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Following another hugely successful Australian tour,
Guru Dan Inosanto, the name associated to the legendary
Bruce Lee and heir to Bruce Lees Jeet Kune Do is regarded
as one of the most prominent and exceptional martial
artists of our time. His relentless pursuit of knowledge
and physical excellence in the combative arts have made
Guru Dan the most sought after instructor in the world.
The following interview was conducted by Arthur Ligopantis
whilst on a two week training tour in L.A with members
of the Australian Jeet Kune do Association.
Guru Dan, your renown worldwide
as being a teacher of teachers. Could I start off by
asking you about your first exposure to the martial
arts and your motivation behind studying the arts….?
I started somewhere around…
right after World War II. My Uncle Vince was a member
of the first Filipino Infantry and Second Filipino Infantry
and after World War II he came back and lived with the
family. That’s when my first exposure came in
the arts of Judo and Japanese Ju Jitsu and also what
they called Okinawa Te in those days.
How many systems of martial arts
have you actually studied…?
I’ve never really counted
the systems and it wasn’t really important to
me but I think in the Filipino Systems alone, it numbers
well over thirty.
And of those arts, how many are
you certified in…..?
I think out of the thirty,
probably twenty. I’m talking about the Filipino
Martial Arts now.
It’s well known and documented
that you’re the heir to Bruce Lee’s Jeet-Kune
Do. Could you tell me how you first met Bruce Lee and
what impression he made on you….?
I met Bruce Lee in 1964 at
the first International Karate Championships and I was
given charge of him by my Instructor, Ed Parker who
was in Kenpo Karate in those days and he said just to
be his host and drive him around town and make sure
he ate properly and made sure that he was well accommodated.
I was very impressed with his philosophy and of course,
obviously with his skill in the martial arts and his
ability to express himself not only on the physical
art but also in total philosophy at that time period.
When did you officially start studying
under Bruce….?
I studied immediately after
the first International Karate Championships because
Bruce stayed in Los Angeles and he needed a dummy, as
he was giving about four weeks of demonstrations at
the Sing Le Theatre in Los Angeles. He needed someone
to be the fall guy or the “ou ki” as they
would say, so I became his dummy and in return for being
his dummy, he started to train me.
How different was the training
under Bruce compared to anything else that you’d
studied in that time period….?
I think for that time period,
he was way ahead of his time. I would say that he was
more into the practicality of it. In the beginning he
studied forms, but then went away from it. Everything
was like a drill format, working on things that would
develop your speed, your power, your awareness, different
tactics for countering the hand attacks and the kicking
attacks. So he was more into the practicality of the
art.
What did the training curriculum
consist of from the early 1960’s and how did it
change…..?
Early 60’s, because
we weren’t educated, we did a lot of really hard
contact sparring and as I look back now, it wasn’t
really the greatest thing. But because we didn’t
really know how to train, we think we over did it on
the full contact. Then later on we started to do away
with all the training equipment. We were too geared
up in the beginning, we had the shin guards, chest protectors,
facemasks and different types of bodyguards and elbow
pads. We were too bulked up and later on we stripped
away the equipment and learnt how to control the sparring
through light tempo contact sparring for training.
What do you think the main theme
was that Bruce was trying to push…..?
I think to deal with what
was reality and to train you in what he thought at that
time period was the best way to get the body ready for
combat or self-defence. And off course if you wanted
to go into tournaments, which at that time the tournaments
were all point karate, he didn’t think too highly
of that. He preferred that we enter in the boxing matches
because he thought there was more realism in western
boxing.
Although Bruce researched many
arts, he only ever taught three arts in his lifetime:
Jun Fan Gung Fu, Tao of Chinese Gung Fu and Jeet Kune
Do. Could you please explain what each of those arts
consisted of and how they differed…..?
They are all somewhat the
same, the Jun Fan Gung Fu is in Jeet Kune Do, and in
the Tao of Gung Fu, there is Jun Fan Gung Fu. It all
stems from Jun Fan Gung Fu, then later on for a short
period, it was called the Tao of Jun Fan Gung Fu. He
later said, “that’s too many things,”
so that’s when he referred to it as Jeet Kune
Do. There are a lot of elements that are in all three
but it is set for Jun Fan Gung Fu and it is set for
what he called the Tao of Chinese Gung Fu.
It’s been said that in order
to truly understand Jeet Kune Do, one must first have
a solid understanding in the Jun Fan arts. What are
your thoughts on this…..?
I think that’s a really
good idea, that you should train in Jun Fan Gung Fu
and then expand into your own Jeet Kune Do. However,
I honestly believe at this time period, a person could
get to his form of Jeet Kune Do by studying different
arts and just evolving into some of the principles and
concepts that were laid down by Bruce Lee. The term
Jeet Kune Do is finding your way through the first part,
which was Jun Fan Gung Fu and then expanding to find
out what is your own Jeet Kune Do.
In developing Jeet Kune Do, Bruce
borrowed heavily from western fencing & thought
very highly about the principle of stop hitting or interception.
In fact, he named his whole art after this principle.
Could you tell me how he trained and developed his interception
skills and what sort of drills he would teach his students…..?
The intercepting part came
from his brother, Peter who was a champion of Hong Kong
in the epee. Bruce Lee relayed to me that as a teenager,
he wanted somebody to practice with and he couldn’t
find anyone to practice, so he asked his brother Peter
if he would help him out. Peter told him that he didn’t
do any martial arts but he would help him out if they
played a game of slap. So they decided to put their
left hand behind their back and their right hand was
used to slap the person, after that, his brother just
really truly got the best of him which infuriated Bruce
Lee, so he ran and tackled him and they started punching
and wrestling on the ground. But he said from that lesson
he learned the value of disengaging, how to stop hit
and that came from his brother, Peter.
So he started to study fencing from I guess, various
different friends and he did a lot of researching, he
then incorporated the stop hitting into the Jeet Kune
Do. It’s like if he side kicks, you try to counter
before he initiates the attack, if he left jabs or right
crosses, you try to counter before. It takes a high
degree of awareness obviously and you definitely have
to practice it because you can’t always do it
100%. So sometimes you have to do what he referred to
as “attack by drawing” rather than stop
hitting. Although you could stop hit and attack by drawing
at the same time but sometimes it’s not possible,
so now, we have to go straight defence before you can
go into an offensive mode.
Guru Dan, you’ve been quoted
as saying that “whenever Bruce was really serious
about a street fight, he’d always revert back
to the straight blast”. Could you tell me how
important the straight blast is for the Jeet Kune Do
student and its relevance to street fighting……?
At this point in my life I
don’t think that’s the only thing you can
do, but at that time, he thought it was very important
to straight blast. What the straight blast does, is
overload the computer centre, the brain and the person
being hit by the straight blast can’t compute
all the incoming things to his body. Therefore, there’s
kind of a panic mode and he doesn’t have his composure
for a while and that’s why the straight blast
works. So that is essential, as long as you pressure
him, it doesn’t even have to be a straight blast,
you can do it with curving strikes and hooking strikes
and put him off balance, then that’s going to
disturb his composure and hopefully one of them will
score and then getting a further hit, by putting on
a more devastating hit after you do the straight blast.
In the book “Jeet Kune
Do Conversations” by Jose Fraguas. Sterling Silliphant,
talks about his training experience with Bruce Lee.
He goes on to say that Bruce taught him to dissect time
into infinite degrees, it’s what Bruce referred
to as “playing between the keys of the piano.”
What exactly did he mean by this and how does one develop
it…..?
I learned a lot of it through
weaponry and when I was training with Bruce, to be really
honest, I fully didn’t understand what he meant
by half beat and one and a half, two and a half and
three and a half beats. What it is with most people,
you strike and he strikes and that’s two beats.
He strikes, you strike and then you half beat when he
is in the middle of trying to strike you. So you are
stealing a beat from him, that’s basically what
it is. If I can explain from stick fighting, if you
hit with a number one and he hits with a number two
and number one and number two and number one, these
are all four beats then you go one, two, three and then
you do the half beat or quarter of a beat or an eighth
of a beat and that is how you can counter him. |
