Bruce Lee quotes

Bruce Lee is a well known martial artist and actor. What a lot of people don't know he has written a lot of texts about fighting and movement based arts. I highly recommend a collection of these called " Tao of jeet kune do".

 

This book contains a lot of interesting quotes and philosophies concerning the martial arts. I'd like to dissect one of those today.

"Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick."

-- Bruce Lee

 

Lately, I've come to a bit of an understanding concerning this quote. For me, it's explained like this in an Aikido context.

Let's say one starts in Aikido and irimi nage is being taught by your sensei. You try to imitate the movement to the best of your ability with a cooperative partner. You're doing irimi nage in your way. Later on you come to an understanding that in order to execute irimi nage there's alot more to it than just copying the movements, so you try to dissect the movements into the tiniest details. Feeling sensitivity, balance, intent, timing, positioning etc. are being studied. Usually this could be the moment in one's Aikido training where you could become discouraged. For irimi nage isn't irimi nage any more but a whole bunch of different principles which work, but only when done together will become irimi nage. At a later stage all these components are unconsciously put together and irimi nage once again becomes the movement which you "own".

This, of course, is a different version than your first attempts at irimi nage. An evolution of this theory would be the consideration of Morihei Ueshiba where he noticed a moment in his training where he had forgotten all "techniques" he'd ever learned but instead arrived at Takemusu Aiki. Spontaneous creation of technique.

 

 

In order to become free of technique, one has to learn the technique for an extended period of time. This is why my teacher will refer to irimi nage as the "twenty year technique".

Enjoy practice.

 

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