Jeet Kune Do Power Strikes

Bruce Lee had the amazing ability to flow from very fast precision striking with a kind of light “flicking” energy from a long distance to tremendous power that could shell shock your body in close quarter combat.  It all came down to what we call in JKD, his body mechanics.  Knowing how to focus your entire body weight and muscle strength into your blows is a key to the JKD striking power.  Once learned, a small person can easily generate enough power to inflict a debilitating blow to an attacker. Bruce Lee was 5”7 and weighed only 128lbs! 

The analogy I like to use is, imagine you have a sack with 10 small rocks in it and you are trying to ward off an attacker. From a far distance it might make sense to pull one rock out at a time from the bag and throw it at the attacker, similar to the JKD strategy of eyes jabs and groin shots. However, from a short or closer distance that method will more than likely be ineffective.  It would make more sense to keep all the rocks in the bag and swing it with all your might to disable your attacker in one or two power blows.

How do we start to train our body mechanics for power? Here is where the practice of Kali helps our JKD.  Paul Vunak with the help of Dan Inosanto isolated six important moves with the stick.  These six moves will force the body to move and twist in such a way as to help develop power in your close quarter combat range.  Power in your blows in close quarter combat is crucial, because if you can’t hit hard, you are just going to make your attacker angrier!  Just remember anyone can learn to hit hard if they are given the know-how.  A 5’ tall person weighing 90lbs can develop a devastating blow if they learn how to impact all 90lbs plus into their strike and in my experience the average street thug can’t recover from that!