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The last two weeks, I’ve been on vacation and have been reading a book called Jeet Kune Do conversations, which is a number of interviews with Bruce Lee’s old students like Dan Inosanto and Taky Kimura. Anyway, there was an interesting part where Sterling Siliphant recalled Bruce Lee’s teaching of the roundhouse kick:
\”He also made me practice the roundhouse, using the instep or ball of the foot as the striking point into a target, like the upper biceps or shoulder. It was Bruce’s contention that you could break your enemy’s neck by kicking his arm because the force of the kick produced a whiplash effect.
Now, I’m a guy who believes in feeling things in order to truly comprehend them. I said to him, ‘Bruce you’ll have to let me feel that kickso I know what you’re talking about.’ He replied, ‘I don’t want to do that. It’s liable to hurt you.’ So he was just kind of nudging me with his instep, when I said, ‘No, give me a little belt, just something to let me recognize the power.’
And WHAM, he kicked me. Well, I understood immediately what he’d been talking about. My neck weny crunch, my head whipped to the side and I saw stars. I had to go to a chiropractor and I was incapacitated for three days. Bruce was very upset. ‘I hardly hit you,’ he said.
Believe me, if a guy is posed in a fighting position and you land with the power equal to Bruce’s, you’ll knock him sideways and his head will snap violently to the side. This kick is also a very effective to the thigh and an obvious killer into the ribs.\”That part caught me off guard- a roundhouse kick to the arm used to break the neck? I’ve never been kicked in the arm and had my neck snap. Usually I’d just get those red marks from shoelaces. Any thoughts on this?
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quote \”whatever\:Bruce Lee was an actor…He was a Martial Artist first. And Bruce had tremendous power. I dunno about breaking it, but maybe with the power of Bruce he could cause neck damage. Unfortuntely, he is gone and we will never know.
If the strike lands with the proper timing (opponent off balance, or fatigued) it will move you. Angle of the kick would have a lot to do with it as well, simply kicking straight into the would require much more power than coming in at a slight downward angle.
Personally can’t see enough force to put someone’s head over that quickly but then I haven’t had that one happen to me yet so can’t really say. I do know that I have been kicked in the thighs hard enough to take my legs out from under me and have my shoulder the deck before anything else.Hmm…I guess the best answer I can give is to reply with KM’s perspective. What a particular individual can do isn’t always relevant to our system. The individual person should take advantage of whatever skills and attributes they can add to their arsenal. But from a systemic perspective, the idea of breaking a neck by kicking the body is useless…I firmly believe that few or none of my average students will ever be able to do it because they aren’t physically capable or because they wouldn’t put in the training time needed.
I guess, for me, the response is that it’s a really cool thing if Bruce could do it!
Hey, I can do it! Well, sort of… I usually do it when no one is watching and the guys I’ve hit ain’t talking no more… 8)
This sounds strange. We actually defend the round kick with the arms and I don’t think it ever gave me a whiplash. Maybe, if you use the ball of the foot, it’s a smaller surface area and then it causes a chain reaction kind of thing?? If your chin is tucked and you are ready for the kick, I can’t imagine it breaking the neck. Rattle the brain maybe, but break the neck? If you are not ready for the kick and your head is up could it work then?
I guess best thing to do is get a newbie from level one, position him and whack him, just to see what happens…. 😈 😉
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GiantkillerHmmm, so maybe what is supposed to happen is that, as the kick hits, the opponent’s body is violently pushed to the side, while his head basically stays in place (or tilts to the opposite side), creating the whiplash effect?
It reminds me of these slow motion shots of crash test dummys inside cars, they sometimes show in TV commercials. When the car is hit from the side, it looks as if the dummy’s head goes one way and the body another (head tilting toward the driver’s side window, body being pushed toward the passenger’s side window). Of course, here we are talking about the impact of a car, hitting at 40 miles an hour or so. But maybe the kick, if placed correctly and with enough skill and force, is supposed to create a similar effect.
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GiantkillerI would agree with Ro- the top of the foot is not the best part to hit with. I would attribute this to Bruce developing his kicking from the Korean style he picked up from Chuck Norris. You see lots of instep roundhouse kicks in TKD sparring- where power isn’t as emphasized, and foot pads may be worn. This might also come from the study of savate, where shoes are worn (especially the roundhouse using the toe or ball of the foot- the fouette). Although Bruce studied muay thai, I read that his info came from a book called Asian Fighting arts by Don Draeger, not an in depth analysis. If he lived, I’m sure he would have looked at it more.
As I see it, if you have that kind of power to snap a neck by kicking the arm, you’d probably be better off targeting the legs. A variation I use sometimes is to kick the leg with a standard shin kick, and if they block by raising the leg, you turn the foot to hit wiht the ball of the foot sideways, usually still hitting the thigh. If you had the freakish power to cause whiplash in the neck, by using standard and the varied version of the leg kick, it would be hard to go wrong.
Bruce was an actor since age 6. Never learned any system full, he was jumping from system to system. Ha may be fast, even he wrote good books, but his self defense – as I have seen many pictures – was horrible.
He was not a superman, any top 10 K1 fighter would kill him in 1 min.
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quote \”whatever\:Bruce was an actor since age 6. Never learned any system full, he was jumping from system to system. Ha may be fast, even he wrote good books, but his self defense – as I have seen many pictures – was horrible.He was not a superman, any top 10 K1 fighter would kill him in 1 min.
I disagree that any K1 would take him in 1 minute. You are comparing them NOW to him THEN. Even back in Bruce’s day he was ahead of other MA. He would have surely evolved to this day and age also he would be like old so ia m sure he might not be in the ring against 20 something beasts. And I am not saying he was superhuman, but he had extremely powerful kickes and lightening fast. Do you think you could have taken him? 😯
I knew, I open Pandora’s box…:) Sorry. I love Bruce Lee’s movies, no doubt. He was one of the first cross trainer, as he trained with TKD, boxin, muay thai, karate, judo people…
But still, first he was an actor. He never learned anything complete, never mastered any style. Anyway, I enjoy his movies, he opened many door for MA, but he not the best ever. IMHO
Jeff,
No, he did not. He did not mastered Wing Chun. He did not have learned enough to master.
Anyway, I like his movies.
Correct- he did not master wing chun. Wing chun doesn’t use the roundhouse kick anyway. However, all accounts say that he mastered the sticking and trapping elements of wing chun, which was pretty much what he was trying to get out of it- modifying wing chun to work at long range. Although he was an actor since a young age (and the cha cha champion of Hong Kong as well), he was a fighter as well, even before studying any martial arts (beating up British kids). Anyway, all accounts I’ve read would suggest that he was a martial artist first and an actor second (in terms of importance, not chronology).
Anyway, I don’t want to debate either way if he was a \”master\” of anything- that’s just semantics. Therer was a guy who lived and breathed martial arts, who could apply everything he taught in sparring, who was a forerunner in moving martial arts from the speculative realm into actual practice through live training, and who led lots of today’s great martial artists into studying the arts. Master or not, his contributions to martial arts have been significant.
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