Jeet Kune Do (JKD) is the martial art created by world famous martial arts icon Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, perhaps the most celebrated and well known martial artist of all time not only starred in and directed several martial arts movies, but is also credited with almost single handedly rocketing martial arts to their huge popularity today.

After trying out several different martial arts styles at a young age Bruce Lee determined that traditional martial arts training was just to rigid and restrictive to be effective in the street and competitions. This is when he gave his own martial art the original name of ‘Jun Fan Gung Fu’, which eventually became JKD.

Jeet Kune Do could actually be defined as the very first form of mixed martial arts. Lee believed that students ought to absorb what they could from other styles without confining themselves so a small set of movements. He believed you should ‘be like water’ and be able to move fluidly and adapt to the situation at hand.

For this reason Jeet Kune Do martial arts training focused more on teaching students to the correct fighting philosophies as well as improving physical conditioning for being able to perform better. Bruce Lee himself was known to train 4 hours a day combining cardio, weight lifting and sparring.

Core to his principals of JKD was the belief that if you did not have a well toned and strong abdomen you had no business sparring or getting involved in other areas of training.

One of the key techniques taught in Jeet Kune Do which can also be seen today in combat fighting systems like Krav Maga is simultaneous parrying & striking.

This is the strategy of blocking and striking simultaneously which is much more efficient than blocking and then striking sequentially. The idea is to wait until your opponent tries to close the gap and strike you and then intercept them.

Finding a true JKD martial arts academy may not be the easiest thing today, though there are many schools throughout the US, UK and even Belgium. However, the JKD martial arts style is still often seen in use on TV, in the movies and in video games.

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