JEET KUNE DON’T

In this post, I am going to become everything I despise, because I am about to levy a critique on a martial art/concept which I have not studied, have not fought against, have not received instruction in, NOR have I ever read the book “The Tao of Jeet Kune Do” to be able to actually have an informed opinion.  Instead, I am going to offer a critique to a soundbite of Jeet Kune Do, BUT, it DOES happen to be the most popular soundbite available (which, in turn, may be an instance of me critiquing popularity, like some edgelord counterculture Hot Topic goth kid, but I digress): “absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”  Right away, a bunch of kids wearing button down anime shirts running the physical gamut of methed out skinny to “4 Cheetos away from ‘holy sh*t’ (and, for some reason, no in between) all got excited at the mention of such a quote, because it became the mantra of every wannabe “martial strategist” who has a TON of great IDEAS about how to win a fight…just no actual practice experience.  It’s because this is one of those quotes that, on the surface, seems incredibly enlightened, progressive, and revolutionary but, upon the slightest bit of scrutiny, completely falls apart.  What appears to be a recipe to achieve the most optimal outcome by using ONLY what is useful instead results in a disastrous mishmash of half-baked concepts that never amount to anything successful.  The fact of the matter is, everyone else was ALREADY doing all of this before we got here: we just couldn’t appreciate it BECAUSE we lacked the experience to understand what it was that we were observing, believing that we ALONE were the sole determiners of the useful and the useless.

This WAS a pretty quick way to make that determination...

Breaking this down from a martial arts perspective, here’s where the concept tends to fall flat.  If one were to apply this concept in a vacuum, it would mean taking an individual with no martial arts training whatsoever and Frankensteining an entire martial art from the ground up by selecting only the best techniques from every style, rejecting all the “useless” techniques.  Take the roundhouse kick from Muay Thai, the left hook from boxing, the double leg from wrestling and the triangle choke from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and you’ve got the ultimate package!  …yeah, except: what STANCE do you execute these moves from?  What GUARD do you employ?  Ever watch one of those matches were a pure boxer fights a kickboxer in K-1?  The boxing stance tends to get it’s legs chopped down with low kicks, BUT, that is the BEST stance to throw that left hook from.  If you try to throw it from a more upright Muay Thai stance, it loses a lot of it’s power, but trying to throw that Thai roundhouse from a traditional boxing stance is a disaster, and both of those stances are garbage for shooting that double leg, but the ideal stance for THAT technique really lowers your guard and allows you to eat knees to the face.  And god forbid if you wanted to mix any capoeira into this, or some drunken boxing, or what about some weapons? 

 

What are we discovering here?  There needs to be a FOUNDATION to work upon first, and this, ultimately, boils down to my previous discussions regarding understanding through the lens of CONTEXT.  Those things that seem “useless” upon initial inspection suddenly make a WHOLE lot of sense when understood from the context of the foundation.  Traditional Muay Thai’s punchwork may appear like inferior boxing, until you realize that it was designed with a more upright and open stance in mind, and used as a means to create openings for kicks and elbows while also being able to WARD OFF attacks from 6 other limbs that boxers don’t need to concern themselves with.  And even when we THINK we’ve figured it all out with modern Mixed Martial Arts, we have to understand THIS through the lens of context, as you can watch the “evolution” of successful MMA styles coinciding with changes in the rules.  Bas Rutten’s success with open palmed strikes in Pancrase was not replicated once gloves became a more standard practice in MMA, and the soccer stomps allowed in Pride greatly changed the ground game compared to what was permitted in the UFC.  And, along with all of that, so many of the greats IN MMA came in WITH a foundation to build upon: the notion of a ground up MMA fighter is a modern novelty, and in that instance, it was their instructor who arrived with a foundation in the first place that ultimately developed their style. 

Soccer kicks make the decision to pull guard and scoot an undesirable one...

Which, of course, leads us into the realm of physical transformation, wherein we have to again view everything through this lens to understand that those things we consider “useless” that are worth rejecting are, most likely, more a product of necessity within the context of the foundation of the programming.  Alex Bromely, in a recent Dave Tate podcast, spoke to understanding “the spirit” of a program, which captures this notion so well.  It’s too easy to just look at a program on paper and say “I don’t like this, I’ll take this out, I’ll add this part from this other program I like”, etc etc, but one must FIRST understand WHY the program was structured the way it was to be able to even consider making these changes.  Was this program built around high frequency in order to get lots of practice on the movements?  If so, you do NOT want to burn yourself out with max weights or max reps in a set, even IF you find that you respond well to that stimulus.  Though sub-max may seem like something “useless” for you to throw out, in the context of the programming as a whole, it makes total sense and is incredibly useful. 

 

It's why a foundation is so essential.  So many young trainees want to just build a training program from scratch, and it ends up exactly as you expect.  For one, it’s not even a program, but simply a routine, and all it boils down to is a selection of exercises, sets and reps, because they think that a foundation means “train a muscle group 2x a week” and that the only way to accomplish this is with a 6x week Push/Pull/Legs split.  And, much like my earlier critique of JKD, what we end up with is a mishmash of half-baked ideas that don’t actually amount to anything successful, because there is no actual foundation being built upon.  There is no structure to the progression, no plan for managing fatigue, no control mechanism for eliciting enough stimulus for growth without achieving TOO MUCH, etc etc.  If one were to take an established foundation in something like 5/3/1, Conjugate, Juggernaut, Western Periodization, DUP, etc etc, they could at least have something to build UPON and refine. 

Sometimes that foundation IS sure brutality and insanity

 

In that same podcast, Alexander DOES go on to say that one SHOULD personalize these approaches based on their own personal experience, which is the last little bit of that JDK quote that is absolutely and totally applicable.  But, in turn, the necessary caveat there is that it has to be based on EXPERIENCE, which can only be gained through time and repetition.  If we try to reject what is useless from the get go, we never get a chance to actually try out all of these ideas in the context they were intended to be employed.  Similar to my “ketchup” rant, if we never actually experience these ideas as intended, we never get to understand HOW they work such that we can later employ them to our own advantage.  When studying a martial art, study it EXACTLY as it was designed FIRST and THEN take the time to play around with it.  When learning a training system, give the program a run as designed for at least ONE full cycle and see how it goes.  I’ve been lifting weights for 25 years, and I’m running Tactical Barbell Operator EXACTLY as it is laid out by K. Black right now.  I’ve been training martial arts since I was 9, and I’m in my Tang Soo Do classes right now doing EXACTLY what my instructor says to do, even IF I think the Muay Thai roundhouse is a better kick than the Tang Soo Do one.  I’m here to learn SO THAT, when the time comes, I can make the necessary adaptations.  But until I understand the WHY, I won’t be able to execute the how.