Internal Art cross trained wiht JKD?

[Crouchingtiger]

I just started taking some Jeet Kune Do. I like it, pretty cool stuff, seems pretty street oriented. Now I always liked internal arts. The only thing with the JKD is that I kind of feel it might take me a while to develop some good power. Now my istructors have taken various martial arts. I can see there skills and strenght. They are showing me great stuff, but I feel my power is weak. I was wondering, what would be a good internal system to mix with JKD, so I can be stronger over all, health, all that good stuff, or maybe I should be looking somewhere else? Any advice would be great.

[gedhab]

taiji quan or xing yi, ba gua etc :)

[Sandus]

The only thing with the JKD is that I kind of feel it might take me a while to develop some good power.

Internal arts will take you just as long or longer to develop "good power." They'll definitely help, but they certainly won't speed up the the process.

[cloudz]

Chi kung is a great way of developing internal strength and will also improve your health in general. It makes a great complement to any martial arts practice.

[nzric]

Try hsing-i. It's similar in a lot of ways to wing chun (and it's obvious what Bruce Lee's connection is with that style). You'll find hsing-i will be the best match with jeet kune do and it'll give you a good intro into power generation and internal martial arts.

If you're into JKD and street oriented styles, you'll probably find bagua too complicated and taiji too abstract for immediate "street use".

[Sandy]

Hi there,

I do JKD and am also something of a novice bagua student too. So far, bagua is indeed proving too complicated to combine with JKD for me. Though it probably takes years to get anywhere with bagua or any other internal art ...

I have no personal experience of hsing-i, but from what I've heard it might mix easiest with JKD, as has been suggested.

I'm just back from a seminar with Peter Consterdine, who is very street focussed as a bouncer, bodyguard and police trainer (www.peterconsterdine.com). Hsing-i is the one internal art that worked in combination with other arts for him. I highly recommend his 'Streetwise' book, which makes a number of references to both JKD and Hsing-i.

However, it's worth starting with chi kung first, as it's probably hard to do any of the internal arts without it.

Hope this helps a little! Let us know how you get on.

:)

[alienlovechild]

To put in my two cents: for me one of the biggest difference between internal and external arts is that internal arts are holistic in the sense that for any part of the body to move the whole body must move, or move specifically, the centre [hara, tan tien] must move ... the whole body must move through its centre. External arts like Karate, Tae-Kwon-Do and Western Boxing do not follow this, even though they might speak of employing the whole body and move through their centre. I don't know much about JKD, though I suspect that the same conflict might appear. I cannot state my belief in this enough, in Internal arts NOTHING can move, not even the tip of the little finger, not an inch, without the whole body moving. This degree of holism is not sought by the external arts. Hence, cross-training in external arts can actually inhibit your capacity to learn internal arts. You can't mix boxing and Aikido, Karate and Tai-chi, Bagua and Taekwondo, it doesn't work. Anyone agree/disagree?

[domino8]

Hi,

From my limited training in Chinese internal systems I don’t think cross training to learn how to develop power would help you much. The mechanics of something like Tai Chi or Hsing I are different to the external systems. If you don’t have the experience to switch between the methods in your training you run the risk of both your instructors trying to train the other’s mechanics out of you. I know I would have great difficulties trying to learn two opposing methods of delivering power in a strike at the same time.

If you are training in a striking art but don’t believe you are being trained to develop power – a fundamental – I would think one of two things are true. Either your instructor is rubbish or you’re not internalising the information he is giving you. Maybe you just need to ask him more questions? Have a chat with him before you try to learn another system to supplement what you think are weaknesses in your current training regime. Oddly enough probably the most underdeveloped skill people having in training is active questioning. I know I find it hard to ask a question when everyone around me seems to understand what the instructor is talking about.

Cheers

Paul

[Sandy]

Hi again,

I personally find it OK to switch between styles. However, what I would find difficult is mix and matching at the same time. I'd have to use one or the other, but find it fine to learn both.

For me, external training gives me a more useful set of skills in a shorter time. (Note that I said shorter, not short!) It's what I would (and have) use to defend myself if mugged. Internal training is, for now, more about the softer side of things; though with enough time and practice, this may change for me.

Sandy

[domino8]

My point would be once you have a fundamental understanding of how to generate power using one method you could then either refine or develop a different method. However; if you don’t think you have one technique ingrained trying to learn two is probably counterproductive.

If the goal of studying say Hsing I wasn’t to develop power that you wanted to use in a external style (I hate that term) but to learn some knockdowns to add to your toolbox I could see the value in it. You could adapt them to suit your method of generating power.

It is just that the way you use your body weight and leverage in a boxing based system appears different than any of the internal systems. But I’m still struggling with the concept of whole body power, let alone the application.

Cheers

Paul

[Sandy]

My point would be once you have a fundamental understanding of how to generate power using one method you could then either refine or develop a different method. However; if you don’t think you have one technique ingrained trying to learn two is probably counterproductive.


Hi Paul,

Yes, I would agree with that. My external training is sufficiently ingrained (and tested!) that I feel comfortable to start learning internal arts. However, being a complete beginner in both might well cause confusion for some people.

[alienlovechild]

I teach internal arts, and in my experience raw beginners are easier to teach than some ingrained external arts practitioners, as they have to unlearn most of what they do.

[ubermint]

That crosstraining is ever counterproductive is one of the biggest myths of martial arts.
The fact is, crosstraining always has benefits, something any good coach will tell you.

[domino8]

Hi,

The original questioner seemed to suggest that he wanted to use IMA to develop power in his JKD, which he had just began. My point was that if you have just started training in one system that uses a particularly method to develop power trying to develop power by learning an alternative method could possibly inhibit his early development and shouldn’t his instructor be able to teach the fundamentals of punching hard? Not that cross training per sa is bad.

However; I would think that if you want to use cross training to enhance a specific attribute – in this case power – you should choose an art that is analogous to your current training method; for example in this case boxing. I don’t think in this scenario that Zhan Zhuang is going to deliver the same benefits for this person.

Just because someone training in twenty one different arts doesn’t mean they are cross training it means they have a lot of time on their hands. Fiona Hayes has written some excellent books on cross training methodologies that prescribes determining objectives then finding a training method to achieve them rather than adopting a random pick’n mix approach.

Cheers

Paul

[alienlovechild]

Ubermint: that's fine if you are just talking about exercise routines, but when you are talking about complex art forms based on very different principles ... external arts teach ways of moving and hitting that I have to un-teach to get the person moving and hitting internally. Surely other instructors out there have had this same experience.