Bruce Lee vs JKD

The first thing I can remember posting on the internet about martial arts was pure unadulterated hatred for Bruce Lee's fighting theory*, from before I ever discovered Bullshido.net. I was livid with the various kumite point fighters I had encountered justifying their unorthodox side stance fighting using Bruce Lee's text. But now that I have had more exposure to martial arts scholarship, and in the last few years have actually trained in Jeet Kune Do (including a touch of Silat and Wing Chun) myself, what I have to say is much more complimentary towards Bruce Lee and much more critical of Wing Chun.

First, my prejudice against Bruce Lee was rooted in the Choy Li Fut (CLF) vs Wing Chun conflict. My first skills in K-1 Rules Kickboxing and Tai Chi were both required parts of my Choy Li Fut training from Sifu Vern Miller, 1st Disciple of Grand Master Doc Fai Wong. Sifu's primary contribution to the Doc Fai Wong's system was applying it to combat sports. Sifu had various successful students, and well known striking champions such as Victor Solier and Maurice Smith would occasionally cross train with Sifu before kickboxing matches. Most notably one of my Choy Li Fut class mates was Margaret McGregor, a female fighter who beat a male fighter in a sanctioned boxing match in 2000.

What is really interesting to me about this prejudice I had has everything to do with Martial Arts Shredded's analysis of Bruce Lee's fighting theory:

But here's an example of Wing Chun:

Wing Chun has a rival martial art called Choy Li Fut. The two arts are opposite in almost every possible way. Wing Chun prefers controlled precise movement, where as Choy Li Fut prefers swift power. Wing Chun has a reputation for being a close range style, Choy Li Fit is known for more long range technique. Wing Chun is known for being as simple and direct and having as few forms as possible, where as Choy Li Fut contains several different fighting styles within it, and more forms and weapons than any one individual can master at one time. Here is what one fighting style within Choy Li Fut looks like:

 

And it turns out that Choy Li Fut was one of the traditional Chinese Martial Arts that Bruce Lee had something nice to say about, UNLIKE Wing Chun:

"Choy Li Fut is the most effective system that I've seen for fighting more than one person. [It] is one of the most difficult styles to attack and defend against. Choy Li Fut is the only style [of kung fu] that traveled to Thailand to fight the Thai boxers and hadn't lost."

Of course there's a lot of side stance unorthodox fighting there that I hate, but that is a debate that happens entirely within the system of Choy Li Fut itself, with Wing Chun we just have that crap we see in the video above. The rival theories on Side vs Front stance in CLF are both venerated by obvious technique in the forms, so that the assumption is you would get good at both fighting stances if you were to master everything.

So though Bruce Lee admired really important styles like Savate, CLF, Muay Thai etc. was Bruce Lee ever able to divorce his theory from the incompetence of Wing Chun? From what I have seen, the answer is a definite "no, JKD is still heavily contaminated with damnably horrible technique from Wing Chun." It doesn't help that non-sparring Silat (one of the few styles arguably more delusional than non-sparring Aikido,) has been injected into many JKD systems. But what really is a problem is Wing Chun's poor sparring (or lack of sparring) practices, reinforced by bad ideas in the forms, which are in turn reinforced by the poor sparring practices.

Wing Chun's concepts are cancerous in my view. Let's take their idea of "sticky hands." For them, sticky hands is the closest thing to sparring most of them do as a regular part of their Wing Chun training. Let's take a look at sticky hands:

Notice how the master keeps turning his jaw sideways making himself vulnerable to getting KOed by a common haymaker. His technique is incredibly uniformed by sparring. Like all other sticky hands fans, he can't seem to make up his mind if it's for parrying strikes or doing takedowns. As a Tai Chi fan you would think I would have more sympathy towards this kind "sensitivity drill" technique found Tai Chi:

But in Tai Chi this "push hands" drill compliments "push hands" sparring, unlike in Wing Chun:

As for Wing Chun's attempt to claim sticky hands is for blocking punches, I have to ask, what kind of punches? Because you see the same blocks practiced with completely superior theory and execution in CLF:

Wing Chun prides itself in being an abbreviated system, the very least Shoulin Kung Fu that can be learned and still be effective, a sort of Shoulin rape-prevention style. Unfortunately Wing Chun fails to deliver on its promise, unlike any established styles of boxing and kickboxing which are even more abbreviated while offering fully actionable technique for self defense. The problem with JKD in today's world isn't so much Bruce Lee's unorthodox side stance theories, so much as it is that they haven't finished removing the cancer that is Wing Chun:

I totally agree with Bruce Lee's critique of traditional martial arts now, as forms/kata seem to take priority over sparring even in most Tai Chi and CLF schools. However Bruce Lee's critique of traditional martial arts is exactly why Wing Chun is the last thing you should study if you want to fight like Bruce Lee. If you want to be able to fight implementing similar concepts to what all of these above styles are trying to accomplish, the healthiest and fastest to get there is Muay Thai, which is most definitely not JKD, least bit Wing Chun:

*I posted this review of the "Art of Jeet Kune Do" on Amazon some time around 2003:

"1 The book is poorly illustrated, badly organized and full of especially foolish ideas when it comes to self defense and fighting in general. 2 Lee says traditional martial arts are too restricting, yet what he suggests instead, "Jeet Kune Do," is even more restricting than most traditional martial arts. 3 He discounts all the credentials of all of the past martial arts instructors, ignoring all of their accomplishments, skills, and fighters. He essentially is saying "I am smarter than all of the other martial artists ever born put together." 4 His material is not new but borrowed from modern boxing, French kickboxing, and Wing Chun. Ironically, any 3 of these arts are a superior form of hand to hand fighting to Bruce's "Jeet Kune Do." 5 The problem with using Wing Chun as an example of a traditional Chinese martial art is that Wing Chun was designed to have a very fast learning curve and has only 3 forms. Most kung fu systems have at least a dozen forms offering an extremely wide variety of grappling, striking, defense and weapon techniques. 6 Bruce Lee's grasp of modern boxing is clearly inaccurate. He depicts all boxers as fighting left handed, with their right foot forward. It's common knowledge that most boxers are right handed and lead with their left foot. He is clearly misrepresenting the art of boxing. It follows then that much else of what he discusses is most likely intentionally misrepresented. 7 Bruce Lee's credentials are? He was in some movies and charged outrageous rates (not something to look for in a source of martial arts instruction.) Claims have been made about how he was the world's greatest fighter, but there's literally no evidence to support this. Even his own accounts of his "fights" differ greatly, and neutral outside witnesses often state that he was not victorious in his various private matches. Bruce Lee was in no position to call himself a martial arts master, least bit in a position to offer the martial arts world a new way of thinking. His new way of thinking? He suggests that you open your mind to his views when he himself was not willing to open his mind to even the most simple orthodox fighting standards." - BFGalbraith "bfgalbraith" on Amazon

Final Solution

The general purpose of this blog is for me to have one link answers to questions that come up when I am talking to people about things that are interesting to me. When I explain something, I want to get it right the first time, and continue the conversation from there. The reason why I haven't been posting on martial arts as much as I used to, is because I have been discussing martial arts with people a lot less than I used to.

Why? Because I don't really care anymore if people get martial arts right. Why should I? In so far as I am right and others are wrong:

1. If they were smart enough or diligent enough to get to the truth, they could have already got there without me having to explain it to them. Certain core basics about martial arts that I have spent way too much time debating like the stupidity of the side stance or the necessity of sparring, these things are self evident.
2. The COVID-19 Pandemic has me rethinking my sympathy for the ignorant- ignorant people are a biological threat to me and my kind. I just assume not sacrifice our safety by improving their fighting ability.
3. When it comes down to my concerns about overspecialization, my opinion doesn't change reality. Let's say two guys get in a fight, one has done BJJ for 4 years and has his purple belt, the other wrestled for three years in high school and has done a year of Muay Thai  after high school. All other things being equal, that wrestler-kickboxer is far better prepared for a street fight than the purple belt, even though the purple belt likely put twice as much time and ten times as much money into his training that the other fighter. If MMA has taught us anything, it's that generalization is more important to fighting than specialization.

Why should I sympathize with BJJ blackbelts who openly promote Kumite Point Fighting as a primary way to train in striking? Why should I try to help the martial art consumer who looked at a Shotokan class and a Muay Thai class, and decided "Wow, I sure like that uniform and that point fighting!" As far as the delusional pressure point chi ball throwing people go, I never met one, for whatever reason all the internal martial arts people I have trained with were very much about free sparring.

So if you are a martial arts consumer or potential martial arts consumer, you will find the truth on this blog, and I have made so many posts on it that you probably won't read them all. If you already agree with me, you can link to my posts I have written if you like. If you disagree with me on most of my points about martial arts, then it looks like life is having one of those Darwin moments.

Two Divergent Paths of Progress

With Bernie Sanders having torched the Democrat Primaries, progressives have two divergent paths forward, from what I can see, which is the Protest Vote versus the Populist Shepard. I think the way to go is the Populist Shepard strategy, but first let's look at the more familiar Protest Vote.

A protest vote would be any of the following strategies:

1. Voting 3rd Party: this is the most effective of these strategies for moving policy forward.
2. Writing in a name of someone: a waste of your vote.
3. Not voting: the only thing you could do worse writing in a name.
4. Voting for Trump: a dangerous gamble because though you get a chance to vote for a progressive again in 4 years, Trump is no Nixon or Reagan - Trump lacks the basic core competencies of state craft, and POTUS is arguably the first job he's ever had not handed to him by his father. Ideologues like me easily forget that there is a job to do here, and that though George W. Bush wasn't very good at the job, Trump for all intensive purposes can't seem to do the job at all.

I suggest instead progressives Shepard the Populist movement that won Trump the 2016 election and almost got Sanders the Democratic nomination twice. I realize that many Progressives are too thin skinned for this strategy, but here's how it would work:

1. Up to the election in 2020, put as much pressure on Biden as possible to be as progressive as possible, leaving no doubt in the DNC's mind your vote is anything but guaranteed. When it comes time to vote, choose Trump or Biden, whichever is most progressive (Trump is far more progressive and Biden far less progressive than what their critics give them credit for.)
2. After every election, switch parties to whichever is going to have the next primary. In other words if Trump wins reelection, your are GOP starting in December of 2020.
3. Explore the ideology of the GOP, and figure out what is their language for policies you would consider progressive. Pro tip: start looking at policies like "Fair Tax" and "EITC," with candidates like Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney. From within the GOP, push for the most progressive candidates and the most progressive polices.
4. When it comes time to vote, again choose the most progressive candidate.

What Progressives are doing right now is by and large failing. Our marriage to the DNC is highly dysfunctional, and the DNC does not deserve our devotion. The way it works now is as long as the DNC has a candidate that isn't as bad as the GOP candidate, we have to choose between 8 years of bad vs 4 years of worse.

Instead Progressives should be open minded enough to embrace the GOP and push for a more progressive GOP, so that the GOP becomes REAL competition for the DNC when it comes to having progressive options to vote for. Consider:

1. On the issue of Basic Income, the single most important progressive policy since the days of MLK Jr., on average more GOP candidates are concerned about this issue than DNC candidates. Fair Tax is one example of this that even Trump talked about in 2016, but Marco Rubio in 2016 was more progressive on this issue by way of his EITC ideas than every single DNC candidate in 2020 besides Yang and Harris! It is no coincidence that Rubio is more ethnically diverse than Biden or Trump.
2. The GOP has the more progressive long-term deep history than the DNC. The GOP is culturally more serious about personal freedoms, and has stronger anti-slavery impulses than the DNC. (The Federal Jobs Program Sanders promoted would not fly in GOP circles.) The influence of the New Testament on the GOP means that they ultimately have a compassionate streak hard coded into their ideology, unlike with bureaucratic establishment in the DNC. 
3. When Gay Marriage was legalized from sea to shining sea, the Supreme Court was controlled by judges loyal to the GOP: after all the noise made by the DNC, it was GOP judges that legalized gay marriage!

Considering how knee-jerk stupid the DNC has been with trying to remain "conservative enough" for "swing voters," there is actually a LOT to work with in the GOP. Perhaps progress that can be made within the GOP that is unreachable within the entrenched bureaucratic establishment of the DNC!

St. Sanders

Having to choose between Biden and Trump is 100% Sanders fault, and the biggest political tragedy of our generation:

 In 2020 my top picks were:

1. Andrew Yang (universal basic income, business know-how.)
2. Tulsi Gabbard (universal health care, combat-veteran experience)
3. Kamala Harris (some measure of both universal income and health care, experience changing the criminal justice system from within as a prosecutor.)
4. Elizabeth Warren (some of all of the above.)

We had so many awesome candidates. Even some of the more conservative ones had great ideas like Klobochar's universal mail in ballot. But then Bernie Sanders couldn't get in and support a new generation of leadership, instead he had to jump in the race again after:

1. He already lost the primary in 2016. Even though his policies are incredibly popular with the general public, his socialist branding was already a proven failure with the electorate.
2. He was completely off on his federal jobs program, which is real actual factual commie-style anti-American socialism, when instead he could have easily adopted Andrew Yang's basic income. Out of pure ideology, Sanders chose the wrong side of history.
3. At some point Sanders threatened to veto the Public Option if it came across his desk. If it hadn't been for Jimmy Carter shooting down a GOP health care proposal in the 1970's, we would have had the Public Option back in the days of Nixon! We don't need lefties shooting down progress for ideological reasons, and this move was every bit as dumb as Biden continuing to insist he would veto Medicare For All.
4. He then proceeded to not drop out after having a heart attack.
5. He then proceeded to not drop out after a #MeToo issue with his staff.
6. He then proceeded to not drop out after a very credible accusation from Warren that Sanders was running because he believed the USA was not ready for a women president.

And Sanders was the Camel's head in the tent. Once old-white-man Sanders decided to get into the race, this opened the door to other old-white-men like Biden and Bloomberg, who are basically 1970's republicans, and yeah they HAVE been around that long. Imagine instead if Sanders had gotten behind his biggest fan, Tulsi Gabbard, or his close ally Elizabeth Warren. Today we would be talking about Biden finally folding instead of Sanders. 

The following song goes out to two rival groups of people:

1. You who think I should vote for Biden because he isn't Trump.
2. You who supported this Sanders joy ride which has ran the 2020 Democratic primary right off of a cliff.

"... I think you might have made a mistake":