I was thinking about this for a little while now, what would it be like if you could combine both JKD and Yoga? A very interesting concept indeed cause number #1 I don't think it's been done yet and #2 think of what it would mean to combine the two. You have Jeet Kune Do which is relatively a hard a$$-kicking art that is very physical, effective, and practical and combine that with a great spiritual and soft art that emphasizes the mind, the spirit, and the breath. Bruce Lee always emphasized the need for the three core foundations for conditioning - strength, flexibility, and endurance. Since many martial artists incorporate bodybuilding into their strength training routine and they are already getting endurance in their sparring, technique training, and bag work, why not incorporate yoga in for the flexibility, the breathing/meditating, and relaxing part of it? Also yoga has a great and natural diet that comes along with it that many people can incorporate into their own lives for better health. It's a good kind of yin/yang completeness to a human being. What do you guys think about this? It would be nice to hear some feedback.
I think combining JKD and yogurt is a healthy idea! I love yogurt! Especially the sugar free frozen strawberry yogurt! Wow, what a great idea ........... huh? What? Oh, YOGA! Never mind!
It's an interesting question. However you may be interested to know that Yoga was incorperated into chinese martial arts a long time ago. Yoga beleive it or not has a heavy influence on the Chinese Chi Kung. For instance the Chi Kung I practice (I Ching Chi Kung) has aspects of it that are very simular to Raja Yoga.
I would say it is very useful to learn. Not just because it will make you more flexible or spiritual. It will help you relax more deeply. I know that in Wing Chun relaxation of the arm in Chi Sau is quite important, but in Yoga relaxtion of the entire body is developed. Imagine this relaxed control over your entire body.
I can say that in my experience it has made me a better, faster and more powerful fighter than I was before. In honesty when I did Wing Chun I thought I understood relaxation, but now I know I barely scratched the surface. I say give it a whirl for six months, and you do need to do it for a little while to feel real benefits.
Did,t bruce do yoga like posture in his films and I recollect that he meditated from some article. Maybe this is where the idea of JKD and yoga stems from. The abdominals leg raises as witness by bolo yeung young, and the finger press ups. JKD has many facets that are never discussed apart from structure and usual cliche.
I think combining yoga and martial arts does make a good mix. I also agree with the post about chi kung having been the foundation of the chinese arts. There is a book out there called "Chi Kung for the Martial Arts" and in it the author shows various postures you can do as well as internal meditation techniques for guiding energy so that you relax more deeply. Warning though!: the horse stance and other stances are used frequently and I dont know how well this applies to JKD! I've found that simple breath focus meditation works very well for relaxing and afterwords my body feels like Ive been streaching it for an hour!
I am desparately serching for Bruce Lee`s fitness programme ( with the photos of training exercices) , but I havn`t managed it yet.
Today 23.08.2004 it is 01:11 and the problem is not resolved.I know my will-power woun`t let me down. Some way, some how I will find Bruce Lee`s fitness programme.
Maybe with your help?
I realy want to pracitce Bruce Lee`s fitness programme on my own due to I have no money for a book.
Could You be so kind and send me an information where I can find it.
No but I took meditation a while back from the same school that offers yoga. Meditation is a big part of yoga so I wasn't far off from the training. I hear nothing but good things about it plus the fact that yoga attracts health-conscious hot chicks. So, when I actually have money, I am there LOL
This message has been edited by Lenmaster on Aug 29, 2004 3:08 AM
health-conscious hot chicks; that can do the splits and Back bridges!
Yoga would be good to practice, I wonder if you could just pick up one of those "Power Yoga" DVD's and just practice at home? I know how to do most stretches and meditate, so maybe the DVD would be a good choice for me.
What?!? You need the class you fool! How are you going to meet health conscious hot chicks from your living room? The tapes are for old or crippled people that can't make it to the class to hook up. LOL
i would not recommend the yoga diet if you are serious about jkd. jkd people sould be powerful and explosive, which requires a large amount of protein. indians, the inventors of yoga, are typically small in stature. the yoga diet is not intended to build a high level of explosiveness.
Mate are you American, cause you just showed some of the stereotypical ignorance that alot of the world associates with US citizens. The world tallest man is from Pakistan. There are over 1 billion people in the Indian sub continent. People from my region are quite small in general, but if you go to places like the Punjab or the Gujarat there you will see a lot of tall people.
And even if they are short does not mean they lack physical strength. If you can lift 40kg bags of rice from dawn to dusk and still go home and do your normal chores then you can talk about strength. And trust me these guys have a lot of strength. My cousins husband does not look particularly big (although he is taller than me, so when I ran in to him to try and take him down I was quite shocked when I felt like a ran into a brick wall. You could not push his muscles in at all. Test yourself I bet you could push your biceps in a bit.
As for your knowledge of Yoga once again, you jump to conclusions. There are lots of watered downed versions of Yoga as there are of anything useful. It is not just for stretching or meditating. Yoga masters are notoriously strong. If you do Yoga properly and regulary you will develop highly dense muscles. Remember it is not how much volume your muscles take up that count , but how much muscle you got i.e. how dense. So you can be very big but not that strong.
Dude if you think one should be wary of a style because the area where it originated from has small people, then why you doing doing JKD? After all, Bruce was not exactly large and Hong Kong has some of the smallest people in China. It shocks me, the kind of logic people come out with sometimes. Can you see the error in your logic there Findog? I hope so.
i was not warry of the style, but of the diet. yoga itself has good qualitites. work on yur reading comprehension. i said the diet was not good not yaga itself. i know some indians are big, but most are small because they don't eat meat. it's just a fact.
also yoga is not an art that people bacome masters in. actually, yoga is a religion. i don't see any people from india wining strong man contests or particapting medaling in olympic level track sprints. again facts.
This message has been edited by findog on Sep 2, 2004 10:50 PM
bruce lee was not large, but he took protein powders, liquid stakes, and many other supplements. there are also some people who say he took steroids. in other words, he ate and took supplements that were at the height of nutritonal sience in his day. he also worked out like a westerner at his height rather than an easterner. he used weights, the heavy bag, the speed bag, and the top and bottom bag. he practiced serious sparring, sprinting, and skipping rope. the only easterners who trained in a similar fashion to bruce lee were the thais.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Charles Darwin, Socrates, Plato, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Clive Barker, David Duchovny, Drew Barrymore, Candice Bergen, Kim Basinger, Paul McCartney, Chelsea Clinton, Woody Harrelson, Steve Vai, Eddie Vedder, Lisa Simpson, Hank Aaron, Alec Baldwin, Bryan Adams, Peter Gabriel, Mary Tyler Moore, Leonard Nimoy, Alicia Silverstone, Liv Tyler, Jerry Seinfeld, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Henry David Thoreau. (5)
Plus let's not mention bulls, elephants, rhinos, deer, and gorillas. All of them eat vegetables, fruits, and grains and guess what? They're pretty strong. Stronger than anybody you could find that eats meat.
Yoga is not a religion, it is at most a phylosohpy. And no it is not a fact that most Indian are vegetarians. Where do you get your facts? You are talking absolute nonsense. I am Bengali, there are hundreds of millions of muslims in India and muslims on the whole particularly in the subcontinent eat meat. A lot of Hindu's/ Sikhs/budhists are vegetarians but it is not compulsory. In fact most of my friends who follow the afforementioned religions eat meat. Then of course there are the Christians and all the other multitude of religions.
You ask how many Indian's enter strong man competitions. Well how many Africans enter strong man competitions? How many Chinese? It is mainly a European/ european decent countries that compete in these competitions, because it is traditional to do so. How many non asian's do you see pierce their bodies and pull wagon loads of people? You could ask many questions like this but ultimately they are shallow and ignorant questions.
Before you start talking facts you should go learn some. Such blatant ignorance is shocking.
Here are some more facts, at the turn of the 19th century the number one wrestlers in the world where from the region that is known as Pakistan today and southern India. I shall have to try and dig out the book I read it in, if you want specific details, might take a while.
There is an old saying, it goes "if you do not know, do not speak".
yoga is a religion in the way buddhism is, which is not monotheistic. yoga and buddhism are more philosophical than many other relisgions.
i have nothig against vegetarians, i just don't see the point. none of the famous people mentioned are world class atheletes. we are talking about atheletes not philosophers, artists, or scientists. humans are humans. they are not rhinos, elephants, etc. i thought that was obvious, but i uess not.
also we are not at the turn of the nineteenth century. we are in the twenty-first century. gai, i thought that was obvious.
actually, in "the world strongest man" competetition, the competetors pull trains, and buses, not justy wagons full of people. a train or a bus weighs more tha a full wagon. correct me if i'm wrong. piercing your body does not mean you are strong, but rather that you are brave. many americans peirce their genitalia anyway.
the olympics are traditionally for the whole world. india and pakistan perfrom poorly or do not compete at all in the sprints.
world class combat athletics also are global. people from the indian sub-continent never are near the elite.
i went to those bodybuilding links. yes, the pseudo-vegetarian diets abstain from eating meat, but they also drink protein powders, eat eggs, and drink milk. milk, eggs, and protein powders are not vegetables. they are all animal products. whey is derived from dairy products. thus anyone eating these things would not be a vegetarian in the strictest sense of the word. my last posts implied that protein is what is important for strength not necessarily meat. i tought that was obvious.
you people keep mentioning things that are not germane to the question: "can a strictly vegetarian diet lead to success in modern day elite athletics?"
mention a person; who only eats vegeatables without ingesting protein powders, eating egs, or drinking milk; who is also a pride/ufc champ, world class boxer, olympic sprinter, winner of a "world's strongest man competition". if you do this, then i will admit that a person who is a strict vegetarian is capable of reahing the pinnacle of athletics.
Findog - Eggs or milk was never the subject at hand. Meat was. This is the exact sentence you used from up above:
"i know some indians are big, but most are small because they don't eat meat. it's just a fact."
Meat is not the reason most indians from India are small. It's due to a combination of natural genetics (like asians) and that many of them do not do any resistance training like weight-lifting. I've listed many links above which show you can get bigger muscularly from eating veges, fruits, grains, eggs, and milk. This is without meat. Meat was what you were talking about.
As far as yoga being a religion, yoga is NOT a religion. Take a look:
meat's underlying growth property is protein. my first post says, "...which requires a large amount of protein." so there. lol! read it. read my first post.
indians are small due to genetics...no doubt about it...but not eating any meat also helps them keep a small stature...there is a group in india called the sieks (seiks)...they have been eating meat for hundreds of years...they tend to be the biggest peopele in india...i called yoga a religion because they believe in the brahma (universal spirit)...yoga's goal is to attain enlightenment and unification with the brahma...that sounds like a religion to me...but if you disagree, that's fine...one of the links you posted actually say that the paper "is not meant to be authortative." none of those links were in a university level academic journal, one of them was a paper written by an undergrad.
also noone has mentioned a world class athelete who eats only vegetables (no supplements or eggs or milk)
My last post for some reason seems not to be here. But hey I shall just have to bullet point it.
I am Bengali so I have first hand knowledge of the Indian sub continent.
1) The worlds tallest man and woman both come from Pakistan (part of the subcontinent or Bharat).
2) The Bharat has around 1.5 billion people living there or varying sizes.
3) Hundreds of millions of muslims, bhuddists, christians etc also live in the Bharat the largest community is the Hindu community and its many derivitives. Only in very isolated cults is it compulsory to be a vegitarian. The rest of us eat meat like there is no tommorow. Hell I grew eating meat everyday.
4) Bengali's are short in comparison to other parts of the Bharat yet my brother is 6ft, and he is not unusual.
5)You can only use a certain amount of the protein you take in each to to build muscle as the process of development is incremental. i.e. if you eat a kilogram of protein a day you can still only put on a hundred miligrams a day at optimum training. Therefor the protein you can get from vegatables is enough, if you did not want to eat meat.
6)Yoga is not a religion it is a phylosophy. Examples of religions are Islam, Christianty, Hinduism, Bhuddism. In all these cases worship of someone or something takes place. And yes this is also true of Bhuddism, Gautama Bhudda is one of the most worshipped people in history. On the other hand no one is worshipped in yoga.
You ask why you do not see Indians in certain tournaments like the olympics. Let me educate you about world history a little. Ancient olympics was european, specifically Greek. Modern Olympics started I believe in Paris or the Uk. Once again European. The games are European. Therefor the historic advantage is with the europeans, coupled with the fact that most Asian nations are poor, therefor less people have the oppotunity to spend all there time training how to run fast. They spend their time instead on finding food to survive. Its very simple if you take the oppotunity to think of the world outside the context of the US.
How many western teams have won Kabadi? None, does that mean westerners are rubbish at sports? No it does not. I suppose you do not watch Cricket in the US, but this is truely a world sport as there are historic representatives from every continent. And what do you know the Indian sub continent has some of the best players in the world. The Sri lankan's, Indians and Pakistani's have all been multiple world champions.
Should I go on or do you feel suffieciently ignorant already? You really should not make assumptions about things you do not know about, then state them as if they were fact.
