my opinion on jkd,and people.

[PentjackSilat]

Everything can be used with everything else as it's essence dictates. There are times to use Karate and there are times to use Muay Thai. There are times to use TKD, JKD, Kali, Juko Kai, Aikido, and BJJ. Now to get to the essence of whether to study the whole art, or just take a little, consider this. I am sure everyone will agree with me on this. It is better to have one or two things that you have practiced a thousand times, than to have a thousand things you have practiced one or two times. Practicing with resistance is implied.

[wcskgh]

is there a lack of communication

first off, i love wing chun, and have done it for ten years, i still state, wing chun is not about trapping, or chi sau, i never said wing chun does not have traps, or chi sau, but is not the main points of the art, yes they are tools, the main points, are the principles,and you will hardly ever trap a guy in the street. pont number 2, im not saying that something has to work in ufc to be good. my point is that if you want to fight quickly, do thai and bjj. end of story. i just know of alot of people, and i used to be one of them, that spar in class, and think they are getting real good, and people in the street dont spar like guys in class, they fight much different, i have made wing chun work in street fights, i have made bjj work in them also. but you have to look at where your coming from, i am not looking to be the greatest streetfighter, because i never will, i have friends that fight everyweekend in bars, they are thugs, im not. so if you brag about how many fights your in, your probably a punk, why are you in so many fights? if your so good, why cant your ego allow you to walk away? i was stating things about jkd, and the idea nowadays, that training all these arts is what bruce intended. and my point being, that you can do jkd,and not have a solid foundation in any art,and a little of many, and you cannot absorb whats useful if you dont learn principles and theories of the arts. which takes time. ok, you train kali, as did i, what is the principles behind your kali sytem besides just destructing and defanging? what is your goal? to be a great streetfighter? if so, then get in some pit fights without refs,and see how tough you are. if your goal is to be able to defend yourself on the street when you need to, thats cool. but if your goal is to learn jkd as what bruce intended, our discussion is on theory, and we can discuss further. pencak, you say your arts were tested in wars, and i agree, but i believe your silat can probably work against a thug, but i will bet money, that a descent collegiate wrestler, with no submissions, will pick you up and drop you, 9 out of ten times, unless you wrestled. my point is this, i have enough experience to know that if you say ufc has rules,and bla bla, i agree, but sparring in class has more rules, so how can you know what techniques really work? i have narrowed my arsenal down quite a bit, from experiencing real fights. i realized, after fighting very good fighters, that i need to go back and really learn each arts principles,and finer details,and not just a bunch of techniques that work in sparring, or saved my ass in a few scuffles with joe nobody. you will see what i mean, after fighting some highly skilled people for real. i love suwanda, as you stated, but i also tried my silat against college wrestlers, i tried wing chun on them,etc. i used bjj,and beat them, but when i fought a very good bjj guy, was i able to use kali or wing chun, or silat, not really. see, he practiced shooting, much longer than i practiced defending the takedown, because i was to busy going to kali on monday, wing chun on tuesday,etc etc. i have a ton of material i am above average with, and a few that i have really got down. i went back,and learned how, and why arts work, by studying a few techniques,and principles, to death. you guys who have got in the ring with amatuer boxers,and college wrestlers,all know what i mean

[Jari]

Originally posted by doubleouch
I know I'm using the technique properly because I test it to make sure. If I twist my partners arm and it hurts then I really don't care if my stance is not correct

Sure, I din't say you can't make it work. What I meant was that if you CAN'T make it work, then it is not necessarily the technique that has fault. It may be that you don't understand where, how and in what context the technique was meant to be used. The same technique that you are unable to make work, may work wonders for someone with different base concept of fighting tactics.

Does this mean that you HAVE TO train more in that art? No, of course you can discard the technique if you don't find it useful. But it is unfair to go on telling everyone that technique sucks or moreover: that art sucks. Just because you failed to understand it's techniques doesn't mean they aren't effective in someone else's hands who has the basis required for those techniques.

[thekuntawman]

i like what the first poster said, but i wont say that i dont like jeet kune do, but i dont like the philosophy of how everybody is teaching jeet kune do.

first you have guys who did not train in jkd every day for how many years, they did it in a seminar. maybe a few times a year. then if they are lucky enough to open a school, they take the students money to train him every week, for how many years before you give him a teaching certificate. i call this hipocrasy. you dont devote your art to full time study, but then you tell your students to do it. and your past experience doesnt count here, ex-karate black belters.

second, the student is made to lost respect for karate, kung fu, tkd, and competition fighting. i am teaching you streetfighting, they say, and those guys have rules. now that, is a lie unless you put your boys on the street to fight with strangers. a competition is the best and safest place to test your skill, your courage, and your ability to think and react fast. and thats any kind of tournament, even point fighting. if you think that a karate man who practice kata cant beat you (even with your 5 BJJ seminars under your belt), i know you dont know much about fighting. the student is taught to believe in stories and theory. they worship bruce lee the actor, and when they want to prove this theory is worthy, they will tell you, bruce lee use to say...in the philippines if you call yourself a fighting expert, there is so many people who want to line up and try you out. and all your potential students are out there to see if you can back up your theory. but what about the martial art teachers of today? they are hiding behind garbage like "sparring is not realistic" and telling you who is in there lineage or how this guy is well known and well respected. most of the people teaching arnis and eskrima here in the US is a nobody in the PI (the ones that came from the philippines), just like how many of the SILAT people here in the US and europe are nobody in indonesia. in the US you get your reputation by how many times people saw you in the magazine, and how many people go to your seminars. not by how effective you are. most of you, probably none of you ever got to see bruce lee fight, and you havent seen his students fight. and you probably never get to see your own teacher fight.

i think so many people want to abandon tradition in the martial art, they abandon practical for theory at the same time.

[thekuntawman]

absorb what is useful

absorb what is useful? are you going to let your 10 year old kid tell you what is best for him? can you let a college freshman make his own path to becoming a doctor, and then operate on people?

absorb what is useful is not a new thing. its the highest form of the martial art, and the top level. but a beginner is not qualified to say what is useful for him. if that is the case, put any white belt or green belter in front of me so i can kick his ass, and make him abandon every technique he ever learn. where one guy here said "the technique didnt work in sparring, then discard it and move on". well whoever told that to you is a irresponsible teacher to make a student think he knows better than the teacher (any teacher). if i show you something from my style, and you cant make it work, we are going to keep working on it until you know how to use it, then i will show you how to use it against different kind of fighters, so you dont have to go after every kind of style to learn how to fight him. but if we only have a 2 hours seminar, well, good luck.

so you want to learn to fight a boxer, then study boxing? this is how a child thinks. the boxer will whip you every time because he knows his art better than you do. if you are learning tae kwon do and you want to learn how to fight a boxer, you better hope your teacher knows how to teach you beat a boxer with the things you are best at. but you learn a little of this and a littel of that, its not going to help you against somebody who knows it well. and you see this is the second highest level of the martial arts training, how to apply your fighting technique against other styles of fighting. but for the seminar goer, or the one learning from a seminar goer, you cant get to that level because your teacher probably never made it to that level because of this "absorb what is useful".

when the guy said to learn a whole art until you can make up your mind about it, that kindof makes sense, because how iwll you know if this art can help you when you only know a few things in the art. in the jkd seminar where you have a guy who never boxed teaching "boxing range" he never did a muay thai match, but he is teaching "muay thai", he never fought in a match as a silat man, but he is teaching "silat concepts"--everything is from the peel of the fruit, and nobody, the teacher, or the generations of students, can tell you anything about the juice.

do you want to know why you cant find anybody around with a skill like bruce lee?

[doubleouch]

Once again poeple are missing the point. crosstraining is not about taking a little of this and a little of that. Nor is it learning a little bit of many arts. It is simply learning what works regardless of what art it comes from. It is shifting the focuss from learning arts to learning what works. It is testing what you know in situations that are as realistic as saftey will allow and not relying on the word and experience of others but to discover and experience for yourself. And yes, it is training what works over and over until you can pull it off in your sleep.
As for traditional arts, I would never disparage them. All arts have alot of good stuff. It is the training methods that I dispute!

[wcskgh]

here is a blatant example

i studied with a guy named charles chi, for many years, he was good at a few arts, and he was a descent teacher. now, he never sparred his students, his lineage is questionable, he did a little of many arts,and can teache the drills well. this served me well for a while, then, he started teaching every art,and claiming certification in all. now, he is one of the highest ranked in mande muda, and i knew all the same material, i was asked by suwanda, to get that ranking, and i said no, i will just study under chi. well, now that suwanda died, i wish i had taken the certificate, but anyway, now chi started jkd, and within 8 months, of 1 lesson a month, because he already has a school, he is given apprentice instructor under ric tucci. now he is having students pay him monthly, to learn what he learned in one class a month, and that is the business of jkd. now, to get ranked under dan, he has to bring enough students to seminars, and show that the students are getting good, etc. its a farce, its political bs. and this is jkd everywhere. when guys have ten rankings in different arts, and all their teachers are in different parts of the country, you know they are just doing seminars. if all there teachers are in the same location, i may buy it. go to this website,and look at the bio. www.nyjkd.com kuntaw man, i agree with you

[thekuntawman]

wow, how old is this guy? he has i think three or four 4th degree, and a fifth degree! i know a guy who got his black belt 20 years ago and he is only a 3rd degree. you see when somebody can go the easy way to get rank, the instructor rank of the fighting art means nothing. this is why boxers in every gym thinks he can eat up a black belter. its no longer a proud thing to be a martial art teacher anymore, its just a cheap title you can buy yourself.

but we see this kind of school all over the state i live in, california. back in DC schools like this have to stay out in the suburb.

[wcskgh]

ready to laugh, kuntawman

hes about 42 yrs old. i hate to feel like im ragging on him, its not him, its martial arts in general. see, i know him for 10-12 yrs, and when i met him, he did only kali,thai, and wing chun, now all those other rankings came over the last 10 yrs, without even taking classes, some seminars, etc, and false claims of different things. its sad, and the guy is very good, he doesnt need to lie, but now its too late. he printed his bio, so it will catch up with him. we had a big fallout, because i got sick of defending his lies,and so he changed the locks on the school, i was the assistant instructor, now he tells everyone i had problems,etc. he has no rank in shooto,or bjj, but wears a blackbelt with red stripes, also, no certificate in thai, or kali, or tai chi, but if he keeps up the jkd, that ranking makes all the other ones legitimate, it all falls under the jkd umbrella, hence you have a way out. its kinda crazy. but i guess its business. anyway, i now train with li tailiang, a master from china, and you see major differences in a master from asia, who is legitimate. its a joke here, but most jkd schools are far more exciting than basic karate here, so people love it, but when they meet a real master, they will know what i mean

[Ryu (JKD?)]

Kuntawman, that was a great post.

Well, it's amazing the state a few think JKD is in. In fact, JKD might run the risk of becoming a joke to the martial arts world if it continues to leave the bad taste ni the mouth of its students.
This is why I think guys like Matt Thorton, Paul Vunak, and now Burton Richardson are doing so well, and are important to JKD. I don't know if the problem lies within the mentality of JKD itself OR the mentality of human beings who want to be "important."
Too many people want to open up a school right away, and be referred to as "sifu" or "master" etc. It's just ego in my opinion.

Here's an example. On 6/6/1998 I recieved a phase 1 instructorship from Paul Vunak. I had started attending seminars years before, then began having private lessons under Tom Cruse, then finally made my way to getting some privates with Paul Himself. When I recieved the instructorship I did not jump for joy and set out to open my own school. Instead I became very aware that my skills (while good enough to get the certification) needed work. I wanted to really train my butt off to "honor the certificate" in a way....and not feel that I was cool for recieving it. I began lifting weights on a regular basis, jumping rope, taking some creatine (I've stopped that) I joined Carlos Machado's BJJ school for about a year and rolled week after week after week (until my money supply stopped ) Then I joined a olympic-sponsored judo school and went through the rankings until I recieved a brown belt (one under black) I for some reason did not want to get a black belt... maybe due to all the crap always posted because of "black belts". Instead I began really training hard in other things. I began having challenge matches, etc. I started training with a fighter who had two black belts (sash?) in CMA, and we began to really fight hard in the "NHB" style of fighting. We wore (and still do to this day) only small gloves and boxing headgear, and we just do it. We punch, kick, clinch, shoot, grapple, and ground and pound. We work for submissions and pound each other from mount, side control, guard, etc. We spar with sticks, knives, etc.
It's amazing training to me. Plus I have begun to privately "instruct" some friends who wanted to learn self-defense. Some just wanted to learn, others were afraid of someone they knew who wanted to fight them, etc.
Here's the point. I never once was a "master" or "sifu" to any one of them. I was only a friend who could coach them athletically and spar with them realistically. They loved the training because it was so informal, fun, and I was always down their grappling with them, boxing with them, etc. They were aware I had a certificate, but I never tell people I am certified in anything else. I even tell people that I haven't trained with Paul in a while, and the certificate is probably not valid anymore. I need to train with him again to progress and make sure. (and I plan to)

In order to have any credibility as a martial artist. You've got to be open, honest, have some decent fighting ability (that people can see), and be humble. It's not about masters and sifus to me... that stuff is all unimportant to me. What's important is that people indeed need to study their arts in devotion. The absorb what's useful stuff can become a fallacy if you don't really train. Kuntaw is absolutely correct for saying that. I couldn't agree more.
An "instructor" should grow with his students. He should always be training hard with the best people. Train with as many great fighters as you can. Train with the Brazilians, train with Japanese shooto champs, train with great boxers, MMArstis. Train with them!! Don't fool yourself with bland absurdtions like they have "rules" and therefore can't really fight.... Don't go there to challenge them, go there with a humble spirit to train with them and take in all their great info.

The martial arts world is so filled with ego lately.....

Ryu

[wcskgh]

ryu

good post , i agree. i did however call myself sifu, when i opened a school. i had a few instructorships, and i teach real well, i was never above anyone, and i got on the mat. its frustrating having a school, because you want to make people good, but if its too hard, they quit, people in general want to be fake martial artist. which is not bad, if thats what they want, everyone has to work the next day. but me, im a small guy, and wanted to know what worked,and train hard. i got alot of injuries, worst being a diaphram injury,and a herniated disc from grappling. so its tough. i still have to work. now, how can i do what i love,and dedicate enough time to it? i have to make it my livelihood, so either fight for money, which i am not at that level, or open a school again, now, how do i keep enrollment up, without watering it down, or teaching children? also, i respect you for sparring so much, but i must say, i had an eye opener sparring with my master from china, literally one shot from a hsing yi master, to the body, and i was almost crying, and he didnt hit me hard, it was a wakeup call. a real internal guy is something you should try to find, and spar him, you will love the experience. other than that, again, my hats off to you

[J.K.]

wcskgh

Hey man - everyone studies MA for different reasons. Personally for me its for self-defense, disipline, health, and self confidence. I think I may have been over defensive when responding to your post. But Its as if you doubt that there is any talent in the JunFan.

First I would like to say that if your teacher is poor - no matter what art they are trying to pass on to you will fail. If you don't train hard and practice senerios real to life - then you will be unprepaired - should you have a street encounter.

If you teacher is good and understands the art he is passing on you will be able to learn some practical self - defense. You are arguing that wrestling beats - kali. BJJ and thai are the best arts if you really want to know how fight. You are simplifying to much. One art does not beat another art. You can not say that a wrestler will beat a kali guy 9 out of ten times - unless your experience is that 9 out of 10 times you lost to a wrestler. Do not apply a part to the whole. I would be willing to bet that just about every style has been defeated at some point in time.

Point - if you have an instructor with a valid background - I gaurentee it will be worth training with him or her. Just remeber that their are frauds in every art - just like there are genuie instructors. Bottom line before enrolling into some exspensive program - do your homework - found out the instructors lineage. If he checks out than great - if he is just another product of some mass produced instructor program - run for the hills.

[thekuntawman]

i think what he is trying to say is the jkd is a mass producing instructor program. his teacher does not have fake certificates, they are real, but the seminar program makes teachers to easy to fast, and most of the people who come from it dont have the kind of experience a fighting teacher is suppose to have.

[wcskgh]

jk

my point is not that jkd is useless, i love the idea of the art. what im saying is that, when people say use what works,and it doesnt matter what art it came from, etc, etc. HOW DO YOU KNOW IF ONE TECHNIQUE WORKS,UNLESS YOU HAVE PRACTICED THAT SOLE TECHNIQUE AT LEAST 1000 TIMES AGAINST PEOPLE RESISTING. thats my point. my instructor was legite, also the sifu im with now is legite, but truly a master. i see guys all over, like ric tucci, who i respect, but truth is, he lives in jersey,and goes to california a few times a year,and host seminars,etc. hes great at what he does, but when the resume states full instructor in thai boxing, full instructor in jkd,jun fan, certified in mande muda, certifies in majaphit silat, certified in kali, certified in savate,etc. its ridiculous. he legitimately trained all those arts, and all those guys are affiliated with jkd, and they all live outside tuccis home state, its all politics. again, if you cant make a technique work, i would seriously ask how long you have trained that one technique. and as far as my saying that bjj and thai will be the quickest roads to being a good fighter, i dont see how you can question that? yes, other arts are just as good, but take longer to understand,and develope. with 6 months of learning positioning in grappling, and working daily on shooting in, most other styles(at the quality in the us) dont stand a chance. also put someone doing karate, or kung fu for six months, in the ring with a thai student of six months, and yes, i bet 90 percent time, the thai guy wins. if both had no experience before joining up. and yes, befor training against takedowns, i was thrown on m,y ass against college wrestlers using my wing chun or kali, 90 percent of the time. i know, you can say it is me, that i wasnt good, but i beg to differ. go down to ucla, or a good college,and find a college wrestler your weight, use your kali, or jkd,and see if he can get you down

[PentjackSilat]

I have to agree with him on one point. If you put someone in Karate, and someone in Thai, the Thai Boxer would whoop ass. In the seventies a bunch of Full Contact Karate fighters went to Thailand to fight Thai Boxers. They got beat so bad that Benny "The Jet" backed out of a fight he was scheduled to have with a Thai Boxer. Bill "Superfoot" Wallace backed out too, as did every other Kickboxing great of that time. Oh, and I mean they really got their asses handed to them.