Crouching Tiger Hidden Ho

I will show you many styles

(In Anglosized Asian voice)

"Shaolin shadowboxing, and the Wu-Tang sword style/
If what you say is true, the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang could be dangerous/
Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?"

The intro to "Bring da Ruckus" by Wu Tang.

The reason I'm feeling this? Coz last night I went to a Jeet Kune Do lesson @ Hurstville Aquatic Centre. I coulda spent my friday night out on the town, drinking beers with colleagues, having dinner with my girl, playing basketball.

But instead I swapped it for learning how to throw a right jab-left cross combination, stick fighting and to how to "protect ya neck" (Inspectah Dek style) from getting sliced by a knife attack.


"No fixed position"

To clarify, there seems to be a bit of confusion between Jeet Kune Do (JKD) and Tae Kwan Do with a similar sounding name. Essentially JKD, is a martial arts system invented by Bruce Lee. Its name means "way of the intercepting fist". Its basis is in Wing Chun Kung Fu buts its a style without style. Its more a concept of fighting. Bruce Lee took a lifetime to perfect this art and wanted to create the ultimate fighting system by mixing and borrowing moves from other fighting styles.

He didn't care about tradition and stripped away hundreds of years of traditional techniques that were too slow in real life street combat. He used punches from boxing after watching Ali, Filiopino Kali knife and stick fighting, jujitsu grappling moves, and anything else he considered effective.

It's a fluid style that doesn't have traditional blocking defense moves. Its always about attack and counterattack. Never keep defending because eventually you'll get hit. Hence the quote "way of the intercepting fist". Its about checking the offender's move and straight away moving into an attacking mode.

JKD stresses four ranges of combat: kicking and punching range from afar, grappling (wrestling) range and finally trapping range from extremely close range. If kicking and punching are long distance weapons i.e. missiles, then trapping are your nuclear weapons.



Bruce Lee focused on moving into your opponent into the trapping range coz this is where you can cause the most damage, as fast as possible, to finish off the fight and walk away. At the trapping range, the smaller man can neutralize the size disadvantage which he doesn't have fighting from further away. Utilising devasting elbows, headbutts, neck grabs, attacks to the vital organs, its simply awesome.

Here comes the Wu-Tang Show Guns

Back to the lesson! It was really fun and an eye opener. We learnt how to defend ourselves from a knife attack by blocking, grabbing the area below the thumb to open up and control the knife hand, taking the knife away and stabbing them back in the arm. The instructor was really good and stressed that you always look to run away, if you can't run, seek to grab anything lying around or if there's nothing available you need to counterattack with your forearms.

The best part?

When he went through the legalities of the knife defense moves: "Self defence. Self defence. Self Defence." (pauses after controlling the weapon) "manslaughter. manslaughter. manslaughter". (when stabbing the person back in the arm). And then I said? "Murda, Murda, Murda".

I'm hoping to start up Martial Arts again cause I love JKD. Hopefully one day I can say: "I will show you many styles, wu tang is forever".

Monty Python Style

Yes Bosco, this post is long but I don't care. On another note in case you missed this pic in Thursday's MX newspaper, check out this mighty clash, python style v alligator bite: