The Three Martial Arts aspects of Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee like other creative innovators was complex in nature and to try to classify someone like that in one or more categories is limiting. However, there are three distinct aspects of Sifu Lee that seem to cause confusion among even some devoted followers. I hope that examining each one of those three sides will help clarify what others have found confusing.  The three martial arts aspects of Lee can be classified as his Martial Arts for the movies, Martial Arts for Kickboxing and Martial Arts for street survival.   Lee was clear that what he choreographed for the movies was not always what he would do in a street fight.  For the movies , what looked good on the screen took priority over how efficient or practical a move would be in a real life fight.  For instance, in the movies, he did more kicking and certainly more high kicks than he promoted to his students. One reason was he felt the camera caught the kicks better than his hands, his hands being so fast.  Therefore, we should never confuse what he did for the cinema, for what he taught in his Los Angeles Chinatown school.  

Then there was his exploration into kickboxing. World class kickboxers were coming to Lee for expert training, hoping his tips would give them an edge in the ring. Champions like Joe Lewis, Chuck Norris and Mike Stone were some who sought out Lee for his expert advice. However, sports fighting is a different animal, which involves a lot of strategy, endurance and observation of rules.   Then finally we have what many feel was Bruce’s true passion and that was reality based fighting for the streets.  The term street fighting is a bit misleading because a large number of altercations actually occur indoors, but we use that term as all encompassing for reality based self-defense.  Sifu Lee’s concepts for reality based fighting were revolutionary at the time and focused on efficiently terminating a fight as quickly as possible.  Certain principles are considered a core to efficient fighting and that one has to find the best way to personally adapt them.   Understanding these different explorations of Lee will hopefully help to clear up past misunderstandings and not confuse his movie choreography or sports coaching with his reality based  street fighting known as Jeet Kune Do.