I was just time for me to read this again

[Xue Sheng]

Liberate Yourself from Classical Karate by Bruce Lee

I hope my comrades in the martial arts will read the following paragraphs with open-mindedness leaving all the burdens of preconceived opinions and conclusions behind. This act, by the way, has in itself liberating power. After all, the usefulness of the cup is in it's emptiness.

 

[Omar B]

Great read, good ideas, but I don't subscribe to it. He studied classical MA and used it effectively, even added to it. Much the same way many of us do Karate or whatever our main art is as well as something else. I won't degrade what got me where I am, nor will I diminish it's effect. MA is an individual persute, nobody else can learn it for you or get fit for you.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Bruce Lee's responses to letters about his article, Liberate Yourself From Classical Karate

 

[clfsean]

Yeah... I don't buy his hype or his flavor of Koolaide offered to the public.

 

[Xue Sheng]

It all depends on the interpretation

 

[Touch Of Death]

You have to start somewhere. Lucky for Bruce Lee, he had twenty years of classical training before coming to this conclusion. My problem with this way of thinking is that many practitioners are free to be great fighters, but they are also then free to be terrible fighters.
Sean

 

[Omar B]

Many adopt this stance of his after little or no classical taining and no real base. It's all well and good to talk that way with many years of WC under your belt, or in my case karate. The difference is that the further afield I go from karate is the more I realize that it is the answer.

 

[Touch Of Death]

Many adopt this stance of his after little or no classical taining and no real base. It's all well and good to talk that way with many years of WC under your belt, or in my case karate. The difference is that the further afield I go from karate is the more I realize that it is the answer.

The base of no base does sound counter-intuitive.
Sean

 

[Xue Sheng]

My interpretation of Bruce Lee’s view and it is just that, my interpretation (basically my opinion) and no one else need agree…unless they want to.

He is not saying Traditional MA or Karate is useless or bad he is saying that it depends on the practitioner and getting locked into the traditional approach like a train on railroad tracks is a bad thing. However if you use your traditional style as your base and do not get locked into it and/or you train your traditional style properly you are fine. Basically it comes down to what works for you and sticking to any style based on its mythology or dogma is a bad thing.

It was simply time for me to read that again, although I did not know it. I came across it entirely by accident.

Now I wish you all a good weekend, I am talking the entire weekend off from all things computer.

 

[mook jong man]

From what understand Bruce Lee only had four years , or according to some accounts much less than that of Wing Chun training.In that period of time he probably would not of even started learning the second empty hand form Chum Kiu in which much of the Wing Chun mobility exercises are contained , and he would have been a long ways off from learning the wooden dummy.Especially training under Yip Man , who according to our Sigung for the first year you only learned Sil lum Tao form and not much else

 

[ralphmcpherson]

I love bruce lee and love reading his ideas and theories, but I have found that many of his ideas are based on the fact that you do martial arts full time like he did. In reality a massive % of all martial artists have a full time job plus many other commitments and martial arts is something done on the side. I read somewhere once where he was quite negative towards forms/kata. If I did MA full time I would probably agree because I would have the time to practice each individual move 1000 times a day but to Mr. Joe citizen who does MA 2 nights a week for an hour each time, form is a very important way for them to learn individual moves, stances, balance etc with minimum time and effort. Its all relative really. It also has to be taken into account that bruce lee was the tiger woods of MA, just a natural. We dont all have that advantage unfortunately.

 

[seasoned]

Karate, kata, drills, all build a base from which to evolve from. Kata, in itself, teaches proper movement with one possibility of technique to expand from. Martial arts in time, and proper teaching, produces a martial artist, (a free thinker), not a robot. I was around in the Bruce Lee era, and thought he did much for martial arts, and opened many doors with his ideas of free thinking.

 

[No man]

Thank you for sharing this thought-provoking article with us Xue sheng. I came away from the article with a similar interpretation. The article is not an attack on any one style or form, or even style or form in general, but instead a caution against closed perceptions and mistaking a part for the whole. Essentially, combat has a more-or-less objective reality, independent of (but including) it's combatants, their affiliations, motivations, and specifically, their styles. A style is like a language used to describe that objective reality subjectively. Mr.Lee's caution is against confusing the description (or describable attributes of) of combat for the essence of combat itself, and confining oneself to only one of numerous perspectives as a result.

That is of course, all in my opinion.

 

[chinto]

Many adopt this stance of his after little or no classical taining and no real base. It's all well and good to talk that way with many years of WC under your belt, or in my case karate. The difference is that the further afield I go from karate is the more I realize that it is the answer.

yep, old Bruce Lee had a lot of classical training before he ever made that statement. I am not a practitioner of wing Chung, but I am of Karate, and I do not agree with his comment on what he called the "classical mess". But to each your own.

 

[Twin Fist]

You have to remember that the "classical mess" Lee talked about was Karate as it was practiced in the 60's

he would most likely not say that about karate as it is practiced today.

 

[Buka]

I'm a Karate man. That's my bottom line. I love classical Traditional Martial Arts, I love non traditional Martial Arts. I just love Martial Arts. As Twin Fist said, Bruce Lee was speaking of Martial Arts as it was taught in the sixties. It was different then. It was no better than now, it was no worse, it was just different. And there was even more trash talk of "he's no good, our style is better" talk than there is now. (if you can imagine)
But I must be going senile. I remember when that statement was made. I remember it as "free yourself from the classical mess", not classical "karate". No matter, really, I think his point was to explore movement as it applies to your particular goals, not anybody else's goals.

I was talking to Bernice Jay one day (Wally Jay's wife). She was telling me of their home and the dojo they had in the basement. (I believe it was California) She told me that Martial Art friends of Wally would come over all the time and down they would go to the basement, not coming up for hours at a time. She said, "Except for that young Bruce Lee. When he came over they would push the furniture in my living room to one side, roll up the carpet, and work out like children. What a mess they would make of our house!" She took out her wallet, rooted around for a while and came out with an old black and white photo and showed me. There was Wally Jay and Bruce Lee in her living room. They were drenched in sweat, the furniture was shoved aside, lamps were tipped over, coffee table on it's end. Both men were smiling like little boys. Mrs Jay said, "He was a nice young man."
Her stories made my heart soar.

I remember when Bruce Lee died. I was in the dojo when I heard. It took the wind right out of me. He was a bright star that shone bright. I believe he changed the face of training as we know it. As I said, I love Martial Arts, especially Karate. But as for me, personally - I consider myself the bastard infidel son of American Martial Arts. Damn proud of it, too. I thank Bruce Lee for that.