bruce lee's workout

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slayer36 said:
maybe "strength wasnt his strong suit" but you have to be strong to hit a heavy bag that hard.
maybe not in a powerlifting usa way, but in a fighting way.

You are referring to power. Yes Lee was VERY powerful physically.

Anyone that has ever played football has probably heard a coach say "you can't take your bench press on the field with you". Granted this is the Strength forum and not everyone is a fighter, but I think too many people equate absolute strength with fighting prowess and that isn't always the case.
 
Mav3rick said:
Granted this is the Strength forum and not everyone is a fighter, but I think too many people equate absolute strength with fighting prowess and that isn't always the case.

That is true, I always here shit like "He's a stong guy, don't fuck with him or he'll kick your ass!"
 
when he started lifting, his average weight was 173. It is in one of his books. When he first came to America his average weight was 158 if I remeber.
 
Urban said:
no. he was not. he was very fast, but strength was not... his strong suit. Bruce brought the foundations of MMA to the world. Not freakish strength, blinding speed, or superhuman skill, his contribution to martial arts was a paradigm shift.

agreed....i think he had good athleticism and speed, and maybe some power. But pure strength is another thing all together.
 
"no. he was not. he was very fast, but strength was not... his strong suit. Bruce brought the foundations of MMA to the world. Not freakish strength, blinding speed, or superhuman skill, his contribution to martial arts was a paradigm shift. "

Urban, i usually agree with you on most things, but you are totally wrong here. From the book mentioned in the start of this thread "The art of expressing the human body":

"Certainly Lee's feats of power are the stuff of legend, from performing one-finger or thumbs-only push-ups, to supporting a 75lb barbell at arms length in front of him with elbow locked for several seconds,...............Lee could send 300lb punching bags slapping against the ceiling with a simple side kick."

My point is how can you not consider someone freakishly strong who can support more than half of thier bodyweight in that way???? How many fighters at any weight do you know of that can do that to a 300lb heavy bag? Ive seen videos of crocop hitting 300lb bags and he certainly doesnt send them slapping against the ceiling.

But i do agree with you that his most important contribution was philosophical not physical.
 
"But i have to say, after competing quite a bit myself, in wrestling, sub grappling, pankration that it's easy to be a bad ass in practice and talk a good game. True warriors compete, real men compete...."

ummmmmmmmm NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. TRUE WARRIORS FIGHT. FOR REAL. LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS. ATHLETES COMPETE IN A RING. A WARRIOR CAN BE AN ATHLETE BUT BEING AN ATHLETE DOES NOT MAKE SOMEONE A WARRIOR. Crocop is an example of a warrior athlete, but very few mmas fit the description of warrior.

"If you have never stood across the ring from some guy who was bigger, stronger, younger than you with a professional fighter as a coach at his side and you are on the other side of the ring without a coach, and there are about a hundred cameras and video recorders trained on you. And you are now both looking at each other waiting for the signal to start.....Then you wouldn't really know anything about how much or what kind of respect Lee deserved."

UMMM NOOOOOOOOO AGAIN FIGHTING IN THE RING WITH RULES IS NOT COMBAT. IT IS A SPORT.
It is certainly the most intense sport and the best approximation of combat that we have while still being safe for the fighters, but a person with the mentality of Lee would say "well unless you have stood across from a man who wanted to rob you, beat you, and possibly kill you, and you have to fight him all alone, when you dont know whether or not he is carrying a weapon, in unfamiliar territory.....blah blah blah........."
In his day, in america, there weren't even full contact karate tournaments, had he wanted to compete he still couldn't have found a contest even close to mma in america.
 
"when he started lifting, his average weight was 173. It is in one of his books. When he first came to America his average weight was 158 if I remeber. "

umm no, his average weight was 135, he was 5'7.5" and was down to 125 in the movie Enter the dragon.
 
With sooooo much information availiable on him its a shame that people around here don't know more about him. No shit the methods he used to train isnt the best available today it was 30 years ago. but like i said before:

IT SHOW HOW MUCH YOU CAN DO WITH THE BASICS, A SHITLOAD OF DETERMINATION, AND A LIFETIME OF DISCIPLINE.

and by the way discussing wheter or not he would be able to take lighweights today is irrelevant, stupid and just a huge waste of time.
 
"agreed....i think he had good athleticism and speed, and maybe some power. But pure strength is another thing all together. "

UMM NOOOOOOOO strength is intimately tied to power. you cannot be extremely powerful without strength.
 
i think of power as strength x speed

then theres weight x speed
and theres endless combinations with endurance thrown in
 
Looking at that routine, it's no wonder he suffered a brain hemmorhage. The guy was pushing himself without much rest and aiming to achieve feats beyond his means, which no doubt caused increased blood pressure and unfortunately led to his untimely demise. Discipline is one thing, practicality is another. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
 
JamieO said:
With sooooo much information availiable on him its a shame that people around here don't know more about him. No shit the methods he used to train isnt the best available today it was 30 years ago. but like i said before:

IT SHOW HOW MUCH YOU CAN DO WITH THE BASICS, A SHITLOAD OF DETERMINATION, AND A LIFETIME OF DISCIPLINE.

and by the way discussing wheter or not he would be able to take lighweights today is irrelevant, stupid and just a huge waste of time.

I'm a huge Bruce Lee supporter, but you're looking at it the wrong way here. Bruce wasn't so great because of his training routines. In some cases, he was good IN SPITE of his training routines.

And I hate to trash Bruce Lee, but what do you mean "how much you can do with the basics?" He may have known a lot about martial arts, and been ahead of his time, but don't forget, Bruce Lee was an actor. He made martial arts movies. While he had a mean side kick, great phyical attributes, and I'm sure he was a good fighter, we're not exactly talking about someone who dominated in MMA. That is, after all, the sport that this website is dedicated to.
 
JamieO said:
"agreed....i think he had good athleticism and speed, and maybe some power. But pure strength is another thing all together. "

UMM NOOOOOOOO strength is intimately tied to power. you cannot be extremely powerful without strength.

He said "pure strength." Power is related to starting strength, not pure strength. How much you can bicep curl has little to do with the power behind your punch. Starting strength is what initiates speed, which is what creates power when combined with mass.
 
"And I hate to trash Bruce Lee, but what do you mean "how much you can do with the basics?"

by basics i meant the basics of lifting, not martial arts.

"He may have known a lot about martial arts, and been ahead of his time, but don't forget, Bruce Lee was an actor. He made martial arts movies. "

and in countless interviews with peole who knew him they always say that Lee considered himself a martial artist who acted not the other way around. he wasnt taking fucking acting classes all day he was training to fight.

"While he had a mean side kick, great phyical attributes, and I'm sure he was a good fighter, we're not exactly talking about someone who dominated in MMA. That is, after all, the sport that this website is dedicated to. "

NOOOOOOOOO SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
HOW COULD HE HAVE DOMINATED MMA?????? TIME TRAVEL?????????
THERE WAS NO MMA BACK THEN RETARD. AND AS I ALREADY SAID ARGUING ABOUT WHETHER HE WOULD DOMINATE MMA IS POINTLESS.
 
Feats shrouded in anectodal myth. I mean, really... is there any video of ANY of this? I always here shit about bruce, but lets face facts objectively here:
Bruce's striking speed from 3 feet away was five hundredths of a second. any Idea how that compares to normal?

Bruce did press ups using only 2 fingers. I can do this

Bruce could thrust his fingers through unopened cans of Coca-Cola. (This was when soft drinks cans were made of steel much thicker than today's aluminium cans) What concerns me most about this is that it's highly out of character for him. I mean. there's a good chance he could lose a LOT of skin on his hands and such an intelligent man wouldn't do something so dumb just to impress somebody.

Bruce was able to explode 100lb bags with a simple sidekick. I've heard of one incident where he did this and it was an old heavybag that was filled with rags. I have doubts about the integrity and quality of the bag as well as his ability to repeat the act with a regular heavybag.

Bruce could throw grains of rice up into the air and then catch them in mid-flight using chopsticks. HIGHLY suspect. I mean, REALLY HIGHLY suspect, and what possible applications could this have?

Bruce would ride for 45 minutes (10 Miles) on a stationary bike, when he'd finished, a huge pool of sweat was beneath him. I gotta tell you, 10 miles in 45 minutes is only 13 and one third miles an hour. I don't have a whole lot of experience with stationary bikes (I may give one a shot tomorrow just to see what this is like) but off hand it doesn't seem that noteworthy.

Bruce once caved in a protective headgear made from heavy steel rods, rods that had previously withstood several blows from a sledgehammer. so they hit it with a sledge and then had bruce kick it? I'm not sure I understand how you could do that without hurting yourself.

Jesse Glover - "When he could do push ups on his thumbs and push ups with 250lbs on his back, he moved on to other exercises".
- while I HAVE done pushups on my thumbs (only 2) I, admitedly cannot do pushups with 250 lbs on my back. However, that's perfectly attainable

Herb Jackson - "The biggest problem in designing equipment for Bruce was that he'd go through it so damn fast. I had to reinforce his wooden dummy with automobile parts so he could train on it without breaking it. I had started to build him a mobile dummy that could actually attack and retreat to better simulate "Live" combat, sadly Bruce died before the machine was built. It would have been strung up by big high-tension cables that I was going to connect between two posts, one on either side of his backyard. The reason for the machine was simply because no one could stand up to his full force punches and kicks, Bruce's strength and skill had evolved to point where he had to fight machines. Bruce was very interested in strength training, you could say that he was obsessed with it".
- also interesting to note is that he was interested in fencing training and most of his clippings were on bodybuilding, NOT strength training. Admitedly you would not find a whole lot of powerlifting or strength training information back in the 70's however if you had the money you could aquire old texts by sandow and such. other than that this quote illustrates the idolic worship of bruce by his students and peers.

Danny Inosanto - "Bruce was only interested in strength that he could readily convert to power. I remember once Bruce and I were walking along the beach in Santa Monica. All of a sudden this huge bodybuilder came walking by, and I said to Bruce "Man, look at the arms on that guy" I'll never forget his reaction, he said "Yeah, he's big, but is he powerful???".
- there is here distinct difference drawn between strength and power by bruce. He did understand that he had to spend more time on training his technique than in the weight room training to get bigger and stronger and thus really learning to apply the strength he had. Furthermore, if you look into a lot of bruces training he advocates lifting explosively, something that is now known to increase (drumroll....) explosive strength. you can see here that he was not interested in strength but in power.

I'm trying to be as objective as I can here, and I'm very skeptical about any claim that cannot be substantiated. anyone reading this thread should have known before this post how I felt about bruce.

on the 300 lb heavy bag, I remember reading an article (interview) with somebody who said bruce bugged him to make him a "man bag" or something similar and was tired of all these "boy bags" they were using for practice. So they put together a 300 lb bag and bruce hit it and sort of went "woah" and the bag barely moved. Sure enough a week or two later bruce was moving the thing around pretty well, but not nearly knocking it up to the ceiling. I have no Idea where these ridiculous rumor begin or how people can possibly beleive them.

Lastly, it's largely suspected that is was a painkiller that he was taking that lead to his coma and eventual demise. Which reminds me, I need to take some Ibuprofen.
 
"He said "pure strength." Power is related to starting strength, not pure strength. How much you can bicep curl has little to do with the power behind your punch. Starting strength is what initiates speed, which is what creates power when combined with mass."

please define "pure strength." since i have never heard of the term "pure strength" i assumed he just meant general strength. did he mean absolute strength? or maybe maximum strength? because these are terms people actually use.
and starting strength?????? you mean starting power???? because again starting power is a term people actually use, but ive never heard of starting strength.
 
"- while I HAVE done pushups on my thumbs (only 2) I, admitedly cannot do pushups with 250 lbs on my back. However, that's perfectly attainable"
yup 250lbs push ups are perfectly attainable. but if you weigh less than 150lbs i would call that freakishly strong.

"- also interesting to note is that he was interested in fencing training and most of his clippings were on bodybuilding, NOT strength training. Admitedly you would not find a whole lot of powerlifting or strength training information back in the 70's however if you had the money you could aquire old texts by sandow and such. other than that this quote illustrates the idolic worship of bruce by his students and peers."

interesting, but not the whole truth, from the same book:

"Since muscle magazines were the only existing source of health and strength-trainings information at the time, Lee immediately subscribed to all the bodybuilding publications he could find. He ordered courses out of magazines and te4sted their claims and training theories in the lab that was his body, in addition to frequenting seconhand book stores to purchase books on bodybuilding and strength training, including ones written prior to the turn of the centurry (such as Strenght and How to Obtain It by Eugene Sandow -originally published in 1897)"
odd how they mention that he owned a book by the exact person you mention......

"I'm trying to be as objective as I can here, and I'm very skeptical about any claim that cannot be substantiated. anyone reading this thread should have known before this post how I felt about bruce."

do you feel the same way about Sandow?? because even though i will never be able to know for sure, i have no trouble believing that he actually did some of the incredible things that people attribute to him.
 
no, I don't beleive it 100%. and I don't mind being proven wrong on lee's interest in strength training (and inclusion of old texts from the turn of the century). that's how you argue people, you come up with evidence and you present it, not with heresay and anecdotes. nicely done and I will re-read my copy of said book.
 
LCDforMe said:
lol.

Yeah, he was pretty cool but like Urban said, he just wasn't the best lifter around.
seems to me his lifting worked just fine for what he wanted to do. In 25 years the body builders of the future will be saying damn them guys back in the late 90's and early 200's had no idea whaqqt they were doing.
 
Every last one of you suck. First of all for arguing perception. Bruce Lee's legacy (so to speak) is a matter of that. There are many things to consider here without getting into arguing bantered about third-hand information (what you or anyone else thought of him personally):

1) INDIVIDUALITY - One of the most significant things I've ever read about the Jeet Kune Do wars (between former actual students of his and even his ex-wife), is that too many people thought Jeet Kune Do was some secret manual with all the answers to how every single person should fight. What kills me is so many young dipshits treat this apparently brand-new dominant Martial Art called "MMA" the same way. Bruce experimented with things that work for HIM, so even his recorded information is relative. Without having him right in front of you to make comparisons you could only make with your own two-eyes, all of your drawn conclusions about him are speculative at-best, wether it's to accredit or discredit him with ANYTHING. You are not Bruce, quit fucking speaking for him or interpreting shit he did to you or anyone else you know.

2) PEOPLE EXAGGERATE - I used to teach Martial Arts and had this happen both to myself and students of mine. Once I asked a student of mine to describe what it was like to spar with one of my best students who was known for his speed. He said to the third-party "this kid took a one-legged stance (he was using a White Crane variation) and I swear all he did was he shrugged his lead-shoulder, and the next thing I felt was my lip swelling up." Now imagine that shit gets written into like 10000000000000 books over the years. I happened to be there on this occasion and it's MOSTLY true, but that doesn't matter, 50% of you when you read that thought "wow that kid must have been FAST"...the other 50% thought "whoooooooooo I smell a steaming nutty pile of bullshit." None of which matters. That's YOUR decision to make.

3) PERSONAL INPUT - This ALWAYS gets added when considering Martial Forefathers. Everyone's got an opinion, and VERY FEW people have gone lengths to be at-all qualified in terms of actual knowledge of the PERSON in question to render such opinions. I was in San Fransisco and met a former student of Yip Man's who actually trained with him around the same time Bruce did. He HATED, and I mean HATED Bruce. But if you took 5 minutes to objectively listen to the guy you could hear in his stories that his biggest problem with Bruce was the favoratism shown to him by Yip Man. This tainted everything he had to say. Which is hilarious, because there's people taking this guy's word for Gospel because well, he TRAINED WITH BRUCE. Whatever. Just like how now there's all these stories disclaiming Bruce's version of the fight with Jack Wong, but the best part being that they come out AFTER one of them is dead, and the ONE person who actually was there (and was not a friend of either particularly) besides the two of them has remained silent. Maybe he knows when it's best to keep your mouth shut.

4) HUMANITY - The guy was human, some of the shit I've read to both accredit and discredit him are equally absurd in assuming he's perceived as anything but. When someone goes overboard about how in-human he APPEARED, what I like to remind them of is that the motherfucker was NEARSIGHTED, and without either his glasses or contact-lenses, he would have a hard time distinguishing details at distances even in fights (hence his fascination for using speed to control and close distances fast, and in-fighting) and that he had one leg longer than the other by about an inch or so, which made him favor one-side when taking stances. Nevermind what he could and couldn't do, those are important physiological constants that put him to a disadvantage. Those who like to talk about him like he was some sort of immortal would do well to remember small details like that. He had physiological things to overcome just like the rest of us.

5) PRACTICALITY - Be fucking practical when going over shit like this. I myself possess most of the home-video footage of Bruce training and sparring at demonstrations. Make no mistake, the man was NO slouch. Saying any current lightweight would dominate him is JUST AS STUPID as saying he could take anyone. Anyone who knows ANYTHING about fighting knows EVERYONE loses eventually. Look at the records of the fucking MMA guys you worship. NONE of them are un-blemished whatsoever to my knowledge. And most of them have lost to guys they've tooled on occasion. Bruce was not immune to this, but it's just as silly to assume he would be completely overtaken by it given the MAIN factor in all this, NONE OF YOU KNOWS/KNEW him. ALL you can do is SPECULATE.

6) TIME FRAME - Yes Bruce existed in a completely different decade. A completely different era in Martial Arts perception. But this neither discredits or accredits him. We still practice techniques today that were invented HUNDREDS of years ago, and prefected GENERATIONS ago, so no this doesn't make anything Bruce accomplished FOR HIMSELF invalid. What it does do is put it into a specific perspective. Comparing him to today's athletes is pointless (aside from personal amusement), but not entirely impossible. What I'm astounded at is the extreme arrogance of this generation in thinking they're so fucking FAR beyond 30 years-ago. Now you know why Fathers run away, because they have to listen to you spewing bullshit about how much better you know/are than they were, and it's not worth their time or effort to either explain life to you, or kick your self-righteous ass all over the place.

Now if any of you cannot consider all of these things before offering your half-assed opinions, sit down and shut the Hell up.
 
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