# bruce lee and fencing



## lonecoyote

I'll preface this by saying I am not a Jeet Kune Do practitioner. I do, however own many of lee's books and take ideas from them, and find them to be great reference sources. One of these books is Tao of Jeet Kune Do. It has lots of great exercises and strategies, like his fighting method books. I also read anything on martial arts or sports, and so the other day I picked up a great fencing book, by an author named Evangelista, and I started noting the similarities. Terms like the "stop hit" and concepts like reading your opponents intention, and even the diagrams dividing the body, though fencing uses latin or old french terms to describe areas and lines. Whats the deal? I know that Lee took from other arts that which was useful to him but there is, now that I read back through some books, a significant Jeet Kune Do-fencing link. I am sure this is not news to a lot of people. But who did Lee study fencing with? Why was it an influence on him? Did he ever talk about fencing specifically?


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## achilles

Bruce Lee learned fencing from his brother Peter as well as from the many books he owned on the subject.  Fencing stresses efficiency as well as control over distance, timing and rhythm.  These elements manifest in Bruce Lee's strategies and tactics such as:
1) fighting measure: the spacial relationship between you and your opponent; more specifically, the distance at which your opponent cannot simply reach out and strike you
2) foot work that can cover a significant distance efficiently (i.e. slide shuffle for kicks, push shuffle for punches) to break the distance from one's fighting measure
3) the stop hit
4) elements of a stance that is excellent for balance and fast forward and backward movement
5) similar geometrical and structural simliarities to his first art of wing chun (the quarte, sixte, septime and octave are analogous to wing chun's four gates; both arts make use of the immovable elbow theory as well.)
6) an emphasis on the manipulating of timing and rhythm in order to exploit the behavior of an opponent
7) non-telegraphic movement (i.e. moving the tool first and then the body aligned behind it)

I'm a fairly elementary fencer, but these are some of the most salient elements of fencing found in Jeet Kune Do.


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## Flatlander

achilles said:
			
		

> Bruce Lee learned fencing from his brother Peter...


I'm curious, what is your source for this statement?  Prior to this, I had never heard of a brother.


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## yentao

I don't know if there is a brother or not, but I know there is none. Bruce Lee bought almost every book about combat. He use fencing moves in the game of death, fight with Fil-Am Dan Inosanto. Bruce use fencing's circle principle where in you will expect an opponent can hit you in a certain distance within the inner circle or you hit him.  If he gets out the imaginary circle you can relax and be confident you wont be able to be hit easily.


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## Baoquan

Breuce Lee did have a brother Peter, and he was a fencer....some say HK champ, some say Commonwealth champ (i haven't seen anything to back up either of these claims), but he was, according to rumour, good at it. He and bruce would apparantly play at fencing without foils....basically trying to slap eachother using fencing concepts.


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## yentao

Baoquan said:
			
		

> Breuce Lee did have a brother Peter, and he was a fencer....some say HK champ, some say Commonwealth champ (i haven't seen anything to back up either of these claims), but he was, according to rumour, good at it. He and bruce would apparantly play at fencing without foils....basically trying to slap eachother using fencing concepts.



Guess Peter was not that popular or he is bruce half brother. Maybe he is not into martial arts.


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## arnisador

Baoquan said:
			
		

> Breuce Lee did have a brother Peter



He had a brother Robert...are you sure there was another Lee brother?


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## Baoquan

arnisador said:
			
		

> He had a brother Robert...are you sure there was another Lee brother?



IIRC, Robert was Bruce's younger brother, and Peter was older.


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## Cthulhu

Lee had two brothers: one older, one younger.  The older brother was the fencer.

I believe Baoquan is correct: Robert is the younger brother, Peter the elder.

Cthulhu


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## arnisador

Cthulhu said:
			
		

> Lee had two brothers: one older, one younger.  The older brother was the fencer.
> 
> I believe Baoquan is correct: Robert is the younger brother, Peter the elder.



This is news to me! I see Robert Lee in the news from time to time...does anyone know what Peter Lee is doing?

Are these both full brothers?


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## Cthulhu

As far as I know, they were full brothers.  He had a sister or two, and I think one of those sisters was not a full-blooded sister.  I want to say the sisters' names were Phoebe and Agnes, but I'm not sure anymore.

Cthulhu


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## Baoquan

Cthulhu said:
			
		

> As far as I know, they were full brothers. He had a sister or two, and I think one of those sisters was not a full-blooded sister. I want to say the sisters' names were Phoebe and Agnes, but I'm not sure anymore.
> 
> Cthulhu



I believe you are kee-rect, sah. :asian:


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