I just the found the video below on you tube and I just could not resist to write this post. Having read many books and articles about Jeet Kune Do (JKD) as well as having practiced wing chun solidly for over 5 years I was kind of giving for granted what I see in the video but it’s obvious that for some people it is not.
JKD is a concept and not a style; basic principle behind JKD is to learn various martial arts and just retain what works for the individual, discarding what doesn’t work. This is somehow a precursor concept of MMA fighting, mixing styles to have a complete repertoire of techniques that cover all ranges of fighting including grappling and ground work. In my opinion that is somehow fine for a person which has decent experience in one style, then moves on to the next one and so on. Trying to learn at the same time different styles just creates confusion because a correct stance for one could be wrong for the other and you never know which one is which.
In principle different practitioners of JKD could have developed, given the hundred of martial styles available, completely different kind of JKD. However if you join a JKD school, as long as it is authorised from one of the original students of Bruce Lee (Dan Inosanto, also portrayed in the video, comes to mind), you will learn from scratch techniques that seem to be unique of JKD but, apart from some simple adaptations of footwork and other details they replicate very precisely basic Wing Chun techniques and concepts. Enjoy the video:
Great video, very inspiring – thank you!