You Don’t Know Jack!

With all due respect to Ayn Rand, who was Jack Dempsey?

Frankly, it’s a JKD tragedy that more of us don’t know who he was and, more importantly, what impact he had on the Little Dragon and JKD.

If you watch footage of Lee pulverizing the heavy bag in his backyard – beating it like it owed him money – you’ll notice a very distinctive manner in the way he threw his punches.  Well, that is, after you recover from the shock of seeing a man so small punch harder than many people can kick!  How did he do that?  That’s the question.  He wasn’t always doing it that way.  In fact, after his legendary and very frustrating fight with Wong Jak Man, Lee rightly reasoned that he needed more hitting power.  That altercation with Wong, after all, went on for way too long though Lee threw something like a gazillion punches.  Licking his tactical/technical wounds afterward, he knew he needed more power.  

And that’s where our man comes in – Jack Dempsey.  

First, it’s important to understand that Bruce Lee was both a man of ideas and action.  He wanted results and he knew that the best way to get them was to find men that had already gotten them.  So, do you want punching power?  Who better to learn from than a fighter they called the man-killer?  Seriously.  You don’t get that moniker by slapping like a sissy.  Especially in the heavyweight division.  

So, how good was Dempsey?  Well, he was the heavyweight champion from 1919-1926.  In his career, he won 51 times by KO (records vary because of the shoddy nature of some of his early fights.  Not only this, but he fought dozens of “exhibition” matches against top fighters of his day and dispatched one and all).  The thing is, of those 51 KO’s, 25 were in the first round.  He was a menacing, snarling, two-fisted, panther-quick destruction machine.  But, lest you think he was all power and no skill, Dempsey was a master boxer – a scientific and intellectual destruction machine of historic proportions.  No less a fighter than Mike Tyson tried to pattern himself after Dempsey.  

Dempsey’s title winning performance against a giant of a man named Jess Willard is instructive as to his incredible offensive capacity.  In the first round, after prowling along the rim of the fighting measure, staying outside of Willard’s daunting reach (he was 6’6 and 240lbs!), Jack connected with a thunderous barrage.  Willard, who had previously killed a man in a boxing match, was sent to the canvas seven times.  Seven.  To his credit, he kept getting up only to get hammered back down again.  By the end of the round Willard wasn’t the same man anymore.  The soon to be former champion had a broken nose.  A broken jaw.  His orbital bone was obliterated.  He lost hearing in one ear.  He had multiple broken ribs and most of his teeth were gone.  

This was a match – fought nearly 100 years ago on July 4, 1919 in a sweltering 100-degree heat because there were no stadium lights yet – that changed boxing history and kicked off what would be known as the Roaring 20’s.  No one had ever seen such a pulverizing spectacle.  Never.  Especially in a title fight.  

In all, Willard, the fallen giant from Kansas, appeared to be a casualty of one of the mighty guns from the recently ended World War.  No.  He was simply the latest victim of the most destructive fighter in boxing history.  Dempsey later said he felt sick to his stomach looking at Willard, appalled at what his inner fury and skill could do to another human being.  And not just any regular fellow, remember – but a man who had beaten Jack Johnson, a champion and a man who outweighed him by 50 pounds.  

Due to the epic destruction of the reigning heavyweight champion, Dempsey became larger than life.   In a time when the heavyweight champion had no parallel in sports, he was now the emperor of masculinity, as it was said.  No one had ever seen anything like it and even today it’s virtually impossible to understand the heights Jack scaled in popularity.  One story can give us a little perspective, though.  

Eddie Sutherland was a powerful Hollywood director in the 20’s.  He was convinced that his lover, the famous actress Clara Bow, was having an affair.  So, he told Bow he had to go to New York on some business, check on some plays that might make good movies.  They shared a limo ride to Union Station in Los Angeles, hugging, holding hands and even weeping as they parted.  But Sutherland got off the train in Pasadena and took a taxi back home.  When he went to Bow’s mansion, having a key, he let himself in.  The bedroom door was locked.  He began knocking and wouldn’t go away as Bow yelled at him to leave or else she’d call the police.  

But who calls the police on their lover?  She was stalling.

Finally, she opened the door.  She was wearing a bathrobe.

“Where is he?”

“Who?  It’s just me, Eddie,” she said and tried to usher him out of the room.  

“There’s a man here!  I smell a man.”

“What are you, a bloodhound?”

He looked under the bed.  Then he checked the closets.  Finally, he came to the bathroom door.  It was locked.

“I know you’re in there,” he shouted.  “C’mon out here so I can knock your teeth out, you yellow son-of-a-bitch!”  

The door opened.  

There stood Jack Dempsey.

Eddie Sutherland had just called Jack Dempsey a coward and threatened to knock out his teeth.  

Quickly coming to his senses, Sutherland smiled and apologized.  “Jack…I didn’t know it was you.  Just kidding, Jack.”

Some reports have Sutherland getting Jack’s autograph before he left.  Imagine that.  Imagine finding a man in bed with your girl and you get his autograph.  And then you tell all your friends.  That’s how famous Dempsey was, and that fame was built upon those thundering fists.   

Until Dempsey’s time, scientific punchers were unknown.  Knockouts happened more from a fighter being worn down than blown away by a single punch or quick barrage.  We now live on the other side of this history and, therefore, it’s easy to miss the significance of it all.  When Babe Ruth his 59 homers in 1921, and then broke his own record with 60 bombs in 1927, other hitters in baseball were lucky to hit 10 or 15.  But that was the 20’s.  Jack’s fists inaugurated that golden era of sports and he wasn’t hitting baseballs; he was decimating professional fighters.  

Sure, there were hordes of crude punchers – wild men that rushed forward swinging with all their might.  Get this image out of your head.  Those types of men were – and are – crude brawlers.  They may have been heavy handed (if they were any good at all) but Jack was a surgeon, but his goal wasn’t to fix, but to destroy. 

In the fight with Willard he was at his destructive best.  The first half of Round 1 was what most people call a “feeling out” period.  Great action and surreal damage followed in the second half of the round but it was the first half that’s important because it shows Jack’s patience.  Dempsey stayed outside of Willard’s mammoth 83-inch reach.  He was giving away nearly 50-pounds too and big Jess was looking to catch Jack with an uppercut on the inside, so Dempsey was careful, stalking, waiting, and expertly clinching on the inside when his attacks didn’t work.  

No great knockout puncher can be impatient.  What makes them dangerous is their controlled fury – their careful aggression.  And this has to be the case because if they rush in foolishly they’ll catch a counter-punch coming in and that’s always bad because you give the punch more power by running into it.  Aggression can and will be used against you and fighters that attack must be all the more vigilant against mistakes lest they end up taking damage on the way in.  

Well, right around the half-point of the first round Jack caught big Jess with that falling-step jab – a punch that Bruce Lee would later adapt as his own.  It caught Willard flush and opened him up for what the sports writers of the day called a barrage.  Today we’re used to such language but it wasn’t popular then.  It was a reference to Dempsey’s short and pulverizing hooks on the inside.  He’d go to the body with both hands, hammering shots underneath a fighter’s guard and then he’d rip hooks at the head.  It reminded the ringside writers of World War 1 artillery barrages.  

Well, Dempsey let loose on Willard’s body and then crashed a hook home.  It landed flush and big Jess slumped to the canvas in the Ohio summer heat.  It was the perfect hook.  It fractured the champion’s cheekbone in thirteen places.  Willard sat there with what Grantland Rice called a dazed and foolish look, his face “twitching in pain and bewilderment.”  He rose AT six and was met again by a Dempsey left-hook.  Half of his face was already destroyed and now six teeth were dislodged.  The teeth scattered, bloodied, onto the canvas as Willard went down again.  

It remains to this day perhaps the worst beating ever administered in a title fight.  The damage was so appalling that rumors developed over the years that Dempsey had used “loaded” gloves.  But Dempsey didn’t need to cheat.  He had mastered the skill of using all of his bodyweight in every punch.  That was his secret.  And he wanted every fight to be over in a hurry because he reasoned that the longer a match went on the more likelihood that he could be injured.  “I never go in confident,” he once said.  “Any sucker can get lucky and give you a crack in the chin.  I go in, saying to myself, ‘kill ‘im, kill ‘im, kill ‘im.  Otherwise, he’ll kill me.”

So, Jack, you see was the perfect fighting machine.  Hard to hit but rabidly aggressive.  Scientific yet with animal instincts.  Ferociously aggressive but tempered by smart tactics and precision technique.  

And that’s the odd part of it all.  Scientific men – men of intellectual precision and careful thought are not thought to be aggressive.  It’s naturally assumed that high aggression and intellect are antithetical.  All throughout history this bias is in evidence; men of the mind think that men of action are beneath them.  Victor Davis Hanson, the brilliant historian, points this out about Patton.  The great war general was the best read and most probing intellectual of his day, but his aggressiveness made others think he wasn’t an intellectual.  Patton swore a lot and spoke in ways that dripped with the fury of combat.  He said, “son, it isn’t your job to die for you country…it’s to make sure the other son-of-a-bitch dies for his.”  This isn’t how a professor talks.  But both Patton and Dempsey – and later Bruce Lee – would ask us to check our premises.  Ideas, to be true, must work in reality.  That’s the test of an idea.  Does it work?  And Patton was a philosopher of war; Jack was a philosopher of the ring and of man-to-man fighting.  They were men of the mind.  Indeed, they were two of the most honest men to ever live because they put their own bodies on the line to see if their theories worked.  

Interestingly, Dempsey, like Patton, hated war and fighting so much that they took no risks.  They studied how they might end matters as quickly as possible.  That’s the goal.  For Dempsey, it was knocking his man out.  When that happened, Jack knew he was safe.  The best self-defense was KO power.  

As evidenced in his book, Championship Fighting, of which Lee was a serious student, Jack was a highly scientific puncher who knew how to get every last bit of payload into every punch.  Jack didn’t believe in light punches as set-ups – that’s what fakes were for!  No.  He was all-in on every shot and from him Lee learned what became essentials in the JKD system: the power-line, falling-step straight punch, and the four ways to get maximum power in every punch.  This can’t be overstated: to watch Lee hammer the heavy bag is to see a Dempsey student.  

There was a key in Dempsey’s approach that coincided with the Wing Chun Lee already knew.  Jack, unlike other boxers, threw his straight jab (which he called the jolt) with a vertical fist.  This allowed Lee to seamlessly integrate the new skills into his already existing framework.  Jack taught in his book to throw the jolt with a step, hand before foot.  Most people mistakenly believe that JKD’s non-telegraphic structure comes from fencing only.  But there’s an enormous difference between striking someone with a blade and punching him.  Dempsey provided the structure to punch with balance and power without telegraphing.  And this revolutionized Lee’s game.  

After the stepping jolt (the falling step), Dempsey taught that power punching came from not just springing forward (off the back foot) and falling forward (the gravity assist you get from the explosive step provided your punch lands before your front foot hits the floor) but also from upward surge and shoulder whirl.  He said that in punching, the fist gets all the glory but it’s really only along for the ride.  Every blow should have maximum body structure behind it.  Bomb them, he said!  And so he did – and so did Bruce Lee after him.  Jack Dempsey made a heavy hitter out of Lee and Lee acknowledged this publicly by writing to his idol and mentor.  That’s right!  While so many JKD teachers obsess over every little detail of Lee’s life, seeking insight in the most asinine ways, they miss that Lee openly acknowledged Jack as his inspiration and teacher.  

There has been this myth floating around in the JKD world that Lee, after abandoning Wing Chun (itself not entirely true) researched dozens of systems in order to find the truth.  It’s not important why this myth abounds but it surely is a myth.  Lee knew right where to look for his need of power.  He looked at the greatest puncher of all-time.  When we understand this, we avoid two critical errors. 

First, we know the source and can avoid trying to reinvent the wheel as so many erroneously do.  Thus, if you aren’t studying Dempsey’s footwork, evasion and punching structure, you aren’t studying JKD because that’s what Bruce did.  Again, go back and watch Lee training in his backyard.  The footage is all over the internet now, so it’s no mystery.  And watch him sparring.  You won’t see him practicing Kali or Muay Thai.  The structure and goals of those disparate systems are contradictory to those of JKD.  The evidence is clear that Lee, to gain more hitting power and freedom of footwork as well as aggressive tactical skill, studied the sweet science.  In doing this, he transformed his method and developed JKD – the sweeter science.  

Second, on the question of did Bruce Lee ever fight (read that: compete), you can rest assured that his sources certainly did.  Dempsey was so formidable a fighter that he KO’d two armed muggers when he was in his 70’s!  What’s the best way to deal with an armed assailant?  Knock him out.  That’s Dempsey.  So, anyone who wishes to dismiss JKD because Lee didn’t have a competitive fighting career is ignorant of the fact that JKD’s sources – in this particular case Dempsey – knocked out world-class fighters with superlative skill.  This is, therefore, the heritage of Jeet Kune Do.  Real Jeet Kune Do stands as much, if not more, on the shoulders of Dempsey as it does on Ip Man and Wing Chun.  

That Jack Dempsey isn’t known as a primary source of JKD is, as I said, a regrettable tragedy as it relegates students to trying to reinvent the wheel.  People say, “man…Bruce could hit harder than anyone his size…he hit like a heavyweight.”  They say this as though Lee was superhuman.  No.  He was a student of Dempsey – and you can/should be too.  That’s where it started.

So, who was Jack Dempsey?  The most fearsome puncher in boxing history and, believe it or not, one of the foundations upon which JKD was built.  There is, simply, no JKD without him.  

Fighting Speed!

Was Bruce Lee fast?

That’s like asking if the Avengers franchise made any money.  

Or if the sun is hot.  

Anyway, with all the bickering and disagreement in the JKD/Wing Chun world, one thing everyone can agree on was that Lee was exceptionally quick.  He was so fast, in fact, that it seems hard to imagine him being so popular without all that speed.  But, more to our point, the very system of JKD is built on – and absolutely requires – a fair degree of speed.  I’ve said before that the system is built around the stop-hit, which is to say, counter-attacking, and you can’t do that if you’re too slow.  That would be like an ugly model, or a clumsy dancer…or an honest politician.  Slow JKD is a contradiction in terms.  

Now, you might think that speed is an essential quality in any fighting art but that’s actually not true.  Speed will help, of course, but it’s far from the dominant attribute of, say, BJJ.  JKD, on the other hand, rests upon the foundation of quickness and without it the whole structure comes tumbling down.  

But what kind of speed are we talking about here?  And how do we train for it?   

First, we must have the right technical/tactical structure of the ready position, footwork, and straight, non-telegraphic strikes – preferably from the forward side.  Each of these three technical points integrate without contradiction into the tactical framework of what JKD aspires to do – stop-hit the bad guy!  Lee was obviously gifted with good genes for movement speed, but he understood how important it was to not waste movement and/or have a bad plan of attack.  

If there was a secret to the whole thing it was Lee’s understanding of the importance of foot-speed.  Most people treat footwork like an afterthought.  In JKD, it’s the central thing.  Always.  Fighting is about moving and distance control.  The man that controls the distance controls the fight.  This being the case, he worked assiduously on foot-speed both in technique training (footwork) and physical conditioning.  He favored footwork that was cat-like and efficient.  And by all accounts, Lee didn’t jog – he ran!  Fast.  Like he was getting shot at.  Up hills.  And he rode a stationary bike full speed too – with the resistance as high as it would go.  Oh, and you may have seen photos of him on a trampoline.  He used that for more power and explosiveness.  All of this translated into an amazing level of movement speed.  Thus, the first big secret to his speed was in his legs.

You see, Lee knew something about fighting that most people simply ignore: good footwork can and will beat every attack.  It’s a basic but painfully true fact that if you can cover ground faster than your opponent, you have a significant advantage.  And this was Lee’s goal with all of that conditioning.  In JKD, we preach the “four hits” – hit first, hit straight, hit hard, hit often.  Without foot-speed, you aren’t going to hit first because you’re at the mercy of the other guy’s movement.  Being first is the heart and soul of JKD philosophy and training because action is always faster than reaction.    

If you take a look at the vast majority of fighters, they move around, or they fire their techniques.  Rare is the fighter that uses footwork as part of their technique.  One such fighter was Roy Jones Jr.  In his heyday, Roy was always boxing from the fighting measure – too far from his opponent to be reached without footwork.  In fact, he used distance like a JKD fighter would – as his primary means of defense.  He’d counter-attack expertly from the rim and he’d attack with lightning quick shots when his opponent wasn’t set, darting in and then shooting back out (or angling offline).  He never hung out inside the pocket, awaiting a receipt, so to speak.  Yet, while everyone was amazed at how fast Roy’s hands were – and sure they were blazing fast! – it was his explosive footwork that carried him expertly in and out of range.  He was so good at this that one time, against a poor fellow named Richard Hall, he actually ended up behind the guy at one point.  For a terrible moment, Hall actually didn’t know where Jones was!  He did this, lest you forget, against another professional – a man paid to fight!  

Add to this that Lee favored straight hits for JKD.  Many fighters lose their discipline under pressure and use round-house type punches and kicks.  But the straighter the strike, the more direct it is, the faster it is.  More still, you can throw combinations better and the straight hits integrate into your footwork/ready-position mix too, allowing you to move and adjust distance with an incredible rapidity.  

But there’s something else.  Movement speed is only one part of the equation.  A fighter must have good timing too.  To be fast in fighting is to be fast “on-time”.  Simple movement speed is superfluous if an action is executed at the wrong moment.  In fact, timing can be said to be the most crucial element in all of combat because nothing – literally nothing – works without it.  Lee understood this and meticulously added timing drills to JKD training.  One example is the Jab-to-Jab drill.  There are several variations of this essential drill but the most basic one is for you and a partner to stand opposite a heavy bag.  One partner initiates an attack with their jab and the other tries to counter-jab as fast as they can.  While the reacting partner is getting the best work in during this drill, both parties actually benefit.  The initiator must be cognizant of their pacing, not falling into a predictable rhythm.  And, above all else, he must not telegraph his strike.  Of course, the counter-puncher is trying to beat his partner to the punch.  You can add difficulty by having the initiator step back so they have to use footwork with their attack.  You can also allow the starter to fake too!  Lastly, the counter-attacker can use different counters like the side-kick or cross to the body.  

Pop-ups on the mitts work wonderfully too.  Have a trainer “pop” a line (like a jab or kick) and hit the target as fast as you can.  The unpredictability is key.  

So, in all, remember that a fast punch or kick is nearly useless without footwork and timing.  With them, though, you have a nearly unbeatable combination of qualities because speed kills – your opponent if you have it, or you if you don’t.  

Happy training.  

JKD’s Most Important Technique

It’s probably surprising to hear that something so (allegedly) basic as the Ready Position is JKD’s most important technique.  I understand, I really do.  But we need to deal with this because not understanding the primacy of JKD’s On-Guard is the central mistake infecting Lee’s fighting method.  Seriously.  

First, let’s cover why it’s so important.  

To begin, the Ready-Position is ready to do two primary things: hit and move.  Specifically, it’s ready to fire non-telegraphic straight BOMBS, preferably from the lead hand/foot.  Assuredly, the rear-side gets in on the action but only as a coup-de-grace.  The supremacy of straight hits is a critical aspect of JKD that we shouldn’t take for granted.  Unfortunately, too many people do.  The JKD Bi-Jong is the launching pad from which the primary weapons (lead punch, side kick and snap/hook kick are thrown).  Any significant departure from this set-up will invariably degrade the efficiency, power and speed of these weapons.  

Next, the Ready-Position is ready to move.  It’s easy to confuse movement with footwork.  Any fool can move; JKD fighters move their Ready-Position by means of specific footwork designed especially for this purpose.  If, for example, you bounce when moving, instead of shuffling as you should, you obliterate your ability to instantly fire when needed.  First, you have to stop bouncing, then reset, and then fire.  This literally destroys your JKD because now you can’t instantly counter-attack.  Your options then are to try and avoid everything by running or getting into a brawl.  

In this, one can see the careful integration of the three technical fundamentals of JKD: the Bi-Jong, JKD/fencing style footwork to transport the on-guard, and the pulverizing straight hits.  It’s a package deal.  If one of these go, the others are soon to follow.  And this is why you absolutely cannot, repeat cannot, simply add things willy-nilly to your game and call it JKD.  

Roundhouse swings and bad footwork are generally added by the student because they haven’t been taught that keeping the on-guard position is of central concern.  After all, if I lose focus on this, I’m liable to throw strikes that telegraph and/or make instant recovery impossible.  The goal of the JKD fighter is, as Bruce called it, stillness in motion.  That is to say, we want to fire without warning from the ready-position and then return immediately to it.  That’s it!  The more we deviate from this standard, the harder everything else becomes.  

Constant drilling must be done in order to ensure that the JKD fighter is able to maintain their discipline under pressure.  The Romans once had the greatest military on the planet. They called their practice maneuvers; their maneuvers were called bloodless battles; their battles were called bloody maneuvers.  

If you’ve ever been to an amateur MMA or boxing event, you’ll notice how wild the fighters can get.  Clearly, they know better than to swing so hard that they fall down if they miss, but novice fighters do this all the time.  Why?   Simple.  They haven’t yet developed the discipline required to control themselves under pressure.  This is no small point.  Pressure causes us to make mistakes, so the JKD fighter must train and train and train – not until they get it right but until they have to try to do it wrong!  

With all this said, it shouldn’t surprise you that Bruce Lee said that all JKD practice was the practice of the ready-position.  The fighter that’s always ready to hit (hard!) is a dangerous fighter.  And the JKD tactical mind-set is to “get off first” – to stop-hit or counter.  Even the attacks in JKD are actually “early” counters because the enemy is off balance or, for whatever reason, unprepared.  Everything in JKD swirls in orbit around the interception/stop principle and this simply can’t be achieved without the integration of the technical fundamentals of the on-guard, footwork, and straight bombs.  

So, why do so many people mess this up?  Well, there are numerous reasons but let’s focus on two big ones. 

First, people erroneously think that JKD’s governing philosophy is relativistic, which is to say that anything goes and there are no fixed principles.  But if you say there aren’t any fixed truths, you just said one.  Get it?  By saying there are no absolutes, you’re saying one.  We can avoid all this confusion by properly understanding what it means to “have no way as way.”  This should be understood – primarily – from a tactical standpoint.  Feints, draws, traps, counters, changes of timing, angle, etc.  These are all the when and why of fighting.  The technical structure of JKD, though, isn’t able to be varied much at all (though it can, of course, be tweaked for practical purposes) for the very reason that human anatomy is a rather fixed thing.  

If I drive someplace, I’m bound by certain specifics.  What kind of car do I have?  What’s the speed limit?  What kind of law enforcement is there?  (Remember George Carlin’s number one rule of driving: if the police didn’t see it, I didn’t do it).  What are the traffic conditions?  You see, we’re “bound” by certain things but also tactically free to adjust.  If there’s a traffic jam on my primary route, I can take another highway.  I can leave earlier or later to avoid congestion.  What I can’t do is mount a missile launcher on my roof and blast my way to work – tempting though that is.  

Naturally, we are free to do whatever we want, but we aren’t free from the consequences.  

Which leads us to the second error – complexity.  The scourge of complexity happens because we fail to properly identify the facts of reality.  The JKD on-guard/straight hitting/footwork combination allows us to best control distance, avoid being a good target while simultaneously attacking the softest targets of our enemy.  And this isn’t going to be easy because the other guy is trying to hurt us.  He’s going hard and fast and he’s moving.  This necessitates ruthless efficiency.  Any complicated movements that don’t achieve simultaneous evasion and counter should be jettisoned.  We endeavor to keep it simple because the stakes are high and the other guy won’t cooperate.  

In all, there’s no way to simplify fighting if you’re out of position and can’t counter-attack.  This is why the JKD bi-jong is absolutely the most important technique because without it, nothing else works.  

The JKD Parry Scientific Defense at its Best

Many times, a student starts learning about the efficacy of the leading straight punch in JKD but runs into a serious problem.  What’s the problem?  Well, to put it bluntly – they get walloped by a shot as they’re throwing their vaunted punch, or directly after they throw it.  Naturally, no one likes getting punched in the face.  That’s less fun than paying taxes.  But it also causes many people to spurn JKD altogether.  They figure it doesn’t work.  They threw the famous straight punch and got hammered for it.  That’s it.

Or, instead of quitting JKD altogether, some people add a gazillion other things to it, making it all but indistinguishable from the methods they added.  

Well, you can avoid this problem by understanding and properly training JKD’s helping hands – that is, the parry.  As far as defense goes, footwork is the king. Nothing is better than simply not being there.  After all, no tough guy can do the physically impossible: he can’t hit what isn’t there.  But as important as footwork is, no matter how good you are, there are instances when you need a little extra help. And that’s exactly what the parry gives you.  

Of course, the stop-hit is the key to the whole shebang.  Everything in JKD is a set-up for it.  And the straight hit from the forward (preferably power) side is integral to the counter-attack.  But you can’t just stand there and throw your shots. That’s called over-simplification and results in the aforementioned wallop you receive from mindlessly throwing the stop-hit because, hey, it’s the backbone of JKD.  Yes, it is, but the backbone, last time I checked, isn’t the only part of the body.  Footwork and timing are critical too.  And so is the parry.

The parry is important to JKD because it’s a precision move, not like a block.  It’s a quick deflection against a weapon that beat your stop-hit and footwork, which doesn’t require a disruption of your balance.  This is critical because it allows you to instantly counter with one of those rapier-like straight hits.  A block is a blast of power on power and shouldn’t ever be confused with a parry.  In fact, a block is to a parry what a man screaming is to a great vocalist.

Watch Bruce Lee use the parry in the Chuck Norris fight in Way of the Dragon and notice how he’s able to move, parry and counter.  It’s all integrated.  If you abandon one element of this tactical/technical mix, you invariably kick the others to the curb too.  Imagine Mike Tyson without the quick head-movement.  You can’t.  The peek-a-boo style of Tyson is built around it just like Lee’s JKD is built around the long, straight counter-hits from the leading side.  

Some critics have opined that most people can’t do JKD because they aren’t as fast as Bruce was.  They say, “he was fast enough to stop-hit…you’re too slow so you’ll have to do something else…something more complicated…and, quick, buy my new video series on how complexity is the new simplicity.”  But this is a false dilemma built around the mistaken notion that the stop-hit is supposed to work every single time.  That would be nice but it’s unlikely, which is why we have the footwork, head-movement and the parry too.    

So, if you aren’t as fast as Bruce don’t worry about it.  You can still do JKD – you just probably need to parry and move more than he did.  You don’t – repeat don’t – solve a speed deficit by doing more complicated stuff.  That’s like not having money so you borrow more – it only increases the problem (unless you’re the government…governments are immune to the laws of basic economics).  

Think of the rear-hand as the goalie and defense on your soccer team.  If your goalie is really good, the other team is going to have a rough time beating you and that’s the whole point.  This is a critical thing to understand: in JKD, the back hand’s primary responsibility is to play goalie, not try and score.  It can get in on the offensive action but most often only when it comes in as a coup-de-grace.  Jim Driscoll wrote at length about this use of the rear-hand in his small but masterful book The Straight Left and How to Cultivate It.  That book, you should know, was a huge influence on Lee and JKD.  Driscoll reasons that it’s a grave mistake to throw the rear-hand into the offense until there was a clear opening.  He likens it to fencing but acknowledges, of course, that the rear-hand must be used in fighting.  Nevertheless, the whole structure of JKD is set up to “keep the line” – that is, keep the front (power-side) weaponry between you and the opponent.  They (the lead hand and foot) do most of the hitting, which gives you distinct advantages both offensively and defensively.  On offense, you have greater range than if you’re squared up, and you’re more mobile too.  On defense, critically, you’re a smaller target and that lightning-fast lead hand is ready to make a mess of the bad dude’s face.  

The parry works when one of the enemy’s blows gets past your primary defenses – your lead punch/kick and footwork.  Blocking or covering up breaks this tactical/technical structure and should, therefore, be abandoned unless absolutely necessary.  Parrying works better than either of those two because it keeps the counter-attacking lead side in play.  The rear-hand can guard either flank easily, using either pak-sao or tan/bui sao.  To protect the lower gate, the rear hand can again execute a low pak or a guan.  These movements are directly integrated from Lee’s Wing Chun training.  They’re simply modified – just like the straight lead punch is – to work from slightly longer range.  

Now, a goalie isn’t good if he’s wandering the field, trying to score and neither is your rear-hand much good if it’s too far forward when you’re at long range.  Close range fighting, naturally, calls for a different approach.  But at long-range, the lead-side weaponry needs support, that’s all.  If you aren’t fast enough to score stop-hits, move and then counter.  Or, more to our point, parry and counter.  Don’t throw away your whole system because you aren’t as fast as Bruce, just understand that the system has back-up plans.  

The lead-hand can be used to parry just like the rear-hand can (and should) be used in attack.  The issue is one of generalship.  The lead-hand is better deployed on attack and the rear (when at long-range) is best kept near the goal – which is your beautiful face!  Understanding this will keep you from running into counter-shots and is a key point in properly understanding and, importantly, applying JKD under pressure.  

Soft Targets: The Achilles Heel of Sport Based Fighting Systems

It seems rude to point out, almost like bringing attention to the finely dressed woman at the party, replete with the best fashions, that she has something stuck between her teeth. But the vast majority of martial systems today are suffering from a glaring weakness. And, lest you think that by vast majority I am merely throwing words around, and the problem isn’t all that bad, be certain that 99 in 100 martial artists are suffering from this. And this may even be a generous, soft-peddling of the problem.

The problem, for the most part, is that martial arts have gone the way of martial sports. Some have eschewed the primacy of attacking and defending the body’s weakest areas for the idiotic sake of complexity too – they just think other stuff is more cool, which is like a man getting attacked in an alley by a gang and whipping out his trusty nunchucks instead of a Glock 9MM because the aforementioned rice-beaters are way cooler. Such is the insanity of a man throwing a reverse kick rather than an eye-jab.

It’s these twin terrors that have utterly decimated modern martial arts from being what a martial art was and is meant to be: a fighting system, instead of a cool martial athletic club. And that’s exactly what most schools are because they’re focusing on things that aren’t essential to all-out fighting. What is? Well, for goodness sake, it’s scientifically attacking and defending the softies – the eyes, throat, groin, shins and knees.

Now listen, I’m sure this is going to offend many out there because we all have our favorites, but this isn’t about a match in a ring or a cage or even a sparring match at the school on any given Wednesday night. This is about survival, pure and simple. If two thugs attack you, helter-skelter ambush style, throwing haymakers and looking to do serious damage and then stomp your head into the pavement after they knock you down, and you’re fighting with rules then you have a serious oversight impeding your success. And, remember, success and failure in this instance could very well mean life or death. So, I’m terribly sorry to have to throw some methods under the bus, but in the name of the truth and your safety, these things need to be considered.

The Attribute Paradox

A person’s physical size, strength, movement speed, timing, endurance, flexibility and pain tolerance all play huge roles in their success as a fighter. Don’t ever believe otherwise. As JKD students we should train intensely as if these were the only qualities determining whether or not we live or die while at the same time developing tactics and techniques that reduce our dependence on attributes as much as possible.

The reason for this seeming contradiction is simple: if we fight in such a way that requires us to be the better athlete in the fight and, for whatever reason we are not, then we have horrible problems. Conversely, if we ignore physical conditioning and tell ourselves that we’re going to just kick a dude in the nuts and be done with it, and we miss, or he eats the shot and keeps fighting, then we’ve created another grave conundrum for ourselves. Both are needed. The proof of this is in the body and work of Bruce Lee himself. He trained like a professional fighter, was a superlative athlete, and yet ruthlessly attacked the key areas of the enemy. JKD reconciles these two – attributes and real fighting tactics so as not to be overconfident and/or unprepared in either area. To my knowledge, no other fighting method does this quite so well, with so much logic.

For example, it can easily be argued that some of the finest conditioned athletes on the planet – some of the physically toughest – are modern MMA fighters. I can personally attest to their grit, determination and skill. Owning a martial arts school with MMA fighters in it, I routinely get a chance to see some of these fighters up close and personal and I marvel at their pursuit of excellence and devotion. Boxers and kickboxers too…they are outstanding athletic warriors and we should be encouraged by them – us martial artists – to train hard and be in the best condition we can.

But there have been many examples in the cage where one fighter “accidentally” pokes his opponent in the eye. (We must note that some fighters have this happen too many times for it not to be an intentional act on their part, but that is another story). Nevertheless, whenever a wayward finger jabs an eye there is always a terrific response. The recipient howls in pain, covers his eye with his hands and hops around like a toddler in pain. Yes! A great and world-class fighter reduced to this by a finger in the eye. Naturally, this causes a break in the action too – giving the stricken fighter a chance to recover himself. This same scene happened as long ago as the first Ali-Frazier fight in March of 1971 when the ref accidentally poked Frazier in the eye as he endeavored to break up a clinch. Frazier, who had taken hundreds of sharp blows to the head from Ali all night, unfazed, was quickly hopping and howling after the middle-aged refs finger caught him.

The same happens when low blows land in both MMA and boxing matches as well. You see, no matter how well conditioned these fighters are, there is literally no way to toughen one’s eyes or village people. There just isn’t. It’s not possible. You can marvel at a Muay Thai fighter kicking a tree with his shin bone all you want but know this: his guys are open before and after every kick. Bruce Lee saw this and we should too. And this is precisely why there are no Muay Thai round kicks dominating real JKD practice. Again, it goes back to trading in your handgun for an Okinawan farm tool. Why waste all that time getting good at something not as effective? It makes no sense unless you’re ego driven and want to wow people with all that power. Or, you just love throwing the round kick like that, which is fine as long as you know that it isn’t the most practical means of defending yourself.

At this point there’s bound to be the dissenter that will bellow on about how some champion or another can round kick a house in half. Well, this very well might be true but the truly valid question as to self-defense is whether or not you can do that. In either event, maybe your Thai idol can truly kick that hard but one has to conclude that kicking a man in the groin is always better than kicking him so hard that you could knock his house down. All else being equal, no man’s thigh is less prepared for a strike than his fellas. Moreover, and this mustn’t be forgotten – in throwing the roundhouse kick we have to expose our own groin. But throwing a good groin kick yourself can keep you maximally covered.

Thus, it logically and ruthlessly targets the eyes, throat, groin, shins and knees, while using footwork and timing to protect their own targets. If the JKD fighter, properly trained, discovers during the encounter that they are indeed the better athlete, so much the easier for them, but they never assume such a thing. One groin strike can incapacitate a fellow, maybe even kill him. Most methods today don’t even bother defending this. It’s like the Death Star floating along with a big red-spot on its exterior, virtually undefended. Certainly, since its so wide-open and hardly defended, one doesn’t have to use the Force to attack it.

So, no, we’re not saying that a JKD student should avoid the vigorous work of training like a fighter. He should. We should strive to be in better shape than sport fighters, in fact. Our founder – that ridiculously ripped fellow in all the movies that inspired us – was. We should be like him and get in the best shape we can be in. But, also, we need to train like this while avoiding becoming a sport fighter. We’ll cover this more as we go and it has everything to do with the right attitude (starting here) and the ready position, footwork and weaponry integration that only JKD offers the modern warrior. This way, in the end, we can hang with the sport fighters in terms of conditioning, timing and emotional toughness, but we are eye-jabbing, groin kicking machines. Lee was a professional; his JKD followers of the current generation should be too. But he was a warrior, not a sport fighter and we must remember that as well or else JKD becomes diluted and unfit for the realities of real world violence – life and death, not victory or defeat; and not unanimous decision or split decision, but safety or morgue.