Winners Announced for Digital Copies of "Enter the Dragon"
A few weeks ago, Warner Bros. contacted me as they prepared to release the new 4K version of "Enter the Dragon." They asked if I wanted to do a giveaway on my podcast of 10 digital codes. Of course, I enthusiastically said "Yes!"
So in the recent edition of the Internal Fighting Arts podcast I asked listeners to come to this blog and leave comments on what Bruce Lee and "Enter the Dragon" meant to their study of martial arts.
As it turned out, hundreds of people have listened to the podcast but only nine people actually left comments here on the blog.
Those nine people who followed the rules will automatically win a digital code for a copy of "Enter the Dragon." Those nine people are:
** Tom Norio Sakaishi
** Liam Machlin
** Eddie Ooms
** Neil White
** Jim Strother
** Mike Sherlock
** Ernesto Pon
** James Helms
** Jovan Lezaravic
Since the people above followed the rules and left messages on the blog post, they will each get a code. So that means I had one left. Several m...
Do You Share the Quality that Made Bruce Lee Successful?
I am reading "Bruce Lee: A Life," by Matthew Polly. Bruce possessed one quality that he had in common with almost all successful people.
Bruce Lee believed in himself, had a goal, and worked hard to reach his goal.
Do you have a martial arts goal? Do you want to learn Bagua, or Taiji, or Xingyi?
It is a good idea not to write down a goal that is overwhelming. Do you want to learn Chen Taiji? Then start with the silk-reeling exercises. Set a goal of learning one every two days, and set a time to study. It may only be ten or twenty minutes, but that is okay.
Perhaps your goal is to learn a form. You can have a big goal such as "Learn Xingyi," but then have smaller goals that help you achieve the big goal.
Do you want to learn the Five Fist Postures? Then write down your goal, set a day to complete it, and then plan out the time to study and practice and get feedback.
Maybe your next goal is the Bagua Swimming Body form. Set a time to complete it, then make a plan to take it move...
Be Water, My Friend - Bruce Lee, Push Hands and Close-Up Self-Defense
One of my favorite quotes from Bruce Lee was not completely original. The concept was already part of Taoism and Zen long before he said it, but Westerners had not heard it in the early Seventies.
"You must empty your mind," he said. "Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. Put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."
I think of this often when I work with my students on push hands and other close-up self-defense skills. I try to be water, and flow around resistance to find my way to my target.
What happens when you punch water? Bruce Lee talked about an inspiration he had when he was frustrated and punched water one day on a lake. Whether this story is true or not doesn't matter. Bruce said that when he punched into a lake, he was inspired because the water gave in to his punch and yet flowed around his fist.
Taoism says "the softes...
Bruce Lee Was My Hero -- But He Was Wrong About One Thing
Bruce Lee was the final spark that I needed in 1973. At age 20, I saw "The Chinese Connection" and then "Enter the Dragon" and decided that I had to begin studying kung-fu. I had been a fan of the Kung-Fu TV show, but it was Bruce Lee -- the beauty of his movement and the power of his techniques -- that made me enroll in a class.
Bruce Lee changed my life.
Bruce Lee said that forms are dead and classical styles are useless.
Bruce Lee was dead wrong.
He died at the age of 32. That's pretty young. When I was 32, I didn't like forms. I didn't want to practice them and focused on sparring and fighting techniques. As a result, I did very well in sparring but just couldn't see the point of forms. In fact, I went to several tournaments before the age of 32 and never competed in forms.
So I can understand where Bruce was coming from. He was a young, opinionated guy -- extremely talented and a tr...
The Tao of Jeet Kune Do - A Huge Influence on My Life
In 1975, I bought my first copy of The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, by Bruce Lee. It was a paperback copy. For Christmas in 1976, I was given a hardbound edition. I still have both copies.
This year -- 2011 -- Nancy gave me the Expanded Edition of Tao of Jeet Kune Do for Christmas. As I started reading it again, it really brought back memories of just how influential these writings were when I was 22 years old.
Growing up in the Bible Belt (Kentucky, Georgia, Florida) in the Fifties and Sixties did not provide opportunities for a young guy to think outside the fundamentalist church. Anything that wasn't understood was Satanic, including the Beatles, according to ministers in my church. Actually, it was a Sunday School lecture against the Beatles that first made me realize that the religion might be full of crap. If they would lie about the Beatles just to prove a point, what else would they lie about? It started me on the journey that led me to reject that sort of narrow-minded thinking. T...
Bruce Lee and Cultivating Chi
A young man sent me an email and asked if Bruce Lee knew anything about cultivating chi. The young man didn't think so, because Bruce Lee did weight training as part of his workouts.
I believe some people have a very narrow view of what "cultivating chi" means. They think that if you aren't doing standing meditation or chi kung or tai chi or something similar, you aren't cultivating chi.
I would suggest a broader definition of what "cultivating chi" means. In my view, it means getting healthy and strong. Anything that helps you get healthy and strong helps you cultivate chi.
That would include eating right, getting enough sleep, weight training, aerobics, running, rope-jumping, sparring, working the heavybag, doing forms, doing chi kung, meditating -- all the things that make the muscles and bones stronger, the mind more calm, and the body's aerobic conditioning better.
I would urge anyone to avoid restricting themselves to such narrow views. If you buy into the concept of chi, yo...
Author - Instructor
Ken Gullette
I have practiced martial arts since 1973 and began studying the internal arts in 1987. My goal is to cut years off your development time by coaching you in the real skills for high-quality Tai Chi, Xingyi, Bagua. To see more about my bio, click the "About Ken" link on the menu at the top of this page.
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