There, that's that, move on... Only it would seem that there is a huge debate (sometimes clear mudslinging or worse) about what it actually is.
Is it just a philosophy? Is it a mix of 26 different martial arts? Is it just a concept, but you can take what you want from anywhere and make up your own thing? Is it it's own art, with its own set of principles / toolset and strategy?
Let me try to bring some clarity (or for some perhaps I'm going to stirr it all up once again...) Note that below I'm not trying to be 100% chronological and may jump around a bit as it comes up in my mind, but hopefully you'll get the gist of it...
As Bruce would say, 'Open your mind'...
First you need to realise that Bruce Lee was a young driven man, who was learning and developing every day whilst he could. Always critical of things he saw, read etc, and most of all of himself, he kept changing / evolving his martial arts development, once he had already laid the foundation of it.
In parallel to this he moved around a bit to be closer to opportunities to work in the film industry, in the US this was from Seattle to Oakland and L.A. not spending an awfull lot of time in any given place. Oakland is a good example, whilst he 'lived' there, he actually did travel from there to Hong Kong and other places so the actual time spend there wasn't that long in reality. This means that those people that studied with Bruce in Oakland, didn't actually get to spend all that much time with him and only during a certain phase of his development. What he did in Seattle looked even different and truth be told, wasn't called Jeet Kune Do at the time, and is generally accepted as Jun Fan Gung Fu. One well known instructor who continues that legacy was Taky Kimura and his son Andrew (Taky passed away in 2021) (btw Jun Fan being Bruce Lee's chinese birthname) This was a few years before Bruce started working to develop JKD. Then he spend some time in L.A. and ran a school there, when other job offers came along, he told his then most senior student to look after his school for him and appointed him as instructor (note, appointed, not graded), this person is the great Dan Inosanto. It could be said that Dan is the person who single handely did a lot of work to promote the art of Jeet Kune Do and Bruce Lee, although Dan's own ideas and interest changed over the years, further muddying the waters. (He's not solely to blame for the confusion, some seminar promoters would advertise Dan's seminar as Bruce Lee's JKD, when Dan was actually demonstrating Filipino Martial Arts for the most part, resulting in the believe that FMA = JKD, or part of JKD etc. Further more, some of his students who also started teaching or running seminar had a similar mixed approached, flowing from 'style to style', saying that at a certain point you use Thai Boxing, flowing into Wing Chun and then onto jiu Jitsu. There's not one single piece of writing by the hand of Bruce Lee that describes this process, none! )
Dan's own ideas and interpretation led him to come up with Jeet Kune Do 'Concepts'. Depending on if you read early articles on Dan's ideas, or watch video demo's made some years later etc, school curriculums, etc, you'll find a variation in his approach, how he taught and explained things etc. Also, and this is a factor that is always overlooked in these debates, is the fact that Dan Inosanto promised that he would never commercialise Jeet Kune Do, so that might also be part of the reason why he chose to do things differently.
This is starting to get confusing, isn't it? It gets worse!
Enter (amongst others) people like Ted Wong. Ted joined the L.A. school but had no background in any other martial art. Bruce noted this and also found Ted lacking in a bit of strength etc.
As they got along very well on a personal level too (they both spoke the same languages) Bruce took him on as a private student and helped him get stronger, fitter and the two became very good friends. Ted Wong's knowledge of JKD is not dilluted with anything else but what Bruce Lee taught him. Again however note that this happened at another time in Bruce Lee's development, but Ted was privi to some of the latest things Bruce was working on, and can be regarded as one of the most knowledgeable people on what could be termed as 'latter stage Jeet Kune Do'. Also Ted Wong had some preferences and aside from Ted Wong and Dan Inosanto, there were several others, that all studied with Bruce Lee, at various times during his life, some a few months, others a few years, some merely weeks.
You can imagine that after Bruce Lee died, and the 'kung fu craze' took hold, everyone wanted to learn what Bruce Lee did (note my earlier post, I am one of those!). Several of Bruce's students decided to pass on what they knew as the demand was there! But this lead to several 'versions and interpretations' of one part of the development of Bruce Lee's art. How then, do you know you're actually learning Jeet Kune Do, and more specifically, where Bruce went with it.
Shall we make it a bit worse still? Yes lets! Lets look at the man himself, Bruce Lee!
Bruce set out with a clear intention to set up his own art/style, that is evident from several annecdotes and interviews. He bought many books/articles, observed several arts for it's pro's and cons. You have to understand here that Bruce had an uncanning ability to observe a martial art and be able to pick out the good and bad, just from observation and analysing books. He didn't need to practice them physically, to understand it. (This is likely the reason why the myth of 26 arts came to be, while he looks at it all, he didn't take a kick from here, a punch from there ( times 26...).
He made many notes, and several of these were published, not always very coherent either, by others after he passed away, leading to confusion. He also answered the same question differently at different times, for example when asked if he had invented a new style, the answer (in a US interview) was that he stated he didn't intend to create a new style (repeated more or less in the 'lost interview', where he goes on to say not to believe in style anymore etc (remember he set out to create his own system initially), but there seems to be evidence that when asked in Hong Kong, he very much still wanted to call it an art/style.
The how/why/what is going to be highly speculative, the man passed away, and we are left with his writings, and the annecdotes and teachings told and taught by some of his students (most of which sadly have since passed on themselves).
Suffice to say where we are today is that there are broadly two camps: The one of Original Jeet Kune Do, practiced by those who want to understand and get proficient in Bruce Lee's own art (which first and foremost he developed for himself).
Then there are others that are trying to 'reverse' engineer his process and by using some of the Jeet Kune Do principles, are experimenting with other martial arts to see how things fit in, to see if they can make it work for them, with or without sticking to some core principles of JKD, and then calling it JKD, or often, JKD concepts.
While I don't mind people experimenting and doing their own thing, often (for a variety of reasons, some harmless, others dubious) the word Concepts, or 'based on' is often left out and the teachings are promoted as Jeet Kune Do, when in fact they are someones own interpretation (good or bad) of martial arts, not Bruce Lee's JKD! This then results in the general public getting confused on what is and what isn't, everybody just seems to do whatever they please and that then leads to the believe that JKD is just a concept, or a philosophy, when Jeet Kune Do is actually a fairly complete martial art in it's own right, one that is pretty well thought out to boot!.
So what then is Jeet Kune Do: In short, Jeet Kune Do is a martial art system as Bruce Lee developed and practiced it, with a set of principles / structure / strategy / theories and tools. All elements of it fit together and are based on the most efficient, simple and direct way the human body can move (in combative form). As it is developed by and for Bruce Lee, it contains some elements of Wing Chun (he wrote Ving Tsun, he spend several years training in it prior to starting to develop his own art), and he was greatly influenced by fencing, and boxing. Certainly towards the end of his life, he had developed it such that Wing Chun elements were more limited, and the fencing/boxing parts played a huge role in how the art started to form. There are also some elements related to ground fighting in there, but largely it was based on mobility (staying on your feet!) , and that is a key hall mark of both fencing and boxing.
Oh and NO! Bruce Lee was not the father of MMA. MMA is a sport, it has a set of rules and over the years the practitioners have figured out what works best in the octagon, often they box/kick box, adding BJJ etc, currently you see a lot of grappling as it is a way to get an opponent to tap out and win the match . The only thing that Bruce has in common with these fighters is that he more or less pointed the way , saying to not stick to one approach but research others and see what they may have to offer. (and this is exactly what some martial artists of the concept's approach are doing amongst others! But, and it's a biggie, that's not Jeet Kune Do in my view, that's developing yourself as a martial artist YOUR WAY, not Bruce Lee's way!) So yes you are doing what Bruce Lee encouraged people to do, but you should NOT pass it off as his work! You should be proud and pass it off as YOURS!
Leave JKD pure, that is the only way to be able to preserve it and show future generations what Bruce Lee had developed. Fact is, it is based on science, not styles and unless we somehow evolve with two heads and 4 arms etc in the next couple of decades, the human form of fighting is not going to change dramatically, tactics and preferences may be, but that is society driven...
In our school, we teach Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do in the lineage of Ted Wong. So you learn what Bruce Lee did and had developed towards the end of his life, nothing more, nothing less.
If you are looking for a school in your area, and it's Jeet Kune Do you're after, then check first if the word concepts, or 'based on' appears anywhere in the school's prospectus. It might very well be that you have a very enjoyable time and the instruction/instructors are great and good at what they do, but it might not be what you were after.
It is also my firm believe that once you have a good understanding of 'original ' JKD, you will not have the need to study other arts, but you will be able just like Bruce himself, to understand them, and to figure out how to deal with them.
You don't need to be spending hours and hours training in different things. You can, if you enjoy it, but I personally rather spend my time honing my skills in JKD, and to prevent being a 'jack of all trades, master of none'. As Bruce Lee once stated: ' I fear not the man who practiced 10.000 kicks once, but one kick 10.000 times'
Feel free to disagree with me on all of this. As I said this debate has been raging for a long time and is unlikely to go away any time soon for a variety of reasons, some people don't get it, others don't want to get it, yet others view it completely differently and have their own reasoning, correct or not... Oh well, such is life!
Walk On!
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