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Figure 4: Aldo Nadi (Photo by Rudolf courtesy of Laureate Press).
Known for his playboy antics and apparent bitterness, Nadi developed a reputation as something of a bad boy, and this naturally spilled over into his approach to fencing technique. His raised left heel, a Nadi trademark adopted by Bruce Lee, is to this day considered bad form. “All fencing teachers will tell you to keep both feet constantly flat on the strip,” he wrote. “I say—No.”19 Trying to understand this rule boggles the mind, because it is nearly impossible to maintain springy mobility while trying to keep your left heel on the ground. Try it sometime. It’s almost physiologically impossible to be fast and mobile while keeping both feet flat. There’s a reason why we call slowpokes flatfooted.20
In line with Nadi’s break from tradition, it’s not surprising that Bruce Lee—with his disdain for classical, rigid training lacking scientific investigation—would be influenced by Nadi’s On Fencing. I suppose the reasons that modern fencers still practice with the heel down—even while they claim Nadi’s footwork was his greatest strength—are the same reasons that modern martial artists fail to investigate the advantages of the straight lead. But what those reasons are remains a mystery.
N O T E S
1 M. Uyehara, Bruce Lee: The Incomparable Fighter (Santa Clarity, CA: Ohara Publications, Inc., 1988), p. 15.
2 In conversation with Ted Wong, March 18, 2004.
3 Bruce Lee, ed. John Little, Letters of the Dragon: Correspondence, 1958 – 1973 (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1998), pp. 110–111.
4 Ibid., p. 60.
5 Ted Wong with John Little, “Bruce Lee’s Lead Punch: Ted Wong Explains Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do’s Most Explosive Technique!” Bruce Lee: The Offical Publication & Voice of the Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do Nucleus, June 2000, p. 67.
6 In conversation with Ted Wong, June 8, 2004.
7 Captain John Godfrey ed. W.C. Heinz, “The Useful Science of Defence” in The Fireside Book of Boxing (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), pp. 158–162. “The Useful Science of Defence” was the first printed work on boxing. Godfrey was a regular at Figg’s Amphitheater. An avid fencer and boxer, he was quick to point out the natural evolution of boxing out of fencing. Published in 1747, the book was a huge commercial success, and two copies currently reside in the British Museum.
8 Jim Driscoll, The Straight Left and How To Cultivate It (London: Athletic Publications, LTD.), p. 20. Driscoll summed up the evolution of the rapier:
To put my argument in other words, the “Bear-Cat” brigade are bludgeon fighters, who disdain the use of the rapier, for the simple reason that they are utterly ignorant of the finer points of the game. Yet the whole history of single combat refutes their argument. Man did not abandon the club as a weapon because he preferred the rapier as a parlour pastime, but because the sword proved itself to be the more useful weapon. And it was by similar process of discovery that the axe, which had superseded the club, gave way to the sword and buckler, then to the case of swords,until even the broadsword and sabre were abandoned in favour of the rapier.
9 Lee, ed. John Little, Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee’s Commentaries on the Martial Way (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1997), p. 210.
10 Driscoll, The Straight Left and How To Cultivate It, p. 27.
11 Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do (Santa Clarita, CA, Ohara Publications, Inc., 1975), p. 100.
12 Driscoll, The Straight Left and How To Cultivate It, p. 13.
All the real champions and first fighters today, American and French, are “straight lefters,” disciples of the old British school. Jack Dempsey, Tom and Mike Gibbons, Harry Wells, Georges Carpentier, Benny Leonard, Mike O’Dowd, Pete Herman, Eugene Leonard, Jimmy Wilde, etc., are all men who hit straight, use the left hand as it should be used, are fully aware of the fact that the feet are as important as the hands in the boxing game, and are first, last, and all the time, boxers first and fighters afterwards. They can fight and do. They would not be champions if they didn’t. But when punching they send all their weight along behind their deliveries
13 Jack Dempsey, Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defence (New York: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1950), pp. 10–13.
14 Roger Kahn, A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring ’20’s (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), pp. 70–71.
15 Dempsey, Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defence, pp. 18–19.
16 Aldo Nadi, On Fencing, (Bangor, ME: Laureate Press, 1994), p. 9.
17 Aldo Nadi ed. Lance Lobo, The Living Sword: A Fencer’s Autobiography (Sunrise, FL: Laureate Press, 1995), p. 375.
18 Nadi, On Fencing, p. 5.
19 Ibid., p. 51.
20 Ibid., p. 52. Nadi’s explanation for the impossibility of keeping the left foot flat:
If a fencer’s guard is a as compact as it should be with feet in their correct respective positions, and legs bent to the proper degree, the left heel usually cannot help rising from the floor. So much so that most people have to practice for some time before being able to keep it as near the strip as indicated. For these people, to keep it down completely would require a terrific strain on the main tendon of the left leg; or else they would have to keep their legs insufficiently bent—and no foilsman can afford that. I insist upon this fundamental difference from the teachings of others.
C H A P T E R T H R E E
T H E S T A N C E
B fore we can even throw the straight lead, we must have a place from which to throw it, and in Jeet Kune Do everything begins and ends with the on-guard position, the JKD stance. Going back to our roots, remember that the physical ingredients are:
And always keep in mind that these physical ingredients are determined by the underlying ingredients:
In the rush to whale away on an opponent, people may think that the small details are trivial matters, and that simply coupling approximated gross movements with brute force is enough. But precision in executing the roots of JKD is everything. As Bruce himself argued, nothing is more fundamental than good form: “Good form is the most efficient manner to accomplish the purpose of a performance with a minimum of lost motion and wasted energy. Always train in good form.”2
Given Bruce’s emphasis on form, it’s surprising to see so many people fighting with such shoddily constructed stances. Eager to hit things, they gloss over the basics of the stance and later wonder why their technique falls short. Watch a good fighter, and note the differences. Efficient fighters waste nothing. Every motion is streamlined, and that makes them fast. Better fighters are more mobile and more effective at transferring weight into their punches. Chances are that the stance of a good fighter looks a lot different