Background:
When you ask most people what Jeet Kune
Do is they will tell you, “It’s Bruce Lee’s Martial Art.” Now ask someone to
elaborate what “Bruce Lee’s Martial Art” is and you will receive a series of
non-committal answers. I was the same way. JKD had always been a mystery to me
until earlier this year. It is rare to see JKD fighters on the tournament
circuit and so my exposure to them was reasonably shallow.
In late 2013 I meet a gentleman by the name of Nik
Farooqui who runs the Xtreme Training Academy out of Chicago, Illinois. His
conceptualization of JKD is a program that he calls Ballistic Fighting Methods.
He opened my eyes to what JKD is and how it could be applied in a real world
environment. With this taste I decided that I really wanted to learn
more about it. Via the powers of Youtube I got turned onto Focus JKD. After
watching an interview by Dominick Izzo with Mike VanBeek I liked what I saw
and hammered “Focus Jeet Kune Do” into Google and actually came up with the
Nashville branch.
Kevin slips my jab and comes over the top with a cross.
As a frequent traveller to the Nashville area I saw
this as a great opportunity and reached out to them. I was immediately welcomed
by Kevin Collier and Langston Glass to come get a deeper
feeling of what Focus JKD was. If you look at Focus JKD’s winter training facility
you will find a compact little building that is utilitarian and spartan. There is no real décor and everything has a place and purpose as
it should in a small area.
I get asked why I will bounce between types of
facilities. Some people equate size with the quality of a Martial Art and as
such a bigger facility must be better. In my experience this is not the case.
Great Martial Artists can be found in all areas and their skill is not
reflective of their facility. Focus JKD is not a commercial operation and as
such they have dedicated a huge amount of personal resources to their school.
They train indoors and outside, on mats and in mud, and if you have never tried
your techniques outside your dojo you should. Does what you do work outside
when it is wet? Can you fight in a tight space with multiple partners bearing in
on you? The guys at Focus JKD know.
Langston thrusts at me with a stick while working on weapon defence.
What did
I learn: You never know where you will pick
techniques up and there is always something to learn at another school, even
during the warm up. I was introduced to the pivot bag which is essentially a
speed bag inverted on top of a metal pole. The bottom of the pole is attached
to a swivel with springs to pull it back up. The pivot bag is wonderful for
building striking mechanics because of the movement it simulates. If your
punches have any loop to them then the bag begins to sway back and forth making it
very hard to hit. This swaying represents an opponent bobbing and weaving in a
fight working your timing and coordination. Finally if you want to
maintain a high volume of hits you need to be right on top of the bag and
actively engaging it rather than waiting for it to return to its original
position. It is a great tool to develop good technique, proper timing and
aggression.
Kevin shows me how to use the pivot bag while making sure to keep up aggression.
Another great lesson was how to use “destructions”
in combat. A destruction is very simply aligning a hard point on your body with
an incoming strike in order to inflict pain on the attacker. The most current
example is Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva in which Silva snapped his leg
against Weidman’s knee. Focus JKD taught me the basics of how to setup a proper
destruction. First you learn to block. A destruction does you no good if you
are knocked out by the first punch. The second step is to learn how to avoid a
punch by slipping. You just move out of the way allowing the punch to slide
past you. This trains your reflexes and timing. Finally, as the attack comes in
you slide out of the way and replace your opponent’s target with something
hard.
I throw up an elbow to intercept Kevin's hook with a destruction.
As you put together these steps you began to have a
great idea how all the pieces fit. You weren't trying to block
punches with your elbow. This is how I had always interpreted destructions in
the past and I was sceptical of their effectiveness. After all, if you are minimizing
your blocking area in favour of a harder surface you run a much higher risk of
being knocked out. The way that Focus JKD teaches you makes much more sense.
Because they either block or slip out of the way the destruction changes from
being a necessary technique to survive into a functional technique that doesn't
endanger you. In short, if you miss a punch with your elbow it doesn't matter.
The punch will sail past or glance off a block and you are free to continue
engaging your opponent. I really enjoyed the focus on assuring your personal
safety before concentrating on an offence.
What was
similar: “We don’t need to be the best, we
just need to be good enough to cheat.” This was a comment that Langston told me
as we were training and it rings true. When I gave an interview with Dominick
Izzo on his Youtube Channel I talked about how the biggest difference between
sport fighting and the street was the ability of the sport fighter to prepare
ruthlessly in advance of the fight. However, things are a little different for
the “street fighter.” One of the gentleman* I trained with told me once that on
the street “you don’t have to win you just have to avoid losing.”
I throw up a hand to intercept a knife thrust.
Not technically what you are supposed to do, however, I was backed into a corner and panicked.
This was exactly the mentality of Focus JKD. They
aren't training to be the next Floyd Mayweather Jr. or to fight George St.
Pierre. They don’t need to win a knife fighting tournament or weapons competition.
Instead they are the great generalists of Martial Arts. When I call Focus JKD
generalists it pertains to the way they conduct their training. They won’t out
box a kickboxer, rather, they now enough to bring the kickboxer into an area
where he is not comfortable like ground or weapons fighting. This “Jack of all
trades” approach to training is perfect for the street where there are no fixed
scenarios and adaptability is more valuable than specialization.
A great night training with Focus JKD Nashville. I learned a lot and made some great friends.
Conclusion:
Focus JKD is a great place to go if
you are looking for combat training that you can apply in your everyday life.
If you want to experiment and test yourself in a wide range of scenarios than
this is the place for you.
*I can't remember the gentleman that left me the quote “you don’t have to win you just have to avoid losing.”
Best regards and keep training,
Martin "Travelling Ronin" Fransham
*I can't remember the gentleman that left me the quote “you don’t have to win you just have to avoid losing.”
If you are interested in training together I would love to get together with you. Drop me a line on facebook and we can connect. I would love to learn from you. On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Travelling-Ronin/583588935029877?ref=hl
On Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwXDjTjOSVMm3-98e0gHUXLlQecYRkcvN
Focus JKD Nashville: https://www.facebook.com/pages/FOCUS-JKD-Nashville-Counter-Violence-Specialists/118179801668862On Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwXDjTjOSVMm3-98e0gHUXLlQecYRkcvN
I do so love your posts.
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