James W. DeMile : Bruce a good teacher

James W. DeMile : Bruce a good teacher

Bruce Lee

Question I have been asked a number of times. Was Bruce a good teacher?
I cannot answer for those of the Jun Fan, JKD period, I will only share my thoughts of the early Seattle period when Bruce was fresh off the boat from Hong Kong. Why is this question important? Because, of the many followers who stay in the shadow of Bruce, rather than move beyond him. He was a step forward in the martial arts evolution, not a barrier. Most of his fans are like an attendee at a motivation seminar. They get excited, energized and envy the speakers for their confidence and stature, dream of being like them, then go home, returning to a blip along life. They only remember the speaker, not what they said. I do not ever remember Bruce teaching to make us better students, only better training partners. When I met him he was only 18 and not really aware of what he knew. To himself he was nothing special, just another gung fu student. His dreams of Hollywood motivated him to train so he could impress the powers-to- be that he was not just another Asian actor. Bruce did not have the confidence, in the early years, that he displayed in the movies. His dreams were filled with doubt. He came to the USA, late 50’s, when prejudice was still an American tradition. He was Chinese in a Caucasian world. He was a quarter German, which added to his identity frustrations. He was short by American standards, wore glasses, had an undescended testicle and one leg was just a little shorter than the other and he stuttered when excited. His road to stardom was not smooth. 
Bruce had been a punk kid in Hong Kong, getting into a lot of fights. He appeared in 17 movies as a child actor and was fascinated with acting. He had no skills other than martial arts. He saw the arts as his only path to Hollywood, which was his primary goal. Since there were no masters or even gung fu students to train with he surrounded himself with streetfighters who immediately challenged his knowledge and skills. At that time, he was not interested in the martial arts as an art, only a means to an end. He had only trained in Wing Chun for three years and was not an advanced student. But, he did have the opportunity to train privately with some of the top Wing Chun teachers and therefore have a broader base of skills than the average student. Unknown to him, he had a unique talent, he was very creative. Although from a traditional background, his mixed blood fueled nontraditional thinking and when he broke the bonds of traditional training, when going to America, his creative thoughts exploded. Although he used traditional terms, he was already exploring different applications of classical teachings. This change was necessary because the traditional moves would not work well against the stronger and more aggressive western style of fighting. This is when he changed from traditional applications and focused on practicality. 

James W. DeMile

He began to break technique down and look for strengths and weaknesses. Since he was only interested in his skills, not ours, he would tend to focus training with individuals that had specific abilities. Although we were streetfighters, we also had particular ways of fighting. I had been a super heavyweight boxer in the military and attacked like a mad 6oo lb gorilla. Ed had been a professional boxer in Chicago, and could drop you, in a nano-second, with either hand. Jesse had been in Karate and Judo, was always angry and ready to fight anything, anytime and anywhere. LeRoy was a grappler and fought like a caged Grizzly bear. This is why we were all so different when training with Bruce. Bruce did not present specific information to a class, but a lot of disjointed information that was different to different individuals. His purpose was not to produce good students, only effective training partners, so he could develop a core fighting style. The better we got, the more challenging we became, which forced him to higher levels of skill. However, as Bruce became more Americanized, he realized that the battles of youth were being replaced with the daily struggles with his own emotions. A major area of talk in our rap sessions, was even though our training was street fight orientated, we realized that fighting, at the most was periodic, but our personal emotional conflicts were daily. His growing confidence as a fighter was being paired with the need for confidence in himself as a person. This is important for the Bruce lee fan to understand. Bruce not only trained his body, but his mind. The threat to him was not only physical, but mental. He knew that in reality, as he grew older, that physical challenges would become less, but emotional conflicts would always be there. Bruce added introspection to his training.
Bruce was a teacher, but only for himself. The old saying “before you conquer the world, first conquer yourself” became his personal mantra. That was the direction Bruce is pointing. Become your own teacher, your own master therapist. Aloha