ARRRGHH! please don't be offended, because most of this doesn't apply to you SBGI guys and others on this forum, it's mostly all the other JKD b.s. i've been seeing or reading on other forums lately. you've probably said it before yourselves.
ARRRGHHH! jkd guys have the WORST fundamentals i've seen in modern martial arts. the ones that claim to have the best fundamentals have the worst, because they're fundamentally f*cked up about what the real fundamentals of fighting are.
all the $hit they spend so much time discussing/obsessing about is intuitively obvious to anyones that rolls/wrestles/spars enough, and only confuses people that haven't rolled/wrestled/sparred enough.
i've actually been getting back to a lot of my old JKD stuff, but it was almost impossible to learn in the JKD environment. these guys just don't understand what makes fighters fight good.
yeah, they were flexible enough to figure out that BJJ was good in the 80s, before anyone else did. but they so profoundly misunderstood the principles that made BJJ work, that they were never able to do anything with that GIANT headstart.
training BJJ for twice as long doesn't matter if your training methodology is so flawed you learn at 1/10 the pace.
I understand what you are saying and this is an ongoing debate at the
gym. I think some of the problem lies in the fact that many of our JKD
guys WANT to learn everything they can. And in doing so there are
fundamentals that are neglected. If you work a specific range there is
much more time to perfect a certain aspect of your game.
The problem lies in the fact that many of the schools rely upon static equipment training and 2/3 step sparring.
Because of this, you develop really bad habits in functional areas plus you waste a lot of time with material that is non-functional.
Also, the sheer volume of arts that is pure insanity. trying to cross train 8 arts at the same time would be tough for someone with experience. Someone with less than two years of experience who is loaded with bad habits trying to cross train that many arts is downright absurd.
"Also, the sheer volume of arts that is pure insanity. trying to cross train 8 arts at the same time would be tough for someone with experience. Someone with less than two years of experience who is loaded with bad habits trying to cross train that many arts is downright absurd."
I've come to the conclusion that the majority of people in the world are like this.
It's very hard for them to assimilate things at the pace required (learning savate, then applying that timing in a wing chun structure, then flowing immediately to a greco/FMA structure, using beats, etc.). It's very challenging for most.
This is why I've changed most of my curriculum around: I only had 3 students who were able to get what I was doing, and they are very highly skilled.
I think that there are, however, very special teachers with dedicated students who CAN do this (this happened at our old school). There are these few that can pull it off...but despite my instructor's brilliant teaching abilities, there were only a handful of us who were dedicated enough to become savateurs, BJJ competitors, weapons competitors, AND be functional in "streetfighting" under Armando's guidelines. Again, I emphasize that VERY few were able to pull this off.
But the few that were able to do this were very exceptional.
the thing that pisses me off the most is that now that i'm finally starting to figure out how to fight, i'm actually rediscovering a lot of my old JKD stuff and finding it technically sound and actually pretty dman useful. if it were worthless crap i had wasted my time on i wouldn't be so pissed off, but it was actually really useful stuff they failed to teach properly.
how come they didn't just tell us thats were they trying to do! :) in retrospect, that was exactly the problem, they spent way too much time telling people and talking about stuff you can only learn by doing. this just created a lot of confusion and "paralysis by analysis".
to put things in perspective, a good practical modern example of an "energy and sensitivity" drill is the wrestling pummeling drill. except they don't infuse it with all kinds of mystical bullshit and forget what it's for. they use it to develop certain qualities, they understand this, and feel free to change the drill around to work different parts of their game.
if you de-mystified a lot of the old JKD training, it becomes similarly useful.
some of the old JKD guys butchered some very valid basic training concepts so badly, you can't even use the words anymore without people rolling their eyes and thinking you're some kind of "JKD Jedi".
"attribute" was the concept they butchered the worst. obviously a useful and valid concept, but they misunderstood it so badly you're afraid to even use the word anymore.
"this exercise to develop this attribute" "that exercise to develop that attribute". i've got a suggestion - to develop most of the qualities needed to roll properly, why don't you just roll a lot and drill the moves you actually use when you roll. to develop the attributes needed to fight, why don't you glove up and fight a lot, and drill the stuff you need to use when you fight? often, the best "exercise" to develop the attributes for rolling, wrestling and fighting is...rolling, wrestling and fighting. it's so basic, people keep forgetting it. "can't see the forest through the trees"
I think much of the very real problem you are discussing can be boiled down to the following:
The guys teaching the "concepts" often learned them at seminars but otherwise had very limited experiences in boxing, wrestling, kickboxing, BJJ, etc. Rather, they ran (semi)traditional MA schools, had done very little real sparring/rolling, and simply saw JKD as a way to increase both their business and their own sense of superiority/invincibility. Not a good combination.
The problem I the way I see it is with JKD in general.
JKD has mess alot of things up with its over theorizing. JKD does one of two things:
1) overly questions things and ends up throwing out the bathtube along with the water or comes up with strange, non-practical ideas/concepts
2) reinvents the damn wheel.
For some reason some people have problems with the concept/principles that are already in existence and have been used for decades.
JKD exponents are good at seeing things out of context and thus wrongly criticizing certain concepts/principles and then later finding the context and acting like they discover something new.
All you have to do is consider how skill is developed other physcial activities and then transfer those principles to martial arts. No big thing.
Vu once told me that if he had a son he wouldn't put him in JKD to know about fighting. He said it was too complicated! LOL! He would put him in boxing for about a year, muay thai to round out the kicking, and bjj for about 2-3 years. The thing is that I happen to agree with to a degree, JKD is simply too complicated to get any real street value out of it within a short amount of time.
wouldn't it be better to have a framework that is effective at every level, and still leaves unlimited room to grow (MANY mma programs). just becuase Vu hasn't figured out how to do that doesn't mean i haven't seen a bunch of modern guys now that do.
wasn't that the original JKD concept anyway?
i once read this awesome book, called "The Tao of Jeet Kune Do". it's really cool and i wish the old JKD guys had an oppourtunity to read it. :)
it would have helped them a lot, it has important concepts like "take what is useful, abandon what is useless". maybe they had a bad print, and the second part wasn't in there.
It would be even better if those who have read the "Tao of Jeet Kune Do" would realize over 90% of what Bruce Lee wrote in that book is taken straight from other sources (many of it word for word). This FACT is confirmed in the introduction/preface of the book.
It would also be even better if those same individual who love Bruce Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do would understand that what they are getting from the book is Bruce's "interpretation" of the information he read and copied. So whatever personal ideas, principle, point of views each person is deriving from the book is nothing more than an interpretation based or derived from an interpretation.
So there is no original thought on the matter but rather a continual watering down of interpretative thought.
It would be better if all those who have read Bruce's book would take the initiative and seek and read, at least some of the books that Bruce used to base his principles, ideas, etc, for themselves and DERIVE their own ideas, principles, etc from those sources instead of basing it all on Bruce's interpretations!
mg, i see we're you're coming from, but if you looked at the guys Bruce copied, they were themselves inspired by others with similar ideas. as were these others, ad infinitum. if you really look at the sum total of human thought, EVERY idea is inspired by the previous great thinkers. the only reason people believe any thinker is so incredible is because he packs these ideas together better, and has a little more innovation the the other thinkers of his era/genre.
10% original thought is actually HUGE by historical standards, and a sign of a world class innovator.
how much did Helio have to tweek Kano's concepts to come up with a completely different art? not much -some of Helio's contemporaries trained with him for years and never realized they weren't doing judo. anymore.
You said: "how much did Helio have to tweek Kano's concepts to come up with a completely different art? not much -some of Helio's contemporaries trained with him for years and never realized they weren't doing judo. anymore."
I'm sorry, no offense to Helio but most of what he says is suspect. I think alot of it is self-promotion. I mean the man claims when he was 16 he learned Bjj simply from watching his brother teach classes. He claims his brother NEVER gave him a lesson. He also implies none of his brothers (keep in mind he was the youngest) made any innovations to the Gjj/Bjj until he did his thing. All of his brothers had been practicing the art for years before he learned it. Heck Carlos, his oldest brother by 12 years, had been practicing it for at least as long as their age difference. You mean to tell me in all that time Carlos never made any innovations? PLEASE! Plus we'll never know how different and innovative Helio's jiujitsu is from those who came before him...namely his brothers, especially Carlos, and Maeda. We can only assume.
You also said: "10% original thought is actually HUGE by historical standards, and a sign of a world class innovator."
How can you tell what Bruce said or advocated is truly original or nothing more than interpretation and mindful application of someone elses original thoughts when he didn't reference any of his work and ideas? He never told anyone where his ideas came from or who inspired them.
I've read some of the works the Bruce read and copied in his book the "Tao of Jeet Kune Do". All Bruce did in was change a few words around (in some cases he didn't change anywords) and then apply the concept or principle to situation or circumstance in which the principle or concept logical fit anyway. There was nothing "original" or any "innovative" about it.
In fact others could have easily done the same thing if they were motivated enough and had access to the same material. In a way Bruce did the hardwork for those who didn't (and don't) have the same intiative and drive.
In my view Bruce was good at "applying" someone elses original thought but he himself wasn't a good source of original thought.
great answer mg! counterpoint - finding a better way to "apply" someone elses original thought (especially synthesizing something reasonably coherent from the best innovative thinkers in your field) is exactly what innovation IS.
people are getting confused by attempting to apply modern standards of "intellectual property" and "plagiarism" to the age old search for truth and knowledge. the current concepts of both "intellectual property" and "plagiarism" are nothing but modern constructs anyway. this is actually a large topic of debate in academia right now.
i've read enough to understand the idea myself, but i'm not sure if i write well enough to explain it well (it's not my "original concept"). if i'm not doing a good job of it, you might have to find a better writer for a better understanding of it.
new book just published on the subject and a first rate lecturer getting a fair amount airtime on BookTv on Cspan.
basicly, the idea is that since EVERY human idea is a synthesis of previous human ideas, you get to the truth faster if you publish the very best ideas/music/etc, without feeling the need to reshuffle them just to create essentially a "fiction" that you thought of it all independently. if that writer "said it best"...well, the thing that "best" helps the student understand is what you use.
this applies to many fields of intellectual property, like art and music. the whole art form of "sampling" - creating a beautiful new "collage" of music by sampling different things by different artists - has been crippled by some of these concepts. only studios with gigantic budgets can afford to use the best elements of the music now available.
before people get in a tizzy about this, ALL classical music has been produced by this method, and it only enhanced the quality of the music.
finding out that your favorite thinker/writer developed his ideas from the milieu of ideas already out there may be the intellectual equivalent of discovering "there is no Santa Claus!". but the reality is "we're all standing on the shoulders of giants". and if you're not, you're just stunting your growth.