I have been asked to expand on the statement regarding Bruce Lee only used natural techniques in his personal tool poach. We are each unique in our body structure, strength, flexibility and endurance. In the martial arts, depending on the style, we are usually required to do stretching and warm-up to do many of the drills and exercises. The reason for this is the average person cannot do kicks above the knee or apply techniques requiring flexibility or endurance. This is OK for training in the gym, but not for applying self defense in the street. After warm-up the average student can move smoothly and flow through complicated moves. Without warm-up these same techniques become stiff, jerky and limited. What was quick in the gym is now filled with hesitation. Self defense requires instant response and often you are not given a second chance to survive an assault. You must always assume the aggressor is serious and will hurt or even kill you or your family. This was always a topic with Bruce in our random discussions. Martial arts as an art is fun and provides many benefits, but self defense, for the average student, is usually not one of them. The main problem is that there is too much to learn and most students will not put in the time or effort to develop a real applied skill. Most systems give rank for time spent and loyalty to the club. The standards for testing may be high for Kata and sparring in the dojo, but often leave a lot to be desired when applied in a real conflict. The majority (90%) of martial arts instructors have never been in a real fight. Their interpretation of reality is based only on dojo and tournament experience. When these instructors went into a MMA competition they were wiped out in the first round and often in less than a minute. MMA fighters have a Neanderthal gene, most martial artist do not. This a point we discussed in depth. As streetfighters we were all aware of how vicious, insane and unpredictable fighting was. Martial arts students are not trained to fight a knuckle dragging cave dweller, only fellow martial artists. We agreed with Bruce that the longer the fight lasted, the more luck became involved and it might not be your lucky day. This is why Bruce believed that a fight should not last longer than two seconds, he did not want to rely on luck. We agreed that, when you are young and active you have a natural broad range of motion and need little warm-up. However, how about later, after you quit training and are struggling with the day to day battles of life. Age and stress begin to stiffen the body. Bruce, who was paranoid about being beat, did not want to train all his life, yet wanted to have the same skills, regardless of his age or condition. As a group we arrived at two conclusions, to minimize the amount of techniques required for most street scenarios, allowing us to develop a very high degree of skill and second, to focus on techniques that were not based on flexibility, need for warm-up or endurance. The reason for these three was they were related to most of the techniques we were doing. Ed and Taky were about 15 or more years older than Bruce. They agreed that training was more difficult for them since they had to spend more time on warm-up. Yet, there were specific moves and actions that they did without needing to warm-up. These had to do with speed and close quarter drills, such as trapping. Part of our training was to separate general attribute training (speed, power, endurance, coordination, timing and rhythm) and identify, from our street experience, what could be efficiently applied in the street. What is our natural range of movement in our legs and arms. What techniques fit that range and did not require endurance. Once we established a list we began to whittle away the unessential and create a small group that became our self defense tool poach. I am 76, had five major back surgeries and can still apply my tool poach techniques. Natural, means you strip away all you can do with warm-up, throw in a few years, add a pot belly and yet can explode with death and destruction if someone threatens to hurt you or your family. Aloha
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 03:19:06 +0000
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