Chaos Theory

Oh, my word, the beak and head seem to be the only parts outside of the egg. The rest of the body is still stuck inside. I'm talking about Jeet Kune Do at this point in its development.  The JKD teachers have the right idea, that JKD should be formless and yet assume all forms and that you have to be like water, my friend. But what they do in practice is still reminiscent of something from the 1970s. The JKD student still goes through a core curriculum through Jun Fan JKD, which they tend to be very dogmatic about.  Or a style sampler blend, like Inosanto's JKD Concepts.

JKD is the product of the marriage between Eastern martial tradition and Western practicality. Bruce Lee learned as much as he could from different martial arts. Likewise the modern JKD teacher provides the knowledge of different martial art approaches. The student then takes all these approaches and assimilates whatever works for his or her particular body type and personality. All good and well, but the progress is impaired when the student goes back to the partial, that is, they keep training the separate ideas.  The Jun Fan JKD people practice the core curriculum that Lee developed and then take in other styles to build on top of the core.  Or for the more enlightened, they strip away to the most essential of the core and the most essential of other styles.  And then the Inosanto approach, the core is practiced along with other styles.  For example, the typical training schedule for that kind of JKD school would be: MMA Mondays, Jun Fan JKD Tuesdays, BJJ Wednesdays, Muay Thai Thursdays, FMA Fridays, open-sparring Saturdays. It's almost as if breaking free of them and fusing all of them would be dishonorable to the traditions of the elders.


Inosanto teaches that there are common threads of movement in many styles, and he states on his web-page that "movement is universal, no one single style or system has it all." Good, I agree. Then I realized why he teaches styles separately when he continues saying, "students learn what works in a particular situation, against a particular opponent, and when another technique or series of techniques would be more practical and effective." He still focuses on particular techniques? He associates those techniques with particular situations? Wow, I had hoped he would be beyond this by now.


Bruce Lee had the right idea when he sought the "totality" in martial arts, the formless form, the ultimate to simple and functional. He did his best to bring together the principles of different styles and meld them into his own, but he died at the beginning of his journey.  His followers also have the right idea, to meld all the styles into a personal style and make it adaptable. But here's the catch: in the blending, they still conform to their training in separate systems, and even if they don't, they still answer a technique with a corresponding technique.

In a way, I'm glad I didn't fully complete my training in JKD. I had to end my training out of necessity, but by then, I was already questioning what I was learning. Why am I practicing the partial? Why is it that I'm practicing specific techniques?  Can I truly adapt to anything thrown at me?  It's good that JKD is more realistic and practical, but why is there so much emphasis on keeping the different styles separate rather than teaching what all of those styles have in common?  Why not work it all together into a person's particular body type in the very beginning rather than doing the traditional approach of finding the formless in the form?

To be continued...