power and inter-move fluidity. So it’s worth paying extra special attention to any demonstrations he made in his 30s, such as those behind the scenes of Enter The Dragon (1973) with John Saxon and Bolo Yeung. His movies themselves were also great examples of legitimate Kung Fu – I believe Bruce fully appreciated the significance of his movies as a platform for demonstrating good kung fu, and utilised them increasingly for this purpose towards the end of his life when he had more control over scripts and fight choreography.

Aside from his movies in the 70s, we can also gain precious insights into JKD from Bruce’s TV appearances, training footage, written books, photographs, posted letters, diary entries, study notes and of course his students of which there were many – most are dead now but their own students are spread far & wide and often still in their prime.