rebellion or the dark side.

[Ghost]

In comparison to the TMA are the newer and/or sports systems such JKD, BJJ, MT, Boxing all the ones considered non-traditional, the rebel alliance or are they the dark side.

I cant help wanting them to be the dark side and i can then post up to Grixti to come join on us on the dark side. which would be cool.
But then these systems are really a bit rebellious in nature compared to TMA. so in a way they are the rebel alliance. So which are they?

And if they are the rebel alliance how do you say something cool about it.

[Tant01]

Oxygen for your pea brain?

In comparison to the TMA are the newer and/or sports systems such JKD, BJJ, MT, Boxing all the ones considered non-traditional, the rebel alliance or are they the dark side.

I cant help wanting them to be the dark side and i can then post up to Grixti to come join on us on the dark side. which would be cool.
But then these systems are really a bit rebellious in nature compared to TMA. so in a way they are the rebel alliance. So which are they?

And if they are the rebel alliance how do you say something cool about it.

LOL When did JKD become a "sport system"?

Been watching a little too much fantasy fiction?

Having a hard time separating reality from your little delusion?

Take a vacation, go get some fresh air. Eat some good organic fruit.

If you're still having trouble perhaps professional help is in order?

[Ghost]

lol i said NEWER AND/OR SPORTS SYSTEMS meaning newer systems such as JKD or sports systems such as MT.hence the and/or, the comma separates the list items.

and answer the question.

[Tant01]

Pardon my poor grasp of the lexicon. I've been living in the woods most of my life. I'm much too ignorant to offer a reasonable reply to such a topic.

Star Wars, right?

Eh, never really sat through a whole episode of that crap.

I'd rather practice Osoto Gari on small trees....

[Ghost]

Pardon my poor grasp of the lexicon. I've been living in the woods most of my life. I'm much too ignorant to offer a reasonable reply to such a topic.

Star Wars, right?

Eh, never really sat through a whole episode of that crap.

I'd rather practice Osoto Gari on small trees....

lol you get internet out in the woods now?

[Guest]

To be honest, from what I have seen, the vast majority of progressive JKD instructors moved their emphasis towards MMA a long time ago. Certainly the guys I know in the UK from my generation predominently teach a mix of Thai, Boxing, BJJ and/or CSW. They have moved with the times and are in fact Mixed Martial Artists.

Those who haven't, and still teach the curriculum of Jun Fan, Kali and Silat, have by definition become TMA Instructors.

One isn't right and one isn't wrong, just an observation.

What I will say is, very very few of them teach their own expression of these arts. Very few people actually teach Jeet Kune Do.

[Tant01]

Yahoo

lol you get internet out in the woods now?

Behind the Redwood curtain we are isolated but not completely primitive...

I recently switched from dial up to real high speed!

Now, if I could only learn to type...

[Ghost]

Behind the Redwood curtain we are isolated but not completely primitive...

I recently switched from dial up to real high speed!

Now, if I could only learn to type...

you only just got broadband? EEK!

I always wanted to live in the Evergreen forest.

[Tant01]

The art of defeating artists!

To be honest, from what I have seen, the vast majority of progressive JKD instructors moved their emphasis towards MMA a long time ago. Certainly the guys I know in the UK from my generation predominently teach a mix of Thai, Boxing, BJJ and/or CSW. They have moved with the times and are in fact Mixed Martial Artists.

Those who haven't, and still teach the curriculum of Jun Fan, Kali and Silat, have by definition become TMA Instructors.

One isn't right and one isn't wrong, just an observation.

What I will say is, very very few of them teach their own expression of these arts. Very few people actually teach Jeet Kune Do.

JKD is clearly about beating the snot out of people. Not sport.

It's self defense in a nutshell and the art of defeating other artists.

Good stuff. Thanks MW.

[Guest]

With respect, that wasn't my point at all Tant. Jeet Kune Do is an individual's personal expression of the martial arts, and to that I attribute no label.

If you train in PFS, Paul Vunak's expression of JKD, then your assessment is fair. However if you train with Rick Faye, that is the last thing on the agenda, his expression is one of self development. Damon Caro or Chad Stehelski's expression of JKD is visual and theatrical. etc etc.

This is kind of my point. The people who I look at and believe are really expressing themselves as indivduals, people who have made the arts their own and teach their own concepts and philosophies, they are teaching JKD. The thousands of other people who just teach curriculum material verbatim, with no personal identity - thats not JKD, that is TMA.

And JKD can very much express a sports approach. Just look at the lesson programs for the Chinatown School 1967 to 1972. The place was pretty much ran as a Boxing gym - skipping, padwork, bagwork, glove drills, conditioning and lots of sparring. Move on since then, Erik Paulson's CSW is a great example. I can't think of many other people that I would attribute the words Jeet Kune Do to more than Erik.

[Ghost]

With respect, that wasn't my point at all Tant. Jeet Kune Do is an individual's personal expression of the martial arts, and to that I attribute no label.

If you train in PFS, Paul Vunak's expression of JKD, then your assessment is fair. However if you train with Rick Faye, that is the last thing on the agenda, his expression is one of self development. Damon Caro or Chad Stehelski's expression of JKD is visual and theatrical. etc etc.

This is kind of my point. The people who I look at and believe are really expressing themselves as indivduals, people who have made the arts their own and teach their own concepts and philosophies, they are teaching JKD. The thousands of other people who just teach curriculum material verbatim, with no personal identity - thats not JKD, that is TMA.

And JKD can very much express a sports approach. Just look at the lesson programs for the Chinatown School 1967 to 1972. The place was pretty much ran as a Boxing gym - skipping, padwork, bagwork, glove drills, conditioning and lots of sparring. Move on since then, Erik Paulson's CSW is a great example. I can't think of many other people that I would attribute the words Jeet Kune Do to more than Erik.

Yeah this is a good point.
Even in thai boxing different gyms have different styles, i can recognise fighters from certain gyms by the way they fight and thats within a limited ring sport.
I think if you arent stamping your own personality on what you do, your own interpretation then you are just copying and pasting entirely. In time a student will develop their own way, but initially you can attribute their whole style to one teacher. As in the MT example, you can see where that student has come from.
Later as they study under others, you attribute certain ways of approaching a situation to certain instructors and say, ah did you get that from Dan?
Or in thai boxing we can say ah thats a Vos Gym technique that one.

In my own journey in Thai Boxing i have become "hard to place" in terms of my origin in thai boxing, ive picked certain styles that are fairly unique to certain gyms. So you could probably watch me and perhaps recognise that i have trained at a couple of places because of certain things i do. But my way in Thai Boxing is now unique. I no longer represent a true interpretation of my original (and still me home) gym.
So when i teach ill be teaching my style of Thai Boxing, the style i developed by travelling through thailand and training with different people in the UK. My approach is unique, as are other peoples that have gone out to find more.

If we dont do this then we, not wanting to open a can of worms, do what many TMA have been left with, churning out highly predictable, characterless martial artists.


I dont think its just for JKD, its the way martial arts are meant to be full stop. JKD allows for a greater expression because it is held by no rules in its purest form, as in its purest form it is a philosophy, it holds no technique or way at all. All you have is to expand on what others have done before you and find your own blend.

In time you have to take what you have learnt from your instructors add your own and you have something evolved, something new. And that is JKD.

[Guest]

All good points Ghost.

What I feel equally important, is to move away from the name JKD. Jeet Kune Do was Bruce Lee's personal expression of the martial arts, and although we can of course learn a great deal from it's teachings, it will never become our JKD. I see websites with people saying "I teach Bruce Lee's JKD". How the hell do you do that? Thats like saying I play Eric Clapton's guitar on his albums. What you mean is you teach your interpretation of JKD (or more often than not you don't)

I remember when Guro Dan first gave me my certification in Jun Fan, he said "don't call what you do Jeet Kune Do, have your own label, your own expression, your own identity". I do, or at least I try to, and I don't use the name JKD anymore. Its something people cling onto for sentimenal reasons, financial gain, or typically fame by association.

Perhaps the moment of greatest clarity in all of this for me was when the Linda Lee Estate took Guro to court and prevented him from using the name, symbol or trademark of Jeet Kune Do. I just shrugged my shoulders and thought "yeah, so, what difference does it make?" The answer is zero.

[Ghost]

All good points Ghost.

What I feel equally important, is to move away from the name JKD. Jeet Kune Do was Bruce Lee's personal expression of the martial arts, and although we can of course learn a great deal from it's teachings, it will never become our JKD. I see websites with people saying "I teach Bruce Lee's JKD". How the hell do you do that? Thats like saying I play Eric Clapton's guitar on his albums. What you mean is you teach your interpretation of JKD (or more often than not you don't)

I remember when Guro Dan first gave me my certification in Jun Fan, he said "don't call what you do Jeet Kune Do, have your own label, your own expression, your own identity". I do, or at least I try to, and I don't use the name JKD anymore. Its something people cling onto for sentimenal reasons, financial gain, or typically fame by association.

Perhaps the moment of greatest clarity in all of this for me was when the Linda Lee Estate took Guro to court and prevented him from using the name, symbol or trademark of Jeet Kune Do. I just shrugged my shoulders and thought "yeah, so, what difference does it make?" The answer is zero.

Yeah i completely get you.

I dont know if you remember ages ago, i think when you first joined you posted a comment on a post i made where you said you understand that i only saw JKD as a philosophy.
I might be able to find it but maybe you remember it?

To me JKD has always been just that, a philosophy. Taking your logic, which i completely agree with. The manifestation of this philosophy for bruce lee will also be called Jeet Kune Do.
In my opinion JKD, for everyone else, can only exist in its philisophical sense.
The manifestation of that philosophy as you rightly point out is unique and like everything that is unique, it should have a unique name, so it identifiable.

For me i still refer to the underlying philosophy of JKD as JKD to give it credit to Bruce Lee. I completely agree with the rest of what you said about naming your system individually. That makes perfect sense to me.

So to come back to that post i made ages ago. This is why i felt JKD was only a philosophy.

I like discussions like these, i know i often come across as though i dont like bruce lee. Thats really not the case at all. I just find that 99% of people switch off mentally once his name is mentioned and go into this autopilot fan zone mentality where everything is perfect and magical. So i say things i dont really mean to try and wake them up.
What i should really do is make a sensible post but i often dont feel they are worth it. Thats probably not very nice of me.

[Guest]

We have an understanding, probably because we speak offline, and I know who you are from the guys at The Academy. I never take anything you say the wrong way.

I know you understand JKD, probably better than a lot of people I know in JKD, but our thoughts on JKD are never going to be popular on a JKD forum. (Thats a lot of JKD in one sentence!) I also do appreciate that you become very frustrated with the Bruce Lee hero worship. I haven't even been on this forum for a year (actively), and I read the same old crap over and over again and want to jump in and tell people to get a clue. But I realise that they are coming on here and just trying to contribute, just expressing themselves, and its not my place to tell them what to do.

Mike B and I speak a lot. One of the things I have said to Mike is that this forum can be quite hard to break into, because new people tend to be given quite a hard time from the regulars. Those that can hack it, like say Liberty who has taken his fair share on the chin and rolled with it, stick around and become good contributors. But many don't because they are met with unnecessary hostility. Thats the only thing I have a problem with.

So (where am I going with this) I actually like these discussion too, and I just take you for who you are. You understand (what I believe is) JKD very well, so you should contribute more to those discussions.

And you also need to let me know when you are back in London, and when you start teaching Thai, cos I want a piece of that!

[Ghost]

making a thread going to PM you something michael