To all JKD'ers:
Ok, I feel like I need to take a few moments to discuss something that I've seen happening for a long time now, something that bothers me a great deal. Namely, there are several things that I'm always seening attributed to Bruce Lee that were not of his divising, and I just feel like I should point this out. First of all, I'm not saying that Bruce was anything less than an extraordinary fighter. His athletic prowess is without question, as well as the effectiveness of his personal fighting style. But much of what Bruce tried to pass off as his idea, his method of beign "revolutionary" and "non traditional", are things he learned studying wing chun in Hong Kong, and ARE traditional methods that have been used for hundreds of years. One only has to look at Bruce's book "The Tao of Gung Fu", to actually see Bruce's own words about the efficacy of the Wing Chun system. Hell, there's even photos of bruce doing chi sao with Yip man. So here's a short list of things Bruce "discovered" that have been, coincidentally, in Wing Chun for a very long time:
1)The famed 1 inch punch. This is wing chun short jing, the ability to produce whipping force from a short distance. This is only one of several types of Wing Chun Jing that is generated by a WC pracitcioner, we learn to put this type of force into all of our strikes.
2)Using a punch to "stop" a punching attack. Here we have Kuen su Kuen, the use of a punching attack in response to a punching attack, moving the other guy slightly off line while completing your own strike. More basic Wing Chun Technique.
3)The "straight blast". This is what got me feeling feisty in the first place. I recently saw an ad for a Demitri Barbito(sp?), and his video teaching application of the "JKD straight blast", an "upper level advanced technique". This is called Lin wan Kuen, or "chain punching" in WC, and is THE MOST BASIC MODE OF ATTACK YOU LEARN. By the time you've been in WC for 6 months, you have learned to counter this with (I'm not kidding) 1 arm.
4)The idea of simplicity, efficency, and economy of motion beating "flowery" movements. This is the entire point of Wing Chun Kung Fu! WC is completely based on the idea of stripping out anything that might add complication to your fighting techniques. It focuses solely on what is combat effective, as it was built to be a combat art, and nothing else. Punches take the shortest path possible, and even when you are blocking, you are striking simultaneously.
I could go on for a while here, but I've already written an awefull lot. I guess I just really wanted people to be aware of this. Bruce was a great martial artist, of that there is no doubt, and he did many wonderful things that helped to spread Chinese Gung Fu in the west, and honestly, wether he meant to or not he's helped the spread of WC a great deal. And JKD is certainly different from WC, I'm not saying he "stole" the art. But I just get tired of seeing "Bruce Lee's 1 inch punch" and "The JKD straight blast" and stuff like that misrepresented as being things that bruce created. Anyway, no real desire to knock on Bruce, just wanted to raise the general level of awareness.
Thanks!
Sandman[Wing Chun]