05/03/2023
It is impossible to count how much research and experimentation Bruce Lee did in his short life. Chuck Norris' private student recalls: No one trained the way Bruce trained - fanatically. He lived with trainings and thoughts about them from the moment he got up at six in the morning until they were over. until he went to bed late at night. If he wasn't training, he was thinking about training. His brain was constantly working, he didn't know what rest was. He was constantly thinking about how to raise himself to a new level, what innovations to apply in training. His brain worked tirelessly.
Lee is known to have experimented with many types of martial arts and used additional training programs. If you look at his training schedule over a period of ten years, you can make a lot of interesting discoveries. First, it is a process of continuous improvement in which Lee emphasizes learning new and improving existing techniques, temporarily setting aside the practice of techniques he has already sufficiently mastered, completely rejecting those he considers unnecessary or devoid of practical application, and constantly increasing the amount of additional training to strengthen those technical skills that he considers most important for martial arts.
For example, looking at his training notes from 1963, we come to the conclusion that he practiced in the so-called traditional style - he studied the movement blocks inherent in Wing Chun kung fu, a classical form of Chinese martial arts. He practiced the "sil-lum-taoo" ("big little idea") style and practiced daily on a "mook jong" (wooden puppet). As Taky Kimura and Jesse Glover, who trained with Bruce during this period, recall, he could work with a wooden dummy for three or more hours a day, do the same Wing Chun moves several times, then move on to kicking. hands and feet. In 1965, Lee added the one-two technique (short right and left cross) and the reverse fist technique (gwa choi) from Western boxing to Wing Chun's arsenal.
Bruce Lee
More importantly, during this period, he begins to train with a bar for the development of the forearms, introduces running exercises for endurance and special exercises for the abdominal muscles. In 1968, Lee abandoned "sil-lum-tao" (at least as the main component of his training), and in his studies the great influence of western boxing (hook, short punch, uppercut and cross) became noticeable. By the 1970s, his workouts were as varied as possible: weight lifting for strength, running and cycling for cardiovascular fitness, stretching for flexibility, heavy bag for timing and strength, speed bag for rhythm and timing, high and low bag for coordination and precision. Furthermore, he begins to conduct separate training to focus more on each aspect of the martial arts,
Note that the influence of classical Wing Chun has now largely disappeared from his training. He doesn't practice movements, he doesn't work with a wooden doll, he doesn't punch the air. The strikes are not limited to the lower level that is emphasized in Wing Chun, but from this it cannot be concluded that Lee has forgotten or abandoned his knowledge of this style. They are already so deeply embedded in his consciousness that he can always use them if the need arises. However, his training programs show that by the early 1970s, Lee began to prefer more rational hitting techniques and increased the amount of additional training to perform the techniques more effectively.
