Is JKD Obsolete?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Mixed Martial Arts
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My son has been searching for quality JKD instruction and it seems fruitless. The best thing we can find is a weekend seminar Inosanto certified instructor who is basically throwing a bunch of arts together. The next thing we saw was a bunch of backyard training, mostly guys that attended Ted Wong seminars who is obviously well respected amongst JKDers, especially those more into “Original” JKD.

Sadly, there is a tremendous amount of political nonsense in JKD. There is so much “Your JKD is not JKD” and lineage nonsense. Im afraid JKD is in a bad state.

Is this just my fear? Have others been through this?

What really is the current state of Jeet Kune Do?

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  1. jkd is a concept not an artform

  2. jkd is intended to be used conceptually with any martial art

  3. people who turn it into ma system and call it “jkd” are in error.

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ya, like what he said. Its an idea not a set style. Any particular reason why hes looking for JKD?

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I’m like your son would love to find some one respectable to the jkd circle to learn from. Seems Europe is the hot spot for jkd schools at the moment. Maybe you well get lucky with this site.

http://academyjkd.com/Instructors.htm

5

The best qualities of JKD (taking what works, discarding what doesn’t) can be found in today’s MMA without all the drama. A MMA school either trains well enough to produce competitive grapplers and fighters or they don’t. And you’d be surprised, there’s no shortage of guys in these circles that like training the knife and stick as well… the bonus, they’re for real type of people. If it’s BS they want nothing to do with it.

Good luck in your search.

My advice would be enroll your son in a local BJJ school. He’s start developing his body, learning important skills and be around properly oriented martial artists. From there, tons of doors can be opened. These people are usually connected with the local fight scene.

6

for me, jkd is the application of the concept of making any martial art work.

it is true that what works for me may not work for you and to strip away those things that we cannot make function and instead to amplify those things that we can make function is what in turn activates the art you choose as a part of your own being.

jkd can be applied to absolutely any martial art there is.

through the application of the concepts as reiterated in the tao of jkd by bruce lee, one can find that the art they have chosen to study can be highly effective and not leave any doubts in the mind of the practitioner which in turn would cause hesitation to use.

I don’t see mma being the be all and end all or even the best representation of jkd, or martial arts as a whole for that matter. It’s still a relatively overall safe environment to beat the crap out of someone in or have the crap beaten out of yourself in. :stuck_out_tongue:

So in that respect, jkd is useful there too, although it is for the most part moot seeing as mma training already employs the addages expounded upon in jkd theory.

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i think the only good ones are ted wong michael wong and jerry poteet
is say the rest prettu much suck and *******ized lees art:D

i agree with the instructors who kept jkd as was taught not the jkd concepts malarkey that is n ot needed

i think bruce lee would be ****ed if he found out what has been done to his art:D

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[QUOTE=David Jamieson;964233]1. jkd is a concept not an artform

  1. jkd is intended to be used conceptually with any martial art

  2. people who turn it into ma system and call it “jkd” are in error.[/QUOTE]

:smiley: correct.

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[QUOTE=goju;964342]i think the only good ones are ted wong michael wong and jerry poteet
is say the rest prettu much suck and *******ized lees art:D

i agree with the instructors who kept jkd as was taught not the jkd concepts malarkey that is n ot needed

i think bruce lee would be ****ed if he found out what has been done to his art:D[/QUOTE]

Bruce Lee’s “art” was Jun Fan Kungfu (Bruce Lee’s Kungfu).

When people would come and ask for jkd training, if they had no martial background, they would learn the basics of ma through study and practice of jun fan kungfu which was a mix of Bruce’s prior knowledge. So, it contained wing chun, white crane and some shaolin and perhaps other materials he had picked up along the way. Once a person had gotten something out of that, they could apply the jkd.

The jkd was more of his applied philosophy on martial arts as a whole.

The tao of jkd is a pretty decent book that brings eastern/asian ma ideas into a presentation that is easier for an occidental/westerner to understand

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Outside of Inosanto, Ted Wong, and maybe one-or-two other instructors, ie.- Vunak, for example…my gut feeling is that JKD is dying a slow and uneventful death due to a watering down process and endless political bickering.

But Ray Pina’s point was a good one. If one is interested in JKD, and if JKD was the father of todays’ mma scene (and I believe it was) - and if JKD is going south (which it seems to be doing) - then it makes sense to look for a good mma school instead.

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MMA choked out JKD.

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Ha! Ha! Ha!

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[QUOTE=CLFMan;964232]My son has been searching for quality JKD instruction and it seems fruitless. The best thing we can find is a weekend seminar Inosanto certified instructor who is basically throwing a bunch of arts together. The next thing we saw was a bunch of backyard training, mostly guys that attended Ted Wong seminars who is obviously well respected amongst JKDers, especially those more into “Original” JKD.

Sadly, there is a tremendous amount of political nonsense in JKD. There is so much “Your JKD is not JKD” and lineage nonsense. Im afraid JKD is in a bad state.

Is this just my fear? Have others been through this?

What really is the current state of Jeet Kune Do?[/QUOTE]
JKD or Jeet Kune Do is a “philosophy”, so to answer your question, the JKD philosophy by Bruce Lee will never be obsolete.

but…

Jun Fan JKD is Bruce Lee’s “nuts & bolts” of his method of martial arts. now here is where it gets confusing…

to understand Bruce’s “method”, you have to understand the core concepts of wing chun. there is NO way around this, because his “method” was founded on these concepts.

but today, everyone is trying to “copy/paste” Bruce Lee and it’s not correct at all. it also gets more confusing because JKD practitioners today don’t even know or study or practice the foundation of the method, which is the wing chun structure. or they only gloss over the already modified wing chun, which lacks the thorough understanding of what makes wing chun so special and unique, which leads to a half ass method that has glaring holes, so they end up trying their best to fill those gaps with other martial arts, so you end up with many folks mixing different styles together, but this isn’t correct.

let’s take for example how Bruce incorporated Boxing into his personal JKD. Bruce’s boxing did not look or feel like a traditional boxer. he did not use a horizontal fist, he did not raise his elbow to throw a hook, he turned the front foot inwards, he in fact changed every facet of traditional boxing and “modified” it to fit within the confines of the wing chun concepts.

he did this with everything. he didn’t just add for the sake of adding what is popular. he in fact had a massive book of questions that every single movement had to pass or else he didn’t use the movement, regardless of what style or system it came from. and the questions were formulated by Bruce Lee through the lens of the wing chun concepts. Dan Inosanto has that book btw.

People today think that MMA is JKD and it’s not. MMA is just taking what is most popular and mixing them together, but with actually no particular rhyme or reason. the concepts for their stand up is completely opposite of their concepts for ground work. it makes no sense IMO

JKD practitioners need to understand that Bruce Lee could let go of structure because he had it in the first place. in other words, JKD students today try to “copy” Bruce Lee’s “end result” but don’t realize the huge “body of ice” that Bruce Lee knew that supported that “little idea”. that’s why i am always saying “you can not leg go of something that you don’t have in the first place.”

anyways, that’s my 2cents on the subject.

Jin