Got this question whilst visiting another forum. How do you know what and/or when to discard? Some techniques will not work or should not be tried on certain individuals due to their size or even speed. Some camps argue that trapping should be discarded because you can just hit and it has become non efficient to even bother with. Well let's discard everything but one punch and/or one kick. Even better discard everything but a really mean look. I for one would rather train trapping, sensitivity etc... and never need them as to need and not know. But regardless of what camp you are in; how do you discard what you don't need when responding or intercepting?


Kent

Hello Kent!

I have had certain students before who just couldn't seem to get something no matter how hard they tried! Sometimes it is best to just, as I like to say, file those things away for a later time when your skill has improved to a level where that very technique may suddenly work quite well for you! I, like many others, have my favorite things that seem to work best for me. Those are the things that I will rely on to save me when the chips are down. However, just as you said in regards to trapping and energy/sensitivity training, some things require more work, and the efforts put into those things are more than worth what comes from that training!

Keep Blasting!
Sifu Lamar M. Davis II
Senior Instructor
Hardcore Jeet Kune Do
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"Hit Hard, Hit Fast, Hit First - ALWAYS!"

"The REAL future of Jeet Kune Do belongs to US, the few, the proud, the HARDCORE! Now, what are we going to do with it?" _ Sifu Lamar M. Davis II

I am very careful about discarding. As Sifu says File it away. It is usually due to a lack of training time, skill or understanding. If we are going to discard anything then most of us would have to discard stop hitting because against a trained opponent using an attack that we have not prearranged, it is very difficult to stop hit. It takes superior speed timeing and visual awareness to pull it off, things that few develop to a degree to make true stop hitting work. However we do not discard this we continue to train it. I have found that things will be naturally discarded as you grow in skill and understanding. You don't have to plan to discard, you just begin to utilize certain things more often. The ultimate for me as a wing chun practitioner is to use jeet sao or the stop hit. However I know that the ultimate is not always possible 100% of the time. Things happen. So I work sil lin di dar, and some times I can't pull that off so I practice parry and counter, I train sensitivity and trapping. In short I prepare for what ever may come but I press on towards the ultimate. Finally if you practice a system that was created for practical economical well rounded street defense then you will probably find little to discard.
Kimsut

"Finally if you practice a system that was created for practical economical well rounded street defense then you will probably find little to discard. "

Youre right Kimsut, Bruce Lee did all the hard work all we have to do is follow. Until a person reaches his level theres no need to worry.

As for the other camps that see Bruce Lee from the LA years and just want to imitate that, they will never completely understand JKD. Let them throw away the meat and eat just the potatoes their pride and ignorance is the cause of their undernourishment. As it was told to me "if you don't know where you come from you won't know where you're going"

Positive Energy Activates Constant Elevation
P.E.A.C.E.

flowing with your opponent do you have to discard? Is this the "letting it happen" that we all strive for? To me part of discarding is letting it happen all by itself and not forcing it to happen. After all the only answer I should give is hit.

Kent

To me knowing when to discard techniques comes down to two things… Structure and the 80/20 training rule.

Essentially the 80/20 rules says that the techniques and methods that you use 80% of the time only come from 20% of your arsenal. For training purposes you then focus 80% of your training on to that 20%. This gives you a good idea of what to train but it will also lead you to what not to train. If your only using 20% of your time to train the “rarely used” techniques you will naturally start to drop some of the techniques. This is your discard process over time you will drop many techniques simply because you never use them and you don’t have time to train them.

Understanding Structure is the next key to knowing what can and cannot be discarded. On a style level you’re not going to find much to discard… the key to discarding is looking at your personal structure, how you move, how you hit, how your recover, what are your tendency’s? It’s easy to look at some like dropping into a front stance and throwing a reverse punch and know that it doesn’t fit the JKD structure. But when you’re looking at yourself and what you should or shouldn’t discard it becomes a lot harder. This is when you look at things that feel awkward or things that put you out of position, things that don’t flow, things that make you miss a beat. Who cares if the guy next to you can do it flawlessly… if it causes you trouble even after you have put a tremendous amount of training time into it… then walk on, leave it behind.

I think another thing to point out is I don’t really believe in discarding techniques. To me discarding takes place on another level. Example if attacking with a certain method leaves me “out of position” every time regardless of how much training I put into it. Then I will discard it without a second thought.

My belief is that letting "it" happen isn't the same as discarding. Becuase "it" is a natural action and "it" is going to take the smoothest path to give the answer: THE HIT. There's no thinking involved only reaction so there is no time to think about discarding.

In a sport like boxing there's a lot of time to win I could see where discarding would be good on a case by case basis. Also maybe if a person fights another skilled fighter where each fighter skills stalemate the others and then a different plan may be needed.

nice thread Kent

Positive Energy Activates Constant Elevation
P.E.A.C.E.

By letting "it" happen I have discarded myself. Yes this is a natural action/reaction but I have trained this. By doing so I have removed myself of thinking about what to do and just do. " Don't think; feel" ; "I do not hit; it hits all by itself" comes to mind as discarding yourself and letting your training take over.

Discarding is more than just discarding what you like to do or can do from what you do not like to do. You have to discard to bad habits when training or the way you tend to train when you are tired.


kent

Valid points I agree getting rid of our bad habits would be the biggest things we have to discard.