For all you that seem to be so confused...here's the definition of JKD from someone who knows!

This is part of an interview with Matt Thornton of the Straight Blast Gym. His answers are simple, logical and to the point...no overly philosophical and semantic crap from him. He also addresses some of the problems that the JKD community faces. I agree with him, although I do not feel that the majority of good Concepts instructors are as bad as he sees. Crummy instructors and lazy students are the source of the problem rather than the Concepts school of thought itself. A few of his views are subject to a little debate, but he is right on about what JKD is all about. Read and learn, grassshoppers. If you still can't grasp JKD after this, then I pity you.

D: In your travels around the world now you have seen the JKD community at large. What would you say the biggest problems still are within the JKD community?

Short answer. . .Aliveness, period. Every JKD concepts person thinks or says they understand it, but then you watch them perform there drills and its just more DEAD patterns. Paul Sharp posted a funny story online about how a JKD Instructor visited his Gym in Illinois and said he had been working "pummeling", and the clinch with a prominent JKD Concepts Instructor. Paul asked to see, and the guy started demonstrating various switches to go in and out of hubud, chi sau, and the swim. As Paul said, "Some people can f*%k up a wet dream!"
Long answer, the problem goes to the very heart of what these Instructors think JKD is. The JKD Concepts people still evaluate growth through accumulation, as opposed to performance. A buffet method where you pick and choose through arts. It's a faulty teaching model. When Aliveness is taken out, and performance is no longer the only goal, politics, and weasels take there place. My job as an SBG Coach is to extract that weasel. Sometimes it's a delicate operation. (laughs)
As for the original JKD people, they still believe you must first learn the "style" of another fighter before developing your "own" style in fighting. In their case they believe in learning Bruce's way first. Again, this is just faulty logic. Imagine if I had a stable of fighters and I was going to prepare them for combat within a NHB or MMA arena. But, before we put them in the ring and had them box, clinch, wrestle, fight, I had them memorize and drill all of Frank Shamrocks moves. Now, I respect Frank Shamrock as a fighter allot.....but he has a unique style all his own developed through sparring and fighting. Imagine if I said you had to learn to fight like Randy Couture first before you fight. Fight with the underhook, etc. Randy is a friend, but Randy has also been doing wrestling most of his life, and he is a 'world class' Greco wrestler. There is no way I could 'imitate' his style, and it would be foolish of me to try. I could go on and on with examples, but the point is that if you really want to screw up the growth curve of a fighter make him imitate someone else first, before you begin letting him develop his 'way' in the clinch, on his feet, and on the ground. That will mess him up for life! (laughs) If you're a boxing coach, and you really want to mess up a boxers game have him try and imitate Ali, or Tyson, or Leonard. It's silly. To train a fighter you teach him the basics and you MUST then let him find his 'way' in the ring. He can only do that through sparring, NOT drill! You may pick up a move or idea from another fighter here and there, but you cannot imitate another fighter's game and expect to be that good. Remember Joe Fraziers son?. . . he was an excellent stick and move boxer, but his Dad tried to have him fight with 'his' style. A bobbing and weaving, hooking style. Marvis lost it all after that. It's just NOT good coaching!

So if I said Derrick, you need to imitate how a 130lb Chinese man who passed away in 1973 fought, do you think that would be a good idea?

D: No.

Exactly. It just does not make sense. You coach the basics of standing, clinch and ground, and let the athlete develop his own 'way' or style based on his physical, emotional, and mental capabilities. That's JKD. Frank Shamrock IS JKD. Randy IS JKD. A guy may say that he teaches JKD because a piece of paper says that, but if he has not gone through the trials to develop his 'own' fighting game at all ranges then he is not JKD and never will be no matter what anyone says or writes. And if he cannot help another athlete develop his own 'style' then he cant teach JKD. No matter how many drills, moves, notebooks, or certificates he has.

D: What about Jun Fan Gung Fu?

I don't claim to teach that. If someone walked in my Gym and said they wanted to learn to fight the way Bruce Lee did, I would explain to them that I don't teach that. I teach people to fight, I don't teach people to imitate other fighters. If they said they wanted to fight like Couture, or Rickson, or anyone else, I would say the same thing. So I don't claim to teach Couture Gung Fu, Shamrock Gung Fu, Thornton Gung Fu, or Jun Fan Gung Fu. I teach JKD, period.
I have had maybe two people out of the thousands who have walked in my Gym over the years, who were positive they wanted to learn "Bruce Lee's way". And that's cool, I send them elsewhere. Go see Steve Golden across the bridge. Go somewhere else, that's not what we do. Those were people that probably would not have survived in the Gym anyway. But, as I said, that's two out of thousands. Only twice in ten years of teaching. So I think most people simply want to learn how to fight, how to defend themselves, and have fun.

D: Why not just advertise as Mixed Martial Arts, or self defense then?

That's a good question. One reason is I started as a JKD Concepts Instructor, and this started as a JKD Concepts school, and we evolved to what we are today.
The other is I absolutely believe in my heart that what I teach is JKD. What JKD was meant to be. What Bruce Lee talked about is what we are. Even if everyone else in the world disagreed and wanted JKD to be "imitate Bruce Lee Do", or "cross train without performance Do", they would be wrong. The SBG is true JKD. I know this in my heart. I believe the best way to honor his memory is to keep cranking out fighters who have a high level of performance skill, coaching ability, and ethics. And that's what I am doing. I am very proud of all our Instructors and athletes. Their wins mean more to me then my own, and that's how we honor Bruce Lee.

D: So people should just forget about their certificates and simply train to fight then.

Of course. Only performance matters, not certificates. But if you want to teach Bruce Lee's method, then go ahead and accumulate a paper trail. If you want to teach Bruce Lee's ideal of martial arts perfection, JKD, then your certification is your students. If you want to know if someone can fight then try them and find out, be respectful, but understand if someone claims to teach grappling and wont roll with you, then there is a problem with their "certification". If someone wants to know if I can teach others to fight, look in my gym. My Gym and my athletes are my certification. I have a Gym full of champions. The people I coach all go on to become good fighters, athletes, and competitors. That's the one and only "certification" that counts within a performance orientated art. within JKD. What good would any piece of paper be if your athletes sucked! (laughs) it's all very silly.

"Courage is the resistance of fear, the mastery of fear...not the absence of fear."

Hi Dragonzrage,

The interview with Matt Thornton was an interesting one but not at all enlightening.

As I read through the interview it made me come up with a few questions. Maybe you can clarify. Mr Thornton adamantly expresses that the student should never look at other fighters to see how they fight and should not attempt to imitate them. They need to 'develop their own style'. This may be true but only to a certain extent. Everyone is built differently, have different temperaments and have different skill levels. Their attributes and experiences vary widely. Every person's 'way of fighting' will be different from the get go regardless of what particular school of martial arts they are involved with. This is so because of all the different variables that exist between every individual's makeup. The reason people look at other fighters is to see what it is these fighters do that makes them successful.If they can incorporate what they see into their way of fighting whether it be by way of technique, tactic, footwork, speed, heart whatever then it becomes a part of them. To me that is not imitation that is looking at someone who has already been there and learning from them. Bruce Lee himself used to watch many fight tapes of many different fighters and it wasn't only for entertainment purposes. He would look to see how they fought and and try to learn from them. Why did he do this? He was a boxer already from the time he was in High School so he had the basics down. Why didn't he just 'develop his style' from there? As Mr Thornton states in the interview , teach the student the basics and let him develop his own style. There seems to be a contradiction here. Again, everyone already has their own style so to speak because everyone is different. But what do we really mean by 'style'? If it is a unique way of fighting by way of techniques, tactics, theories, concepts, etc. then I believe that no one has the ability to develop 'his own style' in that sense. Simply, because everything that is out there has already been done by someone else. There are no 'original' techniques out there. The martial arts are thousands of years old and quite frankly there is "nothing new under the heavens". Even Bruce Lee stated this fact. Unless man has 8 arms and 8 legs there really is nothing new. So whatever the individual student is doing you can rest assured that someone has already done it. Even everything Mr. Thornton does has been done. It all comes down to how much what you know, what you have been taught has been ingrained into your being . How natural it is for you, the individual. Is it a part of you. Or better yet has it become you. That can only come by constant drilling , practise and experince, regardless of style.

Also, am I correct in assuming based on what I read in the interview that if anyone can really develop their own style that they can say they have JKD? If that is so then doesn't that contradict what you said on raynysc's thread? I believe you said something to the effect that if it didn't come from Mr. Innosanto or anyone under him then you shouldn't be able to use the name JKD or something like that?

In so far as Mr. Thornton's interview explaining what JKD means I think his explanation seems to agree more with the ones expressed by people like Rogue and a few others than the JKDers' themselves. But the dillema remains, if JKD is a concept, a way of thinking then it does not belong to anyone. Anyone can claim to have JKD. If this is not so then the JKD community will have to admit that JKD is a style with it's own 'doctrines' and structure and has therefore become what it's founder preached so much against, a 'Classical Mess'.

NO ROAD IS AS LONG OR FILLED WITH AS MANY OBSTACLES AS THE ONE TRAVELLED BY THE CHINESE BOXER. FEW ATTEMPT TO TAKE IT . THOSE THAT REACH IT'S END ARE EVEN FEWE

[This message was edited by loki on 05-26-01 at 03:33 PM.]

loki,

First off, I don't feel that anything Thornton said contradicts your observation that artists can observe other fighters and take note of the strategies that make them successful. After all, what works, WORKS. Just because one guy thought of it doesn't mean that it can't work for other people as well. Thornton is not saying that you must create your own style completely from scratch, with your own patented fist technique and fighting stance. He's saying that you must learn the functional basics that the science of fighting is based on. From there, you master it to the point where you can apply it with freedom and perhaps even develop your own strategy to apply it. Take for instance Renzo and Royce Gracie. Both of them know the same Bjj techniques, but their way of applying it is very different. Renzo can be very explosive and aggrssive whereas Royce is for the most part patient and uses a lot of finesse. Royce is very cautious in the long range whereas Renzo will sometimes stand toe to toe and exchange shots with his opponents. He employs a good amount of kickboxing as well. Good fighters are all applying the same basic tools. No one is trying to reinvent the wheel. But there is a difference between a guy who simply knows and applies Jun Fan Gung fu his own way and a guy who jumps around the ring like Bruce Lee and screams like a chicken whenever he throws a kick. But anyway, I'm not agreeing with all of Thornton's ideas. As i said in the previous post, some of his ideas are subject to debate. But it is his way of explaining JKD that I totally agree with.

Also, nothing I said or quoted here contradicts anything I said before. If you weren't so selectively quoting me, you might've also quoted where I said in the last thread that ANYONE can practice or fight in the JKD MINDSET. As you said, there is nothing new under the sun. Much of Bruce Lee's philosophy is not unique or exclusive. A lot of what he said is universally true, IMO. You cannot patent such truths to one school of thought or one man anymore than you can patent punching and kicking. Bruce simply called his expression of the truth Jeet Kune Do. Many fighters in the past and present have come to the same conclusions and held a similar philosophy without ever hearing the term JKD. In his interview, Thornton used Shamrock and Couture as examples of certain principles of JKD. He never called them "JKD practitioners". I still stand by my view that not just anyone should call what they do Jeet Kune Do. If you reached the same destination and understood the same general principles as JKD without ever really studying Bruce Lee's ideas and being from the family that stemmed from his school of thought, then why should you call it JKD??? Wouldn't you be giving Bruce a little too much credit?? :p
When bruce was alive did he just go around telling every good fighter he came across that they are JKD masters? NO!! Ted Wong and Dan Inosanto were the only two people he certified to teach under his school of thought. And that is what JKD is...a school of thought (NOT a style). I really can't begin to understand this false logic a lot of people are presenting here that if something has a set of doctrines and structure then it has to be a STYLE. Many great religions have doctrine and structure...are you saying that this makes them all martial arts styles? They are obviously not styles, they are schools of thought. A specific martial arts style must have a universally common curriculum of techniques, training regiment, etc. Gracie Jiu Jitsu is a style. Wing Chun is a style. If there is one thing everyone here will agree on it is that if you go to a bunch of different JKD schools, chances are you are going to get different methods of training that often don't even resemble one another. So is JKD a style? No. I hope that this ends the dilemma you spoke of. To further illustrate my point on this subject, I can think of a specific school of martial arts fighting that may bear a few similarities to JKD...Ruas Vale Tudo. It is easy to understand Marco Ruas' philosophy of freestyle fighting and using whatever works. And his method isn't exactly a specific style. Its main concern is using what works for each individual fighter and it may draw upon certain methods more than others. Now, understanding this, do you think it gives you the right to use whatever works for you, become a fighter and then say that you represent Ruas Vale Tudo? Of course not. You'd have no right to do that unless you were approved under the guidance and training of Ruas' camp. Why not just call yourself a freestyle fighter, or even make your own camp? This is the very same reason why i do not think anyone should be able to just browse through Bruce Lee's Book O' Quotes, take one or two JKD classes, then go on to get a black belt in whatever art they want and then call themselves JKD instructors. To me it seems like such a simple stupid fact. But when you point it out to these people then they get so pouty and defensive and start talking about "you guys don't even know what JKD is!", "why should I have to be certified by an actual JKD instructor before I can teach 'MY OWN JKD'?", etc etc. Its pathetic in my opinion.

"Courage is the resistance of fear, the mastery of fear...not the absence of fear."

Dragonzrage,

I respect your opinions and there is nothing I'm going to say that is going to change them, nor am I in any way trying to do that. I am not trying to say that I want to call what I do JKD so please do not think that. To tell you the truth JKD does nothing for me. I am a practitioner of the 'mantis school of thought' and that is what works for me. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that every martial art should be striving for this naturalness in combat that JKD professes to teach. I know mine does. Every system has it's concepts, theories and principles and it is these elements within all the systems which allows them to become practical for the individual. JKD is no different from all the myriad of systems that are out there. It is up to the individual to make his system , style or "school of thought work for him.

JKD is a style no matter how you cut it. That's how I feel about it.

Peace

NO ROAD IS AS LONG OR FILLED WITH AS MANY OBSTACLES AS THE ONE TRAVELLED BY THE CHINESE BOXER. FEW ATTEMPT TO TAKE IT . THOSE THAT REACH IT'S END ARE EVEN FEWER.

Is this the definition of JKD?
You coach the basics of standing, clinch and ground, and let the athlete develop his own 'way' or style based on his physical, emotional, and mental capabilities. That's JKD. Frank Shamrock IS JKD. Randy IS JKD.

Like Loki, I agree with much he says but not all. He also seems to as Loki pointed out, to fall into my camp of thinking. But is Thorntons definition the same as Goldens or Vunaks or Inosanto?

Personally I think because Lee died early what everyone was left with were incomplete ideas, a work in progress. There isn't anyone around that can argue what exactly JKD is because it's never been fully defined and refined by it's founder. So in a way one persons definition could be as valid as anybody elses. It also gets muddy when you try to include JKDO, JKDC and now JKD Unlimited, ( I'll leave off Combat JKD ) all in the same definition.

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.
Louis L'Amour

"I am a practitioner of the 'mantis school of thought' and that is what works for me. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that every martial art should be striving for this naturalness in combat that JKD professes to teach."

I couldn't agree with you more! That should be the ultimate goal, and the fact is that you do not need to call whatever it is you do JKD just to reach that goal. JKD is just one way of trying to reach that destination. Many roads lead to Rome. I respect your opinion as you do mine, even if we won't see eye to eye regarding what "style" means. Other than that, I don't think that there is anything we really disagree on anyway.

The sad truth is that the more structure and crystallization is enforced upon something, the more people will respect its boundaries. JKD has been presented as an idea with so much freedom and so much interpretation that it has left itself vulnerable to such a high degree of misconception and disorder. Sadly, many people are now slicing it and dicing it to the point of unrecognizable obscurity. If we all just suddenly decided that anyone who used their own way is JKD, then where would that leave JKD? It would be utterly meaningless. It would be three useless Cantonese syllables. Despite what some people are saying nowadays, it is obvious that this is not how Bruce intended it to be in his lifetime, or else he would not have trained people in JKD, had certification for JKD and written so many ideals and guidelines for JKD. With Bruce gone, guys like Dan Inosanto and Ted Wong are responsible for JKD, and they do not want to see the name of JKD *******ized anymore than Bruce did. Although Bruce wanted to avoid stylization as much as possible, the bottom line is that JKD MUST be structured and organized to some extent so that its integrity will survive. That's just the way I see it.

"Courage is the resistance of fear, the mastery of fear...not the absence of fear."

Agreed DR. That's the parodox of JKD.

Self-knowlege is the basis of JKD because it is effective, not only for the individuals martial art, but also for his life as a human being. Bruce Lee: TOJKD

Too many people mistake Lees truncated journey to be the same as that journey's destination.

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.
Louis L'Amour