Bruce Lee: How much fuss?

Bruce Lee aka “The Little Dragon”, who in the developed world is not familiar with him? The stories about him are legendary, he has influenced millions and still does to this day. But what is the appeal of this Chinese / American besides his incredible physique, flawless movements and cult classic movies? Well, one has to go back to the early 1960s, when Bruce first gained notoriety. I could sit here all day and detail how it came to be, but neither you nor I want that, however, we are going to discuss a few key points, okay? Bruce Lee begins to teach some students privately his vision of combat and practical martial arts, often training people in parking lots and parks until he has enough students to open his own school. Right now, the developing martial arts scene (as these were the pioneering days of the take-off of martial arts in this country with Asian immigrants and military service members returning from abroad with these never-before-seen techniques ) starts listening to all this talk about a Chinese. man who is so incredibly fast and talented that you have to have experience to believe it.

Well Bruce, he’s starting to get invited to martial arts tournaments to demonstrate and the public can’t believe what they’re seeing. Two-finger push-ups, 1-inch punches (where Bruce would place a small pad against a man’s chest with his fist an inch away and throw the person 6 feet back into a chair), and fighting concepts that were unfamiliar at that moment. Well, low and lo and behold, one day there was a television producer in the audience who, after seeing this exciting display, cast Bruce in the role of Kato on the TV series Green Hornet. The show is successful, but is canceled after a short time, so he goes to China and is very successful in foreign kung-fu movies. Not long after, he became popular in the United States, where he landed a contract for a well-known American production, “Enter the Dragon.” Six days before its release, it dies.

Well then, why is it so popular? Well, for one thing, it was unheard of at the time for a Chinese man to land a lead role in a movie in the US because of the strong anti-Asian prejudices that were prevalent at the time. The other reasons are that he was way ahead of his time with the training techniques he was experimenting with at the time. He was one of the first to use weight training (before him, people thought that the muscles would get slower and more muscular if you lift weights, sadly some still think this, that only happens if you don’t stretch after lifting heavy weights ), he also used boxing gear for full contact combat and soccer hitting pads that we now call the air shield for training kicks. He was experimenting with crazy types of diets and vitamins and was using electroshock to get faster, not unlike what we see now in physical therapy for muscle stimulation for rehabilitation reasons, not faster muscle contractions. Lastly, he avoided traditional martial arts by creating his own fighting art called Jeet Kune Do (Way of the Interceptor Fist) after nearly losing a challenge fight in China Town when the elders were upset that he was teaching Chinese martial arts to Caucasians, which was not allowed in their culture at that time. It would take too long to discuss what his art consisted of but, in short, these are the reasons why he was so popular.

Okay, here’s a rhetorical question: to what degree was Bruce Lee a black belt? He was obviously a teacher, right? No, in fact he wasn’t even a black belt. Hope for? That’s crazy, who would say such a thing? No, really, he achieved an intermediate rank in Wing Chun (a traditional Chinese style of Kung-Fu) and had some early experiences in some other traditional styles of Kung-Fu, but that’s about it. At one point he got into a fight and hurt someone and the police were looking for him, so his uncle gave him some money he had saved, put him on a boat and sent him back to the US Since he was born here and had U.S. citizenship. So with his training interrupted, he studied and practiced on his own and eventually came up with Jeet Kune Do.

That’s a quick synopsis of a very long and detailed story. Bruce Lee’s influence is still felt today in many areas. Mixed martial arts is said to owe him their gratitude and is often called the “father of mixed martial arts”. All of these breaks with traditional martial arts that we see today, it can be argued, all started with his radical concepts, training techniques, and influences from his writing.