Dan Inosanto holds the highest of the two Jeet Kune Do certifications that were ever awarded by Bruce Lee.

Why then, does it appear that most of Sifu Inosanto’s certified instructors do not teach Jeet Kune Do as Bruce Lee taught it . . . the “original” stuff?  Yet, they still call their material Jeet Kune Do?  This was extraordinarily perplexing.

Is Sifu Inosanto teaching the actual “Jun Fan” Jeet Kune Do in all its simplicity and biomechanically efficient glory?

From what I have seen in his videos and the videos of some his top students like Paul Vunak and Ron Balicki, they just seem to be teaching a mixture of wing chun, kickboxing,  grappling, stick fighting, and knife fighting without emphasizing the core principles of simplicity, directness, and efficiency.

I don’t know about you, but this phenomenon was very confusing for me in my early training days.  It was not easy to separate the supposed “concepts” material from the concrete historical stuff.  I was being taught one way in class, while the material that was publicly available from the JKD Concepts clan was showing something else.

Applying the JKD concepts to other martial arts is fantastic, and I would like to see more of that (especially in sport fighting) but I am not seeing this in much of the "Concepts" material that I come across.

Also, I understand that it was Bruce Lee’s wish that commercial jeet kune do schools not exist and that jkd training only be conducted privately and in a low numbers but high quality format.  Could it be that sifu Inosanto is still honoring that request after all these years?

If this is the case, I can certainly understand.  Yet I feel that most the Concepts people are doing Jeet Kune Do a terrible disservice by not giving students a chance to learn what Bruce Lee originally taught and evolve their own personal expression from there.

Other martial arts are great, I have studied and continue to respect all martial systems, but to teach something other than JKD yet claim it as authentic Jeet Kune Do is a shame.

If anyone has some information regarding this matter, let me know!

In Health,

–
Nhan-Esteban Khuong, L.Ac.
http://www.TrueSelfMartialArts.com

 


Comments

Joel Borcherding

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 10:19:42 am

Hello sir!

I'm not absolutely positive, but I think what their teaching could still be JKD. Although there may not always be a hard strong emphasis on the principles of Jeet Kune Do, I was taught these briefly at the beginning of my training and instructed to apply them as I see fit as I grow as a martial artist. After all, along with the principles of simplicity and longest weapon to the nearest target, Bruce taught us to absorb what is most useful to us as an individual and discard what is not. So we're taught JKD concepts and the methods from the variety of arts that went into Jun Fun Kung Fu, and left to amalgamate what we learn into our own individual JKD experiences or true self-expressions when those techniques come into use. As I've said, that's just what I've been told and how I understand it. Whichever way you look at it I think it's a noble endeavor still. Have a wonderful day, may God bless you mightily!

 

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