10/09/2026
THE FACTS OF JEET KUNE DO
There’s a lot on Bruce Lee’s list that deserves discussion, but numbers 8 and 9 are difficult to ignore.
8. Strong in-fighting:
Shifty blasting. Throwing. Grappling. Immobilisations.
9. All-out sparring and actual contact training on moving targets.
Those two points say a great deal about the kind of martial art Bruce Lee was pursuing.
JKD wasn’t intended to exist only at kicking and punching range. It wasn’t supposed to stop when the distance collapsed. And it certainly wasn’t meant to be practised exclusively through compliant drills, predetermined sequences or technical demonstrations.
Yet, somewhere along the way, some sections of JKD seem to have become uncomfortable with precisely these areas.
Clinch. Throwing. Grappling. Contact. Sparring. Resistance.
Sometimes they’re treated as optional additions to JKD rather than being part of the training Bruce Lee himself described. Sometime they’re simply ignored.
That doesn’t mean every session needs to become an MMA fight. Nor does it mean technical drilling has no value. It means that eventually the training has to meet resistance.
The opponent has to move.
They have to hit back.
They have to disrupt your plan.
The range has to change.
And sometimes the fight has to become messy.
Because without that, how do we know whether what we’re practising actually works?
Perhaps one of the most important lines on the entire page is number 11:
“Individual expression rather than mass product; aliveness rather than classicalism.”
For me, that remains one of the clearest descriptions of what JKD training should ultimately become.
Learn it. Drill it. Pressure test it. Spar with it. Make it your own.
That feels considerably closer to Jeet Kune Do than simply preserving the appearance of it.
