Very interesting thoughts, and from my experience I fully agree.
JKD (I know you weren’t talking about JKD per say, but just to offer my example) has always credited itself with the ability to flow through the ranges. I spent a lot of time, certainly in my early years, focussing on the flow and blend from weapons to kickboxing to boxing to trapping to grappling. It feels great to flow like that and it is a very effective way to train a vast amount of material efficiently.
I stopped one day and thought, hang on, am I actually any good at any of this? If I walked into a Boxing gym tomorrow would I get handed my arse, or a Thai gym, or a BJJ gym etc. Now I know people say that’s not the point, we aren’t trying to be Boxers or Thai Boxers, we just need to know their game so we can flow and counter. But I just somehow didn’t buy that. If you are only as strong as your weakest individual link, then surely my game wasn’t strong at all. It looked good, and it felt good, but was it all an illusion built from training with our guys, our way, all playing along?
About 8 years ago I realised that my grappling sucked. I had a base in BJJ and could handle a bit of ground in the overall chain, but as am individual link it was very weak. I spent 2 to 3 years making grappling my sole personal focus, training with people like Erik Paulson and some good BJJ and Ne waza guys. Its still not great, I’m just not really a grappler, but when I came back to the blend I was much stronger for it. About 5 years ago I went back to the beginning with my Thai and absorbed myself in that art again, at one point spending a year on nothing else but Thai. My overall game benefited enormously. At the start of last year I walked into a Boxing gym, started again from scratch, and realised that I knew nothing about Boxing. That’s the learning curve I am in right now, and I’m sure will be for some years.
I guess to support your experiences of breaking down each element Excessive my point is this: I still love to blend and mix and flow through the arts, the point is that I’m trying to build a chain made of strong links, steel as opposed to paper. I realise now that you need to be very careful in JKD, or any similar concept that quickly encourages a wide mix, blend and flow. It may look great, it may feel great, and may offer the illusion of being very complete. If you aren’t careful it can be just that - an illusion. I think lots of people hide behind their “street effectiveness” as a reason why they don’t need to enter each world in depth, it’s the old line of “we know their game and we counter it”. From looking at the good Grapplers, Thai Boxers and Boxers I have met – I think my “blend” of old would have serious problems getting anywhere near these guys. The simple reason being, no matter how good it all may look, they have been through the war - and I have just been playing Army.
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