Bruce Lee-ification

I've been doing a lot more Bruce Lee moves recently. Actually I used to start a lot more Bruce Lee moves before I started training seriously at Kung Fu. And of course during breaks i would inevitably sometimes do these thing for fun in my first few years of training. So why am I doing this stuff now?

The first time recently I started doing Bruce Lee moves was for teaching kids. I got a really charged reaction whenever I pulled out Bruce Lee in the inner city, and among Chinese kids. Not ABC's but kids that were born in China. The inner city kids into it were mostly Black and Hispanic. I pulled out Bruce Lee once in JP among a whiter crowd and got blank stares. Since my classes have been younger and in JP recently I had put him to the side for a while. Also because I hadn't practiced the moves by myself, I accidentally used more of a boxer's stance and hurt myself mildly throwing the kicks.

Recently my knee had been hurting me, and for some reason the Bruce Lee horse stance, which is similar to a Japanese Swordsman's horse stance where both toes are pointing out, was just easier to get low in stretch out in, and to try and get a little cardio in the small space inside the door of our house. So I started doing it, and working on the high side kicks again.

Then I decided, that I should re-introduce him to my classes. It's fun, easy for me, and simple for the kids to pick up (or so I thought.) What I ended up doing at Little Panda was really breaking of the techniques into move forward (pause) move back (pause)  But it was new and it passed the time. You can't keep doing the same thing every week. I did the side kicks extremely slow (because it's easy for the kids to kick each other in the head) and so the focus was more on the foot work and the hand punches which are usually only used as feints to set up for the side kicks in the movies.

Also the poses and the hand movements are crane's wings and can be categorized as internal. And yet they are still fun and exciting and simple. So kids won't fall over trying to do them, or get bored. Plus I feel like I'm taking a break

Since I brought him back out and went over some more Bruce Lee combinations I could do, by myself and I realized the strategy and the combinations are unmistakably simplified combinations that are used in Sup Ji.

There is an oral history among the Tibetan White Crane branch that Bruce Lee went into Chan Hak Fu's studio and ended up getting some lessons in Singapore and joined the White Crane system to the point where Ip Man had to be considered his friend instead of his Master, and when Ip Man died Bruce Lee apparently sent flowers as a friend, instead of attending as a disciple.


However I've never read or seen anything on video to back this up. And also if Bruce Lee learned White Crane basics how come Chuen Pow cup are not part of his repertoire? And high kicks were not a big thing at our school.

Of course after teaching for a while, I realized that not every school is going to line up and do basics in necessarily the same way, even if they are the same system. And the more I really went through some Bruce Lee moves, and took out some combinations I used to do particularly Bruce Lee-ish when I performed Sup Ji as a second year student. It was unmistakable. Those were the basis of Bruce Lee's techniques, but he dramatized them and used them in his own way. Of course Sup Ji the way it exists in our school is different from the other White Crane's forms also.

But anyway,  the two combinations were combinations I had turned into short little kiddie forms previouslu. Now I realized if I broke the moves down, editing certain aspects out, dramatized them, and slowed them down, I could present the same combinations as Bruce Lee combinations. This makes me happy because I can use these same two combinations in multiple ways for the same group of kids. By presenting them differently they won't get bored, But by them being similar, they will find them easier to pick up.

Anyway, I guess I have nor proof other than that oral history rumor about Bruce Lee studying White Crane, which it seems nobody from his schools has ever acknowledged, so maybe it isn't true. But in any case. I can do Bruce Lee moves and White Crane moves simultaneously for classes and have them be based on sections on the Sup Ji form so that if anyone ever took real interest, it would be a side tracked training, but will be an example of an application of Sup Ji, if they were ever to be interested enough to actually study that form.