Bob Dubljanin
17-01-2003, 21:54
Hi Board,
herzlich willkommen zum neuen JKD Forum, hier mein erster Beitrag. Hoffe ihr könnt alle Engles da ich diesen Artikel nur im Original habe. Viel Spass beim Lesen und wie immer warten Frank und ich auf eure Beiträge.
Gruss,
Bob Dubljanin
www.soai.de
_________________________________________________
JKD is fast, powerful and deceptive
1972 © by Rodger Shimatsu and Dan Inosanto
Line up ten punters and let them perform their kicking styles without the football. Can you honestly judge who is the better kicker, or which is the better kick, by just studying their form? The real test of a punt is how far and how accurately the football can be kicked. And yet, this is exactly what many schools of karate and kung-fu are doing-they are teaching how to kick without the football. In other words, deluding their students as well as themselves, karate and kung fu instructors are attempting to teach how to fight without actually fighting."
This is an ex-kenpo instructor speaking out on his first love, karate. He's a 33-year-old man who has studied jujitsu, kenpo, kung fu and karate. He now studies jeet kune do under Bruce Lee. This is Dan Inosanto exploding some hard-hitting thoughts and provoking ideas upon the karate scene today.
A physical education teacher in the Los Angeles area, Inosanto is a quiet-mannered man. He's not a loud talker and is reluctant to offend others. He's married and lives with his wife and three-year old (with one more on the way) in a modern house in Carson, California.
It is obvious Inosanto is dedicated to the martial arts, and on first impression he seems to like everything about them. Once the surface is scratched, however, one finds Inosanto has some very definite ideas on what's good and bad in the martial arts. His delivery is soft and his voice subdued, but after the interview, it feels like a huge tank has rumbled past, shaking the very foundation of one's philosophy of karate.
Having studied many styles, Inosanto has a broad background in the martial arts, beginning when he was in the paratroopers and started taking the Army's self defense course in jujitsu in 1959. The next year he graduated to karate. The style he and the others in that loose group of enthusiasts were taught depended on which instructor was teaching that day and where he had studied. The course was a crazy blend of styles: Japanese, Korean or Okinawan.
During the time he was stationed at fort Campbell in the Strategic Army Corps, his group studied karate three to five times a week under the sponsorship of Henry Slomanski. Reflecting on his karate stint while in the Army, Inosanto said, "the exposure to the various schools in the beginning taught me not to be one-sided because everyone had their own philosophies and each school seemed to have its good points and bad points."
After Inosanto was discharged from the paratroopers, he moved to the Southern California area, where he began taking kenpo. "I was very impressed with a kenpo student I met a Fort Campbell. He wasn't stiff and he seemed freer with his movements. He was graceful, smooth and fast. He had studied kenpo in Hawaii and had a brown belt. I liked the way he moved and decided to take up kenpo when I got out of the service.
"In 1961, I started taking kenpo from Ed Parker at his Pasadena school. At that time, kenpo reached my expectations of what I was seeking in karate. I was looking for a self-defense and also a body conditioning sport. I guess I got carried away with it. I became fascinated by the martial arts field and how there could be so many different ways of fighting."
Even with the variety of fighting arts, especially in karate, Inosanto found himself in a quandary. "I was puzzled by the attitudes of the instructors and their schools here in Southern California. At Fort Campbell we were learning many different styles at the same time and we felt this was good. There was a give and take of information concerning karate. The various instructors came together to try to help one another. In Los Angles it was a different story. I never realized how cliquish karate factions could be. I couldn't understand this and it made me even more curious about karate as a whole. I couldn't believe instructors could be so hostile to one another and refuse to share knowledge.
"When I first began taking kenpo, the instructors and students there would run down the Japanese stylist. So I went to a Japanese karate school out of curiosity and they ran down the other karate styles I was studying. Looking back at it as a whole, shotokan puts a lot of emphasis on power, while in kenpo karate they put their stock in speed."
As in football, there are various ways to run with the ball and Dan Inosanto used this analogy to drive home his point, "Take the three types of runners in football. A good runner can either have speed, power or deceptiveness, The runner can use any two combinations of the three, but very rarely can one be found with all three outstanding characteristics. Karate schools may stress as many as two, but it's hard to find a school that stresses all three: speed, power and deceptiveness.
It wasn't until I started jeet kune do under Bruce Lee, that I found a style that used all three important aspects of fighting - a style that was fast, powerful and deceptive. Bruce Lee was able to take all the pieces of the karate puzzle I was wrestling with in my own mind and make them fit together in an integrated system. It seemed to me that other karate and kung-fu schools were trying to fit everyone into a size 38 coat, regardless of an individual's size, speed, build, reaction-time reflexes or anything.
In boxing, everyone can't be a Marciano because everyone doesn't have the rugged build needed to wade in and take a punch, or have the ability to give one. Note everyone can be a Classius Clay because they don't have his speed or his deceptive co-ordination. Looking at each person as an individual, it's not possible to take a 98-pound weakling and make him into another Marciano or Clay.
"Karate in general doesn't take the individual into consideration because the system stresses everyone must do the same things in the exact way. The karate student becomes a factory product- a molded replica of the instructor. The student sometimes comes out good, sometimes bad, sometimes better than the instructor, but its hit or miss depending on the individual."
To Dan Inosanto the individual is very important because, he says, "A man doesn't excel because of his style. It's only when a man can go outside of the bounds set by his system that he excels. If a martial artist can practice in a style without being bound and limited to his particular school, then and only then can he be liberated to fit in with any type of opponent. A great majority of instructors, however, binds their practitioners and brainwashes them into believing only their school of training is best. This is especially true of kung-fu."
Dan met Bruce Lee in l964 at the first International Karate Championships. He got to know Bruce pretty well in the few weeks they travelled from one dojo to another all over California. During this period, Inosanto was introduced to Bruce Lee's philosophy. He wanted to study under Lee but the noted jeet-kune-do-ist had to return to the Orient, so Inosanto began taking kung fu from other instructors in the Los Angeles area. He tried different schools, often studying at two or three schools at the same time.
He soon discovered what he was being taught was a far cry from what Bruce Lee was talking about. "To me, what they were teaching the forms, the blocks and the posturing wasn't realistic. The posture and form of the body became the ultimate end. Their teachings didn't seem to have any direct relationship to self-defense, although it probably taught me to be graceful and helped with my co-ordination, posture and smooth, correct body movements."
Bruce Lee returned to the United States to star as Kato in the television series, "The Green Hornet." Concurrently, he opened two kwoon, one in Los Angeles, the other in Oakland, California. Dan began studying under Bruce in L.A. and he recalls it as frustrating but enlightening. "I had been practicing and instructing in a kenpo karate style for some years and I felt, at that point, it gave me the most freedom and variety of moves. By that time, I had stumbled across many partial truths and I had become more aware of workable and unworkable techniques. Being a die-hard kenpo man, I found myself confused and frustrated. I began to actually rebel against jeet-kune-do.
"I was bound by loyalty to my former instructor and to his style. Looking back on it, I really didn't want to see the truth in self-defense. I began to mentally criticize the informal and unstylized way Jeet-Kune-Do moved, kicked, punched and trained. Yet, I found myself using what I had learned and liking it better than kenpo, finding it more functional, powerful, faster, freer, and, above all, the easiest style to express." Just what is jeet-kune-do? Dan says it is the art of "fitting-in" with all types of opponents and a way of expressing oneself in combat. Many of Bruce Lee's students are former karate and kung-fu stylists and they maintain JKD's style-less style of combat is 50 to 100 years ahead of its time. Dan anticipates karate will continue to progress and will someday reach the beginning stages of ideas and principles set forth by Bruce Lee today. As explained, jeet-kune-do is not an organization or even a style in which students can affiliate. The principles of JKD are stated simply as self-defense, because everything is so dependent on what the opponent will do. It's almost like an exchange of ideas between two combatants with the communication being done with offensive and defensive techniques instead of words. The action must flow like a conversation and the two combatants must be in tune with each other as the fighting reaches it's climax and one or the other is taken down, knocked-out, or placed in an otherwise helpless situation.
Spectators watching a jeet-kune-do practice session come away with differing views. The sparring has been described as vicious but polished street fighting. At other times, it looks like boxing, sometimes wrestling and even Thai kickboxing. The kicks resemble karate, but in a more informal, livelier and freer manner. The practitioners use 12 or l6-ounce gloves and they are encouraged to punch and kick below the waist, especially to the shin, knee and thigh areas.
Comparing jeet-kune-do to other fighting arts, Dan observes, "Karate is mainly a stylized form of punching, kicking and striking. Judo is a throwing, grappling and choking sport. Wrestling is grappling, and boxing is a punching sport. All of these arts or sports are highly effective in their range of distance. What boxers call the "in-fighting" range is never reached in karate tournament free styling because the referee usually separates the combatants before they reach this stage of fighting. But in reality, isn't this where real fighting begins?
"If a good boxer learns jeet-kune-do's bridging (transition and moving-in techniques) he needs only his hands to be effective. A proficient wrestler, using jeet-kune-do's techniques, can tie-up a majority of the classical martial artists. If the wrestler is sharp with his grappling range, he will be more than effective. An experienced fencer, if he learns jeet-kune-do techniques, can become very skilled with his outside range.
"Many karatemen tend to look down on judo, boxing and wrestling. This is like a football coach who uses a split-T formation, then starts to belittle other formations such as the T, wing-T, slot-T, or the I formation. A good football coach, even if he believes in his own style of play, will study and learn how to defend against those offenses. I believe a good martial artist should likewise prepare for the wild street fighter, the wrestler, the slugger, and the judoist."
To illustrate the importance of preparing for all types of fighting situations, Dan likes to quote Bruce Lee, who in turn quoted SunTzu's book 'The Art of War', written around 500 B.C. "Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."
Explaining this statement, Dan affirms, "Some people think they know themselves when in reality they know only their weak points and not their strong points, or vice versa. Others are intelligent in knowing themselves, but ignorant in knowing others.
"To quote a certain football coach. 'Every system of football has strong points and weak points in its structure. Every football coach believes in his methods of training and drilling. The training and drills should be as close as possible and all drills should be as close to game-like conditions as possible.'"
In Dan Inosantos opinion, "Totality and freedom of expression toward the ultimate reality of combat should be the goal of all martial artists. To achieve this, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own."
herzlich willkommen zum neuen JKD Forum, hier mein erster Beitrag. Hoffe ihr könnt alle Engles da ich diesen Artikel nur im Original habe. Viel Spass beim Lesen und wie immer warten Frank und ich auf eure Beiträge.
Gruss,
Bob Dubljanin
www.soai.de
_________________________________________________
JKD is fast, powerful and deceptive
1972 © by Rodger Shimatsu and Dan Inosanto
Line up ten punters and let them perform their kicking styles without the football. Can you honestly judge who is the better kicker, or which is the better kick, by just studying their form? The real test of a punt is how far and how accurately the football can be kicked. And yet, this is exactly what many schools of karate and kung-fu are doing-they are teaching how to kick without the football. In other words, deluding their students as well as themselves, karate and kung fu instructors are attempting to teach how to fight without actually fighting."
This is an ex-kenpo instructor speaking out on his first love, karate. He's a 33-year-old man who has studied jujitsu, kenpo, kung fu and karate. He now studies jeet kune do under Bruce Lee. This is Dan Inosanto exploding some hard-hitting thoughts and provoking ideas upon the karate scene today.
A physical education teacher in the Los Angeles area, Inosanto is a quiet-mannered man. He's not a loud talker and is reluctant to offend others. He's married and lives with his wife and three-year old (with one more on the way) in a modern house in Carson, California.
It is obvious Inosanto is dedicated to the martial arts, and on first impression he seems to like everything about them. Once the surface is scratched, however, one finds Inosanto has some very definite ideas on what's good and bad in the martial arts. His delivery is soft and his voice subdued, but after the interview, it feels like a huge tank has rumbled past, shaking the very foundation of one's philosophy of karate.
Having studied many styles, Inosanto has a broad background in the martial arts, beginning when he was in the paratroopers and started taking the Army's self defense course in jujitsu in 1959. The next year he graduated to karate. The style he and the others in that loose group of enthusiasts were taught depended on which instructor was teaching that day and where he had studied. The course was a crazy blend of styles: Japanese, Korean or Okinawan.
During the time he was stationed at fort Campbell in the Strategic Army Corps, his group studied karate three to five times a week under the sponsorship of Henry Slomanski. Reflecting on his karate stint while in the Army, Inosanto said, "the exposure to the various schools in the beginning taught me not to be one-sided because everyone had their own philosophies and each school seemed to have its good points and bad points."
After Inosanto was discharged from the paratroopers, he moved to the Southern California area, where he began taking kenpo. "I was very impressed with a kenpo student I met a Fort Campbell. He wasn't stiff and he seemed freer with his movements. He was graceful, smooth and fast. He had studied kenpo in Hawaii and had a brown belt. I liked the way he moved and decided to take up kenpo when I got out of the service.
"In 1961, I started taking kenpo from Ed Parker at his Pasadena school. At that time, kenpo reached my expectations of what I was seeking in karate. I was looking for a self-defense and also a body conditioning sport. I guess I got carried away with it. I became fascinated by the martial arts field and how there could be so many different ways of fighting."
Even with the variety of fighting arts, especially in karate, Inosanto found himself in a quandary. "I was puzzled by the attitudes of the instructors and their schools here in Southern California. At Fort Campbell we were learning many different styles at the same time and we felt this was good. There was a give and take of information concerning karate. The various instructors came together to try to help one another. In Los Angles it was a different story. I never realized how cliquish karate factions could be. I couldn't understand this and it made me even more curious about karate as a whole. I couldn't believe instructors could be so hostile to one another and refuse to share knowledge.
"When I first began taking kenpo, the instructors and students there would run down the Japanese stylist. So I went to a Japanese karate school out of curiosity and they ran down the other karate styles I was studying. Looking back at it as a whole, shotokan puts a lot of emphasis on power, while in kenpo karate they put their stock in speed."
As in football, there are various ways to run with the ball and Dan Inosanto used this analogy to drive home his point, "Take the three types of runners in football. A good runner can either have speed, power or deceptiveness, The runner can use any two combinations of the three, but very rarely can one be found with all three outstanding characteristics. Karate schools may stress as many as two, but it's hard to find a school that stresses all three: speed, power and deceptiveness.
It wasn't until I started jeet kune do under Bruce Lee, that I found a style that used all three important aspects of fighting - a style that was fast, powerful and deceptive. Bruce Lee was able to take all the pieces of the karate puzzle I was wrestling with in my own mind and make them fit together in an integrated system. It seemed to me that other karate and kung-fu schools were trying to fit everyone into a size 38 coat, regardless of an individual's size, speed, build, reaction-time reflexes or anything.
In boxing, everyone can't be a Marciano because everyone doesn't have the rugged build needed to wade in and take a punch, or have the ability to give one. Note everyone can be a Classius Clay because they don't have his speed or his deceptive co-ordination. Looking at each person as an individual, it's not possible to take a 98-pound weakling and make him into another Marciano or Clay.
"Karate in general doesn't take the individual into consideration because the system stresses everyone must do the same things in the exact way. The karate student becomes a factory product- a molded replica of the instructor. The student sometimes comes out good, sometimes bad, sometimes better than the instructor, but its hit or miss depending on the individual."
To Dan Inosanto the individual is very important because, he says, "A man doesn't excel because of his style. It's only when a man can go outside of the bounds set by his system that he excels. If a martial artist can practice in a style without being bound and limited to his particular school, then and only then can he be liberated to fit in with any type of opponent. A great majority of instructors, however, binds their practitioners and brainwashes them into believing only their school of training is best. This is especially true of kung-fu."
Dan met Bruce Lee in l964 at the first International Karate Championships. He got to know Bruce pretty well in the few weeks they travelled from one dojo to another all over California. During this period, Inosanto was introduced to Bruce Lee's philosophy. He wanted to study under Lee but the noted jeet-kune-do-ist had to return to the Orient, so Inosanto began taking kung fu from other instructors in the Los Angeles area. He tried different schools, often studying at two or three schools at the same time.
He soon discovered what he was being taught was a far cry from what Bruce Lee was talking about. "To me, what they were teaching the forms, the blocks and the posturing wasn't realistic. The posture and form of the body became the ultimate end. Their teachings didn't seem to have any direct relationship to self-defense, although it probably taught me to be graceful and helped with my co-ordination, posture and smooth, correct body movements."
Bruce Lee returned to the United States to star as Kato in the television series, "The Green Hornet." Concurrently, he opened two kwoon, one in Los Angeles, the other in Oakland, California. Dan began studying under Bruce in L.A. and he recalls it as frustrating but enlightening. "I had been practicing and instructing in a kenpo karate style for some years and I felt, at that point, it gave me the most freedom and variety of moves. By that time, I had stumbled across many partial truths and I had become more aware of workable and unworkable techniques. Being a die-hard kenpo man, I found myself confused and frustrated. I began to actually rebel against jeet-kune-do.
"I was bound by loyalty to my former instructor and to his style. Looking back on it, I really didn't want to see the truth in self-defense. I began to mentally criticize the informal and unstylized way Jeet-Kune-Do moved, kicked, punched and trained. Yet, I found myself using what I had learned and liking it better than kenpo, finding it more functional, powerful, faster, freer, and, above all, the easiest style to express." Just what is jeet-kune-do? Dan says it is the art of "fitting-in" with all types of opponents and a way of expressing oneself in combat. Many of Bruce Lee's students are former karate and kung-fu stylists and they maintain JKD's style-less style of combat is 50 to 100 years ahead of its time. Dan anticipates karate will continue to progress and will someday reach the beginning stages of ideas and principles set forth by Bruce Lee today. As explained, jeet-kune-do is not an organization or even a style in which students can affiliate. The principles of JKD are stated simply as self-defense, because everything is so dependent on what the opponent will do. It's almost like an exchange of ideas between two combatants with the communication being done with offensive and defensive techniques instead of words. The action must flow like a conversation and the two combatants must be in tune with each other as the fighting reaches it's climax and one or the other is taken down, knocked-out, or placed in an otherwise helpless situation.
Spectators watching a jeet-kune-do practice session come away with differing views. The sparring has been described as vicious but polished street fighting. At other times, it looks like boxing, sometimes wrestling and even Thai kickboxing. The kicks resemble karate, but in a more informal, livelier and freer manner. The practitioners use 12 or l6-ounce gloves and they are encouraged to punch and kick below the waist, especially to the shin, knee and thigh areas.
Comparing jeet-kune-do to other fighting arts, Dan observes, "Karate is mainly a stylized form of punching, kicking and striking. Judo is a throwing, grappling and choking sport. Wrestling is grappling, and boxing is a punching sport. All of these arts or sports are highly effective in their range of distance. What boxers call the "in-fighting" range is never reached in karate tournament free styling because the referee usually separates the combatants before they reach this stage of fighting. But in reality, isn't this where real fighting begins?
"If a good boxer learns jeet-kune-do's bridging (transition and moving-in techniques) he needs only his hands to be effective. A proficient wrestler, using jeet-kune-do's techniques, can tie-up a majority of the classical martial artists. If the wrestler is sharp with his grappling range, he will be more than effective. An experienced fencer, if he learns jeet-kune-do techniques, can become very skilled with his outside range.
"Many karatemen tend to look down on judo, boxing and wrestling. This is like a football coach who uses a split-T formation, then starts to belittle other formations such as the T, wing-T, slot-T, or the I formation. A good football coach, even if he believes in his own style of play, will study and learn how to defend against those offenses. I believe a good martial artist should likewise prepare for the wild street fighter, the wrestler, the slugger, and the judoist."
To illustrate the importance of preparing for all types of fighting situations, Dan likes to quote Bruce Lee, who in turn quoted SunTzu's book 'The Art of War', written around 500 B.C. "Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."
Explaining this statement, Dan affirms, "Some people think they know themselves when in reality they know only their weak points and not their strong points, or vice versa. Others are intelligent in knowing themselves, but ignorant in knowing others.
"To quote a certain football coach. 'Every system of football has strong points and weak points in its structure. Every football coach believes in his methods of training and drilling. The training and drills should be as close as possible and all drills should be as close to game-like conditions as possible.'"
In Dan Inosantos opinion, "Totality and freedom of expression toward the ultimate reality of combat should be the goal of all martial artists. To achieve this, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own."