{"id":1550,"date":"2011-12-19T14:46:38","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T14:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2014-08-20T13:48:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T12:48:35","slug":"fighting-fit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/?p=1550","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Fit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When he was only 17, Bruce Lee wrote in his diary … After 4 years hard training in kung fu<\/em>, I began to understand the principle of gentleness \u2014 the art of neutralizing the opponent\u2019s effort with the minimum of one\u2019s own energy \u2014 which must be done in calmness, without striving.\u00a0 It sounds simple, but the actual application was difficult.\u00a0 The moment I engaged in combat, after exchanging a series of blows or kicks, all theory of gentleness was gone.\u00a0 My only thought was that, somehow or another, I must beat him and win.\u00a0 My instructor, Professor Yip Man, would say, \u2018Loong, [Bruce\u2019s Chinese nickname] preserve yourself by following the natural bend of things, and don\u2019t interfere.\u00a0 Never assert yourself against nature.\u00a0 Never be in frontal opposition to any problem but control it by swinging with it.’<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Bruce Lee\u2019s screen image as the ripped fighter dispatching dozens of opponent\u2019s in a whirlwind of spinning kicks is the exact opposite of the how he would fight for real.\u00a0 The action movie-style is strictly for audiences \u2014 where everything has to be exaggerated.\u00a0 Even then, he actually had to slow down some of his moves, because\u00a0they were\u00a0too fast for the cameras to capture at only 24 frames per second.\u00a0 The real fighting style would involve\u00a0very efficient\u00a0rapid movement and be very relaxed.<\/p>\n

What Bruce Lee wrote in his diary was echoed in an experimental project set up in 1985, when aikido<\/em> master, Richard Heckler, was invited to teach martial arts awareness skills to US Special Forces \u2014 the famous Green Berets.\u00a0 For these soldiers, martial art meant killing a man with a single blow, the power to smash bricks and muscles like steel.\u00a0 Invincibility was\u00a0the target.\u00a0 Instead, they got a guy in baggy pants telling them big muscles and sucked-in bellies were more of a hindrance than a help.\u00a0 Like all soldiers\u00a0(and like trophy-hunting fighters)\u00a0they believed the only way to succeed at something is to push harder, faster, or longer \u2014 and that obstacles are dealt with by overwhelming them or blasting them aside.<\/p>\n

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For Heckler, the hardest problem\u00a0was getting men (whose bodies had \u2018an armour\u2019 of a high centre of gravity, slightly puffed-out chests, hard eyes and set jaws) to relax and allow their self-awareness to drop to its natural physical centre-of-gravity in the lower abdomen. \u00a0To their bewilderment, they had to learn that a martial art (particularly one like aikido<\/em>) isn\u2019t something you succeed at by being tougher.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just one more sport you could simply figure out, and then do<\/em>.\u00a0 It involved a complete redefinition of body, mind and emotions.\u00a0 Where martial sport asks you to grit your teeth, try harder and dig deeper; martial art asks you to direct your attention to\u00a0feel and\u00a0sense \u2026 To some, it might sound like asking Mike Tyson to try flower arranging.<\/p>\n

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Training blindfold to increase kinesthetic awareness – or as Bruce Lee called it ‘body-feel’.<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Heckler devised a computer-based biofeedback game, to reveal the way both the military, and our culture as a whole, deal with problems.\u00a0 A biofeedback loop, with sensors attached to the soldiers’ fingers, was set up to monitor muscle tension and relaxation.\u00a0 A display showed a little hot-air balloon rising into the sky.\u00a0 The more muscular tension the unit sensed, the faster the balloon would rise.\u00a0 The more the soldier relaxed, the faster the balloon descended.\u00a0 The object of the game was to move the balloon to dodge the missiles.\u00a0 In other words, you avoided the missiles by consciously adjusting your muscle tone between tension and relaxation.<\/p>\n

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The object of the game was to reveal something to soldiers who were used to dealing with obstacles by force and effort.\u00a0 Because, in this game, the usual approach meant instant loss of control of the balloon.\u00a0 The more effort and force was applied, the more balloons were destroyed by the missiles.\u00a0 As muscles tightened even more in frustration, even more balloons popped.\u00a0 And the greater the reaction to this, the more balloons went \u2014 as the soldiers got caught in a loop.\u00a0 So all you could hear was: Pop, \u2018Damn!\u2019\u00a0 Pop, Pop, \u2018Damn!!\u2019\u00a0 Pop, Pop, Pop, Damn!!!\u00a0 … Later, in a \u2018Eureka!\u2019 moment, one of the sergeants suddenly \u2018got it\u2019 \u2014 as though he\u2019d just discovered gravity.\u00a0 Then, minutes later, he doubted it, because it all seemed too easy \u2014 as if he wasn\u2019t doing anything.<\/p>\n

[An extract from my upcoming book Another Roll of the Dice<\/a>.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

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When he was only 17, Bruce Lee wrote in his diary … After 4 years hard training in kung fu, I began to understand the principle of gentleness \u2014 the art of neutralizing the opponent\u2019s effort with the minimum of one\u2019s own energy \u2014 which must be done in calmness, without striving.\u00a0 It sounds simple, but the actual application was difficult.\u00a0 The moment I engaged in combat, after exchanging a series of blows or kicks, all theory of gentleness was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[35,36,33,37,34,38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2271,"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions\/2271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brucethomas.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}