Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method

I’ve just received my copy of Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method, and I’m salivating over it! I’m only on the first page, but this book is already stirring up concerns and uncertainty I have about certain aspects of martial arts training. Bruce  Lee geared his training towards being “fighting fit”. If an exercise improved his endurence, power or speed, he would perform it. I’m currently reading about the aerobic element of his workouts, and it seems that he thought this a very important part of anyone’s martial arts training.

Training Conflict

This contradicts my club’s philosophy on training in which “cardio workout” has no place. Don’t get me wrong, our training can be very physically demanding, but the exercises we do are in the traditional “standing on one leg until it hurts” school of pain. And also, I’m not dismissing the benefits that these kind of exercises bring. Our physical training comes from doing, among other things, 20 minute siu lim taus, standing on one leg whilst circling the other slowly, performing one legged siu lim taus etc. Yet many other wing chun practitioners include a lot of physical exercise that isn’t necessarily “martial”. Bruce Lee did massive workouts and was a great advocate of building functional muscles.

Personally, I’ve always loved doing exercise. From the age of 13 I would do press ups and sit ups every night without fail, and I used to sprint round my paper round. About 8 years ago I discovered weight training and so I replaced my daily pressup/situp routine with a more structured and rounded weight training plan. I’ve dabbled in other martial arts in the past (tae kwon do, tang soo do,  some weird made up style of kung fu and ju jitsu) and they all, without fail, placed importance on the physical exercise side of training. Strength and stamina are important in a fight.

At my club, the emphasis is placed squarely, even solely, on developing skill. Muscle power is taboo. In one way, this does make a lot of sense as the whole wing chun concept enables the smaller person to beat the bigger, stronger attacker. But surely there is something to be gained from training to become more powerful. I mean, Bruce Lee did it with great success. I’m in a quandary at the moment. On the one hand I want to continue training for strength and size (I know, pure vanity!) but on the other, my sifu discourages this kind of training. He says that all the exercise you need is in Wing Chun itself.

I used to accept that, and I used to think that Wing Chun included all the training I needed, but perhaps simply accepting without testing is a little narrow minded of me. I liked Bruce Lee’s approach. He questioned old masters and tested traditional ways of doing things. If something didn’t work, it was rejected. If it did work it was absorbed. Bruce Lee also spent a lot of time researching the benefits of different types of exercise and he kept what worked. Through his training, he developed massive amounts of power.

MMA Training

Look at the training that the top dogs in MMA endure. OK, I know that they are training for extreme situations, but they are living proof that the fitter you are, the better you will fight. And some exercises are better than others at preparing you for a fight

I’m not suggesting that Wing Chun students incorporate Wanderlei Silva snorkel style methods into their training routines…

… but I think training to improve endurance, speed and power is a good thing.

Call me cavalier, but I’m going to have a look around at other training methods. I don’t believe that Wing Chun is enough – from a training point of view anyway, and certainly not at my low level of skill. It may be enough from a skill/technique/efectiveness point of view, but something inside tells me that if I were to supplement my forms and technique drills with exercises designed to develop speed and power, I will fare better in a fight.

With that in mind, I’m going to be paying a lot of attention to Part 1 of Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method. It’s all about basic training and the table of contents includes sections on aerobic, warming up, flexibility and abdominal exercises, stances and footwork. But the two sections in Part 1 that have me drooling the most are those on power training and speed training. And there are 60 whole pages on those two subjects. If doing extra curricula exercises such as these will improve my power and speed, then I want in!

Interestingly, there’s a thread going on MartialTalk discussing weight training and Wing Chun training.

As well as being very good at Wing Chun, it appears that my sifu is also a mind reader. I’d been thinking about how to develop more power in my punches and other strikes and then in last night’s class he  decided to do a little bit on developing punching power.

An Exercise For Developing Punching Power

It’s a simple exercise to do, but of course it hurts after only a very short time doing it. Here are the steps:

• hold one arm stretched out in front of you
• make a fist and squeeze tightly
• as quick as you can stretch out your fingers as far as they will go. The important points are ‘as quick as you can’ and ‘as far as they will go’. Doing this will exercise your tendons more
• snap the fingers back into a tight fist again
• repeat this cycle as fast as you can

You’ll find that you can’t do this for too long which is good. This means that you are getting a good workout in a very short space of time. When one hand is fatigued, do the same on the other hand. When that one is fatigued, return to the original hand.

You might have to get someone to feed you afterwards!

What’s Wrong With Sandbag Training?

Some people like to train their punches by punching a sandbag. There’s nothing wrong with doing this as long as you know what’s actually going on. This exercise doesn’t improve your punching power, it toughens the knuckles and turns your fists into hammers (as my sifu says). Which, again, is fine as long as you realise that punching a sandbag repeatedly over a long period of time is likely to cause joint problems in your knuckles in later life. You’d have to give up the piano, that’s for sure.

But think about it. When you punch anything, at what point in that punch are you generating the power? It’s before the impact on your target. Anything from the impact onwards, is after the power has been generated. When punching a sandbag, at the point of the impact you’ve already generated the power. This means that if you practise everything up to actually hitting the sandbag, you are still practising the generation of power. The sandbag is unnecessary. Simply punching into thin air will develop power.

So, tedious as some people might find it, a good exercise for developing punching power is to stand in a basic stance and punch with one hand and then the other. Make each punch count, it has to be strong. Don’t fall into the trap of firing off a thousand chain punches a minute. If you hit someone with those light punches, the chances are they will still be standing when you open your eyes again. So snap each punch out quickly and with force.

I’m going to have to make another revision to my new training routine to include these power generation exercises.