W4

"Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it."

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It is impossible to count how much research and experimentation Bruce Lee did in his short life. Chuck Norris' private student recalls: No one trained the way Bruce trained - fanatically. He lived with trainings and thoughts about them from the moment he got up at six in the morning until they were over. until he went to bed late at night. If he wasn't training, he was thinking about training. His brain was constantly working, he didn't know what rest was. He was constantly thinking about how to raise himself to a new level, what innovations to apply in training. His brain worked tirelessly.

Lee is known to have experimented with many types of martial arts and used additional training programs. If you look at his training schedule over a period of ten years, you can make a lot of interesting discoveries. First, it is a process of continuous improvement in which Lee emphasizes learning new and improving existing techniques, temporarily setting aside the practice of techniques he has already sufficiently mastered, completely rejecting those he considers unnecessary or devoid of practical application, and constantly increasing the amount of additional training to strengthen those technical skills that he considers most important for martial arts.

For example, looking at his training notes from 1963, we come to the conclusion that he practiced in the so-called traditional style - he studied the movement blocks inherent in Wing Chun kung fu, a classical form of Chinese martial arts. He practiced the "sil-lum-taoo" ("big little idea") style and practiced daily on a "mook jong" (wooden puppet). As Taky Kimura and Jesse Glover, who trained with Bruce during this period, recall, he could work with a wooden dummy for three or more hours a day, do the same Wing Chun moves several times, then move on to kicking. hands and feet. In 1965, Lee added the one-two technique (short right and left cross) and the reverse fist technique (gwa choi) from Western boxing to Wing Chun's arsenal.

Bruce Lee
More importantly, during this period, he begins to train with a bar for the development of the forearms, introduces running exercises for endurance and special exercises for the abdominal muscles. In 1968, Lee abandoned "sil-lum-tao" (at least as the main component of his training), and in his studies the great influence of western boxing (hook, short punch, uppercut and cross) became noticeable. By the 1970s, his workouts were as varied as possible: weight lifting for strength, running and cycling for cardiovascular fitness, stretching for flexibility, heavy bag for timing and strength, speed bag for rhythm and timing, high and low bag for coordination and precision. Furthermore, he begins to conduct separate training to focus more on each aspect of the martial arts,

Note that the influence of classical Wing Chun has now largely disappeared from his training. He doesn't practice movements, he doesn't work with a wooden doll, he doesn't punch the air. The strikes are not limited to the lower level that is emphasized in Wing Chun, but from this it cannot be concluded that Lee has forgotten or abandoned his knowledge of this style. They are already so deeply embedded in his consciousness that he can always use them if the need arises. However, his training programs show that by the early 1970s, Lee began to prefer more rational hitting techniques and increased the amount of additional training to perform the techniques more effectively.

Lee's friend and student, Herb Jackson, recalls that the only consistent element in Bruce Lee's training regimen was flexibility exercises, mostly stretching; The only exercises he did consistently were stretching exercises - he did them as a warm-up before every practice or before a fight. One of those exercises that I have never seen from anyone else. it consisted of him and his partner sitting on the floor with each other's backs and pressing their shoulders against their partner's shoulders so that in the final position the partner's head was literally touching the floor. This exercise greatly develops leg flexibility. We took it in turns, competing to see who had the most pressure. Excellent tendon stretching. Bruce Lee Even when Lee was doing film dialogue, it was common to see him standing in front of a microphone with one leg propped up on the back of a studio chair and leaning forward evenly to stretch his hamstrings. And in his home office he had a specially equipped stand, the horizontal bar of which could be raised to the required level and fixed there by means of two screws. On this machine, Lee could do all kinds of stretches while reading a book or watching TV. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in Bruce Lee's training program attention was paid to the development of flexibility no less than aerobics. There is no need to dispute the importance of flexibility for an athlete, especially in martial arts. In the end, the very appeal of the actions of martial arts practitioners to an inexperienced audience is largely due to the spectacle of the fights and, above all, the flexibility due to which the athletes rise high in the air and deliver impressive blows to the upper body. enemy on the run. However, unlike Jeet Kune Do, karate, savate and some northern styles of kung fu, flexibility development is not part of the core training programs of most martial arts.

Bruce Lee
Lee realized that flexibility depends on the mobility of the joints and the elasticity and strength of the ligaments, as well as the condition of the cartilage that covers the ends of the bones and serves as shock absorbers to reduce friction. Always basing his research on the laws of anatomy and physiology, Lee was well aware that the range of motion available to a particular body part depends on the nature of the joint that produces it. A ball-and-socket joint, such as in the shoulder or hip, provides much more freedom of movement than the elbow or knee joint. The gliding joint of the ankle joint is mostly limited to forward and backward movement, while the thumb, located in the saddle joint, can move relatively freely forward, backward, and laterally.

The results Lee achieved in developing his own flexibility are obvious and impressive, just look at the film or photos of his fight with NBA superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. These photos clearly show Lee, who was only five feet tall, kicking Jabbar, who is over seven feet tall, in the chin. To achieve this, he had to do a full lunge to the side, with both legs forming a vertical line. These photos taken on the set of A Game Called Death and those incredible warm-up stretches we see in Way of the Dragon (before Lee gets into a grandmaster battle with Chuck Norris in the ancient Roman Coliseum) show such incredible flexibility

Lee was a great proponent of flexibility development as early as 1963, when he devoted several pages to this topic (along with the description of several basic exercises) in his book Chinese Kung Fu - The Philosophical Art of Self-Defense. Even then, his knowledge of specific exercises for developing flexibility was many years ahead of the respective views of his contemporaries.

The largest single man made site on the planet
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The Great Walls of Benin today Edo, Nigeria 🇳🇬 were a series of more than 500 interconnected earth walls (Edo: Iya) in the area around present-day Benin City.

They extended for some 16,000 km in all, took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct and were perhaps the largest single man made site on the planet in the absence of modern Earthmoving machines. This wall was destroyed to the ground by the British and their allies.

Respect and Honour to Great Benin Ancestors

PREMIERED ON THIS DAY, March 12, 1946, RAYMONDA - Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, City Center of Music and, Drama, New York.

Choreography: George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova after Marius Petipa

Production: Scenery and costumes by Alexandre Benois. Scenery executed by E. B. Dunkel Studios; costumes executed by Karinska

Cast: Alexandra Danilova, Nicholas Magallanes, Nikita Talin, Joy Williams, Marie-Jeanne, Gertrude Tyven, Leon Danielian, Pauline Goddard, Stanley Zompakos, Patricia Wilde, Ruthanna Boris, Maria Tallchief, Yvonne Chouteau, Herbert Bliss, Robert Lindgren, Ivan Ivanov

This version derives from the Petipa original at the Maryinsky as remembered by Balanchine and Danilova, abbreviated and rechoreographed by Balanchine, retaining the Petipa style.
In 1955, Balanchine choreographed Pas de Dix for the New York City Ballet; in 1973, Balanchine incorporated the version of VARIATION VII into Cortège Hongrois , a new work for the New York City Ballet using much of the Pas de Dix music. In 1961, Balanchine choreographed a completely different work to other selections from the Raymonda score for the New York City Ballet: Valses et Variations [ retitled Raymonda Variations in 1963].
(Note from the Balanchine Catalogue of Works)

The original cast of Act 1: Raymonda was premièred on the 19th January 1898 and was a huge success, with most of the praise going towards Legnani’s performance (center of the photo), Petipa’s choreography and Glazunov’s score.