Bruce Lee, Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do
The original martial art of Bruce Lee was
Wing Chun Kung Fu. Lee learned Wing Chun
in Hong Kong from Grandmaster Yip Man in the late 1950’s. After studying Wing Chun
for about 6 years, Lee’s parents sent him to the Seattle, Washington to attend school.
After Lee arrived in the U.S., he began teaching a modified form of Wing Chun which he
called Jun Fan Gung Fu. Years later, after moving to California, Lee further modified
his original Wing Chun by adding ideas from arts such as fencing, boxing and northern
kung fu style kicking. Bruce Lee called his new art Jeet Kune Do, the “way of the
intercepting fist.”
A close examination of Jeet Kune Do reveals that it's theories,
techniques and training methods are indeed actually Wing Chun Kung Fu. Jeet Kune Do’s emphasis on
economy of motion and simultaneous attack and defense, its use of the vertical fist for
punching combined with low kicks, as well as its use of trapping hands, sticky hands (chi sau)
and wooden dummy training can all be traced back to Lee’s Wing Chun training. So it is safe
to say that Wing Chun was the basis for Lee’s art of Jeet Kune Do.
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