The
VITAL Tour -- Jeet Kune Do
Concepts
Bruce Lee is undeniably the
most influential and iconic martial artist there ever was.
He was the Albert Einstein of martial arts. His skills were
astonishing, and his wise insights were mind widening. Many
decades later, many books are sold by his name. His movies
are classics that many people love.
So the martial arts “style” (conceptually, this gets a bit
muddy, but just bare with us here a moment) he created
should be the best, since he was the best, right? That’s
the line of thinking many have adopted. And even though
Bruce Lee specifically wanted Jeet Kune Do to never be
commercialized into a formal style, it has pretty much done
just that in an indirect way.
Now let’s come back to that muddy concept of Bruce Lee’s
Jeet Kune Do “style”. As he describes, Jeet Kune Do is the
style with no style. In other words, it is solely what
works best for you, and maybe only you. It is an outgrowth
of your own natural abilities as a practitioner. It is NOT
a dogmatic definition of techniques and moves that everyone
must learn. Everyone is free to explore for themselves what
is good, bad, works, doesn’t work for them.
That is a pretty revolutionary concept, especially for the
time it was conceived in (that being the 1960’s and 70’s).
While it’s a really neat step in the right direction for
martial arts training / concepts, it does only a little bit
for the actual violence protection issues we have been
talking about. The concept of finding what works for you is
very helpful and applicable for self-defense training. We
at VITAL Self-Defense employ that concept all the time.
However, as you look at Jeet Kune Do today, it has evolved
into a semi-commercialized organic-like style that is
heavily tactics / strategy focused and relies very much so
on the individual’s skill level. If you are an athletic
“feel-it-out” type (artistic) person, Jeet Kune Do may be a
good hobby and/or interest for you. However, don’t think
that just because Bruce Lee awesome, that his method will
make you invulnerable to all attacks.
Because Bruce Lee specifically banned Jeet Kune Do from
becoming an official commercialized martial arts style,
programs that teach it get around this obstacle by calling
it “Jeet Kune Do Concepts”. By attaching the concepts word
at the end, they have convinced themselves that they are
holding their founders wishes intact. We at VITAL aren’t so
sure about that.
SIDE NOTE: All of the 10 flaws with martial arts used for
self-defense purposes also apply to Brazilian Ju-Jitsu:
#1. Narrow vision of violence with limited response options
#2. A foundation built on fighting with techniques
(although it emphasizes principals / strategies rather than
set physical movements)
#3. Lack of psychological and physiological considerations
#4. Omission of preventative and pre-contact
counter-measures
#5. Exclusion of medical, legal, and emotional aftermath
issues
#6. Male-centric with size, speed, strength, and macho
aggression prevalent
#7. Ideal training / fighting conditions make a convincing
illusion
#8. Ineffective and antithetical educational methodology
#9. Techniques are overly fancy / complex and rarely
effective (It is somewhat of a step forward to have
movements flow naturally from within, but much of what is
covered is a ballet dance in front of a violence tidal
wave)
#10. Absence of criminological and violence mindset
information