JKD is quite limited, isn't it?

[David]

Take what is useful and discard what is not.

It sounds like a recipe for success: take what you like from any style and use it for your arsenal.

However, it occurs to me that JKD is practised and taught as an external art and so probably lacks the capability to take on-board techniques or strengths originating in high kung fu systems.

Am I right in thinking you have no iron palm, iron shirt, ging, fa-jing, chi, ki, dantien, sink, float, bone marrow regeneration, bone flexibility, ... etc?

Perhaps you have the 1-inch punch taught as an elementary skill in honour of Bruce Lee? Or is it not useful?

I seem to be in a trolly mood this afternoon.
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_razz.gif[/img] . I'll be going back under my bridge now.

The powers of Kung Fu never fail!
-- Hong Kong Phooey

I think you have fallen victom to many myths that
surround JKD. JKD is Street fighting art that is also called scientific street fighting So it may lack all that mystical stuff but it can wipe someone out.

Promoting Peace through JKD

[David]

*shrugs*

Your loss.

"Consider a spherical cloud" as the scientist in us is wont to say.

[origenx]

David - I agree, Bruce Lee (at least publicly or consciously) didn't seem to put much stock in the esoteric internal sides of the martial arts. Just a guess, but if that was really his attitude, I suspect it may have been because he lacked the right teacher, opportunity and patience.

Or maybe he was right - it is all just a bunch of hogwash. Although I personally don't quite believe that...

[Black Jack]

I think your last few lines told the truth...a bunch of hogwash...there is no place for the mystical in streetfighting and I would consider it our gain and never a loss.

I like to work with practical systems or schools of thought when it comes to my life and the life of my loved ones.

Regards

[rogue]

I've found the "spiritual" aspects help keep me focused and centered when the guano hits the rotary. Getting my blood up and fighting is easy for me, but my goal is to take the personal aspect out of it. Dropping someone shouldn't be anything more than taking out the trash.

I used to be daga

[David]

Black Jack -how practical and streetwise is the love you have for you "loved ones"? How much hogwash is that?

Internal skills will keep you in good shape long into your old age. As an externalist, you might take on some young hoodlum when you 70 but your bones are just going to crumble to dust when he hits you or you go to the ground. Your body will fail you because you've treated it like a machine and it ain't like that.

Rogue you're scaring me! You sing hymns while kicking ass?

The powers of Kung Fu never fail!
-- Hong Kong Phooey

[Black Jack]

David thats not how it works number one and number two your top paragraph didn't make any sense?

Why do you want to take a system that does not train for fighting...???? Do you think that when the **** realy hits the fan that your chi will be there for you...???

I will always have knees, elbows and headbutts...tools like those need zero conditioning...no iron palm, no fabled chi, no hogwash, just practical training, concepts and tools that will help get me out of a situation no matter what the age.

As for the body crumbling into dust statement...to me that is just a copout for not training seriously, same as the my techniques are too deadly to spar bullcrap.

You ask me why would I want to take a art that would hurt me when I am older (not true) and I will ask you why you would want to take a art that does not teach you to protect yourself in a life or death situation in the present??????

Rogue do you mean "spiritual" as in your styles "spiritual" aspect or as in a personal one of a religous nature?

Regards

[rogue]

Dang tootin I sing hymns while street fighting. Well I don't really sing, I lip sync to a sound track that I recorded earlier. It's hard to fight and sing well at the same time.

I picked the wrong word when I used "spiritual", I meant "internal". Meditation and focus really do help me fight and raise my situational awareness. Yeah, and I break boards as an exercise to help develope focus, and please guys don't give the overused Lee quote about breaking boards, since mooks don't hit back either. These things do not have to be left out of arts whose prime focus is fighting. We fight, I have two bloody sets of white PJs currently in the wash to prove it, but we don't ignore the otherside of our art.

There's more to fighting than just a lot of techniques. Do you need the internal stuff to be a good fighter? No, but if done right it sure helps. The trick is to do it right and incorporate it into the training just as you would anything else.

BTW, JKD is only as limited as the people doing it, like any other art.

I used to be daga

[Black Jack]

Good Post Rogue

Dude you should get the black pjs they look way cooler...they got that kenpo badboy look to them that just says..."I have arrived".

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

Regards

[Tiger Moon]

I must say how in the world can JKD be limited, its to be bound by none. Yes it is to take what is useful and discard what doesn't work, but its unlimited its to take everything and anything that works and use it in your arsenal. So how can that be limited?? Bruce never specifially made JKD a internal or external art, but its basically a everything art. The point of it is the idea of how to fight and what to learn and use is up to you, not to limit yourself with just one and only style.

--Tiger Moon--

[rogue]

But the white shows the blood up so much better Black Jack!

Tiger Moon, while I don't think there are any built in limitations in JKD, I do believe that alot of JKD folks follow a certain dogma as to what arts to study, how to study them and how to train. There is nothing at all wrong with the arts that JKD people study, how they study them or how they train in them; but there is some hypocrisy in the JKD community regarding how open minded they are to other systems. I also think this is a fairly recent thing that came along with the number of new JKD schools opening.

Now one guy in the JKD community, Jerry Beasly, is offering seminars on JKD concepts for traditional stylist. That has my attention since he may be untyping the JKD concepts from the art of JKD, yes, I believe that JKD has become an art unto itself and a very good one at that. I'd be interested in hearing from any one that's been to these seminars or knows Dr Beasly.

I used to be ex-JKDer daga.

[This message was edited by rogue on 10-21-00 at 10:31 PM.]

[Tiger Moon]

yeah i hear ya, alot of people are opening the schools making it a certain style to practice, when in fact its not supposed to be and shouldn't be a style. Its an idea and way to study and learn the martial arts in a smarter and more free way to learn the MA, making it so that your not limited to some specific style. So you can of course learn everything that works so you can match up with most fighters, not just someone with your own style. I think Bruce was an unbelievable individual as both a martial artist and a human being, and amazing that he did so much of this stuff before he passed away at 32, even though for some reason alot of people won't take JKD as he made it, somehow thinking that it wasn't completed when in fact he stated thats the way its meant to be which is to learn everything in which works. Sorry for rambling on lol

--Tiger Moon--

[rogue]

I wonder if Lee at a certain point would have scrapped the whole of JKD and started over had he lived. Maybe it would be more in the spirit of JKD if people looked at how guys like Guro Dan and Vu learn than what arts they learn. Let me also clarify that I don't think JKD has intentionally become a style but has become one due to how well guys like Dan and Vu, to name but two, have spread JKD and naturally it reflects their views of what works and what doesn't.

I used to be daga

[David]

black jack, I learn kungfu for self-defense and because I'm a long-termist. It is because other people like to fight that I learn to look after myself.
Granted, I'm getting to be more physical these days but I don't think in terms of fighting. Last Friday, a guy brought a smile to my face by threatening me with a pool cue. End of situation.

Do the externalists here watch too many cartoons? What's the beef with chi and internal training? You're plain nuts if you think there's nothing to it.

JKD is limited perhaps because the people who train it aren't kung fu people.

The powers of Kung Fu never fail!
-- Hong Kong Phooey