Martial arts Training

Wing Chun: Bruce Lee began his formal martial arts training at a young age in Wing Chun under Hong Kong Wing Chun master Yip Man. Like most martial arts schools at that time, Grandmaster Yip Man's classes were often taught by the highest ranking student. The highest ranked student under Yip Man at the time of Lee's training was Wong Shun-leung. Lee didn't finish the Wing Chun curriculum.

Bruce Lee's first formal, organized bout came as a teenager at his Catholic school in Hong Kong. He was to fight a young British boxer, a reigning two-time boxing champion. Bruce knocked his opponent out with repeated strikes, using the Wing Chun technique jik chung chuy.

Jeet Kune Do: It would not be until his arrival in the United States, however, that Lee began the process of creating his own style, which he would later teach at the martial arts schools he opened first in Seattle starting with judo practitioner Jesse Glover as his first student who later became his first assistant instructor, and the first person authorized by Lee to teach aspects of Bruce Lee's Gung Fu.

Then in Oakland and Los Angeles, California Lee opened his martial arts school named the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. After studying and becoming dissatisfied with existing schools of martial arts, Lee also created his own styles of martial arts: Jun Fan Gung Fu, a Kung Fu style; and Jeet Kun Do, which incorporated elements from martial arts outside of Kung Fu with the intent to create a more streamlined and practical martial art, as well as a comprehensive system of fitness training. He frequently gave demonstrations of his two-finger pushups and his famous "one inch punch" to demonstrate his martial arts.

Bruce Lee saw loyalty to any particular martial arts style as a limitation. Instead, he emphasized what he called "the style of no style". Lee also named his martial arts style Jun Fan Gung Fu, which consisted mostly of elements of Wing Chun, with elements of what he knew of Western Boxing, Fencing, and other martial arts. Lee expanded this style over time, including elements from Muay Thai, Indo-Malay Silat, Panantukan, Sikaran, Bando, Catch Wrestling, Karate, Judo, Jujitsu, Aikido, Taekwondo, and other martial arts. It would be much later that he would come to describe his style as Jeet Kune Do or the Way of the Intercepting Fist, a term he would later regret because Jeet Kune Do implied a specific style.

Bruce Lee put Jeet Kune Do to its first test by knocking-out Martial Arts Champion Uechi in a record 10 seconds for a 1960 Full-Contact match in Hong Kong. Soon after the still completely unknown Bruce Lee embarrassed black belt Karate champion Dan Inosanto in a martial arts combat fight during a Long Beach Karate demonstration, so quickly that Inosanto asked to be his student. Lee was subsequently sought after for instruction by established martial artists such as Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris.

Lee claimed that, after arriving in San Francisco, his theories about martial arts and his teaching of secret Chinese martial arts to non-Asian students gave him enemies in the martial arts community. A contest was scheduled between him and Wong Jack Man, a practitioner of Northern Shaolin.

Bruce Lee's description on the fight was that a rival martial art master named Wong Jack Man challenged him to a duel over his decision to teach Non-Chinese students. Bruce Lee accepted the challenge. Many of people witnessing the fight believed Lee had won the duel, but Lee later thought that the fight took too long because traditional martial art technique were too rigid, formalistic and impractical in scenarios of chaotic street fighting. Thus he decided to develop a system with an emphasis on "practicality, flexibilty, speed, and efficiency."

Wong's version of the story suggested that he had only challenged Bruce Lee after Lee claimed to be able to defeat any martial artist in the city; Lee did not agree with this account however. The numbers of people who attended the fight ranged from 8 to 13. Wong and another attendee, William Chen, remembered the fight as being more than 20 minutes, and that Wong was on the defensive and Lee was the aggressor. Bruce Lee's description said that he had chased Wong around the room until finally subduing him. Wong later published his own view on the outcome of the fight in the Chinese Pacific Weekly newspaper and an invitation to Lee for a public rematch. Lee, however, did not publically respond to Wong's invitation.

Beyond Jeet Kune Do: The match with Wong influenced Lee's philosophy on fighting. Lee believed that the fight had lasted too long and that he had failed to live up to himself. At this point he decided to start training with weights for strength, running for endurance, stretching for flexibility, plus many other methods of training, which he constantly adapted.

During this time Lee developed his own combat techniques, while demonstrating the infamous one inch punch, of Wing Chun, which he demonstrated during a Karate tournament at Long Beach.

Bruce Lee certified three instructors: Dan Inosanto, Taky Kimura and James Yimm Lee (no relation to Bruce Lee). James Yimm Lee, a close friend of Bruce Lee, passed away without certifiying additional students. Taky Kimura, to date, has certified one person in Jun Fan Gung Fu, his son and heir, Andy Kimura. All other instructors are certified under Inosanto, who acts as a leading instructor and historian of Jeet Kune Do Concepts. Inosanto also teaches and practices other styles such as Kali, Silat, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jujitsu and others martial arts styles, some of which were already incorporated into the Jun Fan Gung Fu system.

Prior to his death, Lee told his then only two living instructors, Inosanto and Kimura (James Yimm Lee had passed away in 1972), to dismantle his schools. He no longer wished to call his art Jeet Kune Do or have his students associate what they were learning as Bruce Lee's style. His last wish was that Inosanto never use the name Jeet Kune Do again. Though there are many who claim to teach Jeet Kune Do around the globe, Inosanto, following Lee's request, still refers to the Bruce Lee curriculum taught at his school as Jun Fan Gung Fu.

Many martial arts instructors, in an effort to promote themselves or their martial arts schools, make dubious claims about learning from or teaching Bruce Lee. This was a reason why Lee, and later Inosanto, put rigid standards forth to earn certification in his martial arts. Being composed from many different styles of martial arts, Jun Fan Gung Fu (Jeet Kune Do) claims to be composed of 27 different styles of martial arts.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors, This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bruce Lee".

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