Be Like Bruce Lee

Many people consider Bruce Lee extremely inspirational. He a martial arts legend, but he was also a person who sought to master the mind as well as the body. He's known for his incredible athleticism and his movies, but that's not all there was to him. Being Bruce Lee requires metaphysical wisdom as well as physical prowess.

Steps

Training Like Bruce Lee

1. Be open to different types of training. Lee approached physical training in an open and flexible way. He embraced many different traditions, and he didn’t like training regimens that were one-size-fits all.
   • Instead, Lee borrowed from many disciplines, including martial arts, bodybuilding, and other types of training. He used barbells, kettle balls and circuit training regimens on different days of the week.
   • Lee believed in organizing workouts by similarities; he would train differently on each day. For example, some days would be devoted to punching, and some devoted to kicking.
   • It’s said that he could hold a barbell that weighed 40 kilograms (88 pounds!) for 40 seconds at arm’s length and that he could punch his finger through a closed can of soda. He could swap a coin in your hand before you had time to close it.
2. Vary your workouts constantly. Bruce Lee was not a person who found a single workout to stick with forever. He was constantly changing his workouts and trying new things to push his body to every limit and to prevent his body from being able to adapt.
   • He ran, rode bikes, and jumped rope as well as practiced kicking and punching. In other words, he was interested in all-around training.
   • Bruce Lee was an all-around athlete with an extremely defined body and an incredibly impressive combination of speed and strength.
   • Lee did enjoy martial arts, but he didn’t want his body to get too used to any fitness regimen. Check your ego at the door. The goal of Lee’s training was not to physically look great. He wanted a functional body and described training as “the art of expressing the human body.”
3. Learn martial arts – the Bruce Lee way. Although Bruce Lee practiced many different physical fitness regimens, he is clearly defined in part by his ability to excel at martial arts. To some degree, he used other fitness styles in order to become a better martial artist.
   • He started learning the Wing Chun style of Kung Fu from a grandmaster and then he formed his own method, Jeet June Do, which was not bound by rigid rules.
   • Lee defined this as “a style without a style,” meaning the fighter was open to fight in whichever way he or she thought would be effective.
   • He practiced martial arts rigorously though so that he had all kicks and punches at his disposal if needed. Some martial arts studios in your area might use the Bruce Lee style of fighting.
4. Train the arms and feet. Lee put a lot of emphasis on training the muscles in the forearms, which he felt were extremely important for any martial artist. It was by no means the only training he focused on, but he considered it important.
   • Lee would hit heavy bags as aggressively as he could. He was always on the move, side-stepping and feinting, even when hitting a bag, because he believed you shouldn’t leave yourself open to attack.
   • He used jabs, crosses and hooks when punching. He felt the feet were also incredibly important, and that it was important to be able to move fast and lightly with them. He used side kicks, hook kicks, spin kicks, rear and front thrusts, and heel kicks when training.
5. Strength train. Bruce Lee knew that martial artists also needed to build their strength. He was one of the visionaries who first made this connection.
   • Thus, he worked on developing his arm and leg strength with weight training. He didn’t only punch and kick bags. He used weights in his workouts.
   • Lee would use kettle balls and barbells to do squats, pullovers, and bench presses. He is known for his extremely well defined muscles, as his body was in the best shape that is possible.
   • He was also known for being able to do two-finger pushups, which is where he used the thumb and index finger of one hand, with his feet a shoulder-length apart, while he performed a push up.
6. Condition yourself. In addition to strength training and martial arts, Lee was a big fan of conditioning the body. He felt that endurance training mattered too because increased stamina would make him a better fighter.
   • To condition his extremely finely tuned body, Lee would run. He considered this a form of meditation to bring inner peace as well as conditioning. He would typically run about 40 miles per day three times a week, changing tempo as he ran.
   • Lee enjoyed jumping rope because he thought it would increase his stamina as well as build the muscles in his legs. He jumped rope three times a week for about 30 minutes a day.
   • Lee enjoyed stationary cycling, again to focus on his stamina and his legs. He could get an exercycle up to high speeds for 45 minute at a time and would try to do this for three days a week.
7. Focus on core training. Lee felt that the abdominal muscles were really important to an elite martial artist because they enabled the martial artist to withstand even the hardest punches.
   • Lee’s famous six-pack abs were not about looking great. They were about creating a shield that could ward off tough punches from opponents.
   • In order to strengthen his abdominal muscles, Lee would have a person drop a medicine ball on his stomach, while he was lying on the ground. Be careful with this maneuver if you are not already in impeccable shape so you don’t get hurt.
   • Side bends, leg raises and sit ups were some of the ways that Lee worked his abs. He would usually do 5 sets to failure.

Being Like Bruce Lee Philosophically

1. Show extreme focus. One of the most famous quotes often attributed to Bruce Lee is “absorb what is useful. Reject what is useless.” Bruce Lee was known for his extremely focused intensity.
   • Even if the quote wasn’t actually said by Lee (that’s debated), it captures a lot of his philosophy. He used this ability to focus to his advantage while fighting, but he employed discipline and focus through all aspects of his life.
   • While being focused on the task at hand, Lee was extremely open to experimentation. He was focused on achieving top physical and mental fitness, but he did so with a wide range of activities and ideas.
   • Bruce Lee was extremely disciplined. Be unpredictable when fighting, though. Bruce Lee had a legendary style of fighting that relied on what was called “the way of the intercepting fist.” That meant that he was an unpredictable fighter who altered his strikes depending on his opponent’s incoming attack. He was entertaining because he was not predictable.
2. Study wu wei. Bruce Lee believed in internal balance. He was interested in wu wei, which is a term in Taoist philosophy that means “not doing.”
   • The goal of wu wei is to only undertake natural action, and to, thus, allow things to come easily or naturally, rather than partaking in activities that involve struggle or extreme effort.
   • A lot of people misunderstand wu wei. To practice it, clear your mind and get in the flow. Wu wei does not mean laziness. It means not overthinking things and making them more difficult than they need to be. Bruce Lee was known for his metaphysical wisdom.
   • He once wrote that wu wei was “not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling was not sticky or blocked. Therefore in order to control myself, I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.”
3. Read a lot. In order to be like Bruce Lee, you should exercise the mind, not just the body. Read books about philosophy because Bruce Lee merged his philosophical beliefs with his fighting. In fact, while a student at the University of Washington, Lee studied philosophy.
   • Lee was an atheist who was influenced nonetheless by religious traditions like Taoism, Joddu Krishnamurti and Buddhism. Bruce Lee believed that knowledge led to self-knowledge.
   • He expressed himself through martial arts. He wrote poetry that spoke about the deeper and darker areas of human psyche. He was interested in human enlightenment. One of his most famous quotes is “Be formless… shapeless, like water.”
   • Bruce Lee once wrote in admiration of water: “Water is so fine that it is impossible to grasp a handful of it; strike it, yet it does not suffer hurt; stab it, and it is not wounded; sever it, yet it is not divided.”
4. Be confident. Bruce Lee didn't back down from what he believed in. Primarily, this was because, above all, Bruce Lee believed in himself. He had the confidence to set his own path in life.
   • Don't confuse that with arrogance. He had enough humility to know that he, himself, did not hold all of the answers, so he turned to many other teachers and disciplines in his quest to find them.
   • He mastered his own mind and body, taught himself everything he wanted to, and loved himself for it. So you need to know what you want to do in your life, start doing it now, and believe in yourself!
   • One way to describe Bruce Lee accurately is to say that he was a knowledge seeker. He had an unquenchable thirst for self-improvement, both physical and of the mind. Lee didn’t let oppression hold him back. He shattered cultural barriers and fought back against those who would hold him back.

Living Like Bruce Lee

1. Eat right. Bruce Lee knew that total fitness excellence must also include eating right. He had a list of banned foods that he never touched, and he enjoyed protein-rich drinks. He didn’t put anything in his body that he considered empty calories.
   • Lee was trying to gain weight in muscle, and he went from 100 to 130 pounds. He made weight-gain shakes that mixed powdered milk with things like royal jelly, vitamins, and ginseng. Lee wouldn’t eat baked goods or things made with refined flour because he didn’t think they added anything important to the body.
   • Lee did not eat food he thought could harm his body. He didn’t drink coffee, choosing tea instead. He enjoyed Chinese food, though. He was not a vegetarian or vegan and enjoyed eating meat, but the Chinese dishes he ate most were vegetable heavy.
   • In contrast to some modern diets which have turned carbohydrates into the enemy, Lee tried to eat carbs because he thought they were needed to maintain such a high level pf physical activity. Thus, he would eat them in 4-5 small meals a day. He liked Chinese food because of its emphasis on vegetables and rice versus proteins and fats.
2. Devote yourself to fitness. To really be like Bruce Lee, you have to turn fitness into a livelihood. It wasn’t something that he just did once and a while. It was a lifestyle to him. It was something he did every second of every day.
   • It would be difficult to be completely like Bruce Lee, in part because his level of devotion to fitness was almost unparalleled and because it takes so much time. Many people are too busy to basically make fitness their careers.
   • However, you could still engage in training that is inspired by his general philosophies. The key is to go for a full body workout by mixing up your routines, and to do it consistently, even if, for you, that means several days a week.
   • To really be like Bruce Lee though, fitness needs to permeate almost everything that you do in your life, and mental fitness should be part of it. Bruce Lee was a deep thinker. Sadly, though, all of this devotion did not provide Lee with the gift of years. He died young of a cerebral edema at age 33.
3. Learn about Asian culture. Bruce Lee was of Chinese descent (he was born Lee Jun-fan), and Asian culture remained important to him during his entire life.
   • He was the son of a Cantonese opera star. Lee himself was also an actor, known for revolutionizing how Asian actors were seen on screen. He was born in Chinatown in San Francisco, in the year of the dragon.
   • His mother was half Chinese and half Caucasian in descent and his father was Chinese. His father introduced him to martial arts after he was involved in street fights with gang members.
   • Lee trained in martial arts in Hong Kong. He began teaching martial artists in the United States in 1959. Lee’s movies focused on amazing fight sequences. For some movies, he merely choreographed the fight sequences. His films turned him into a martial arts legend and helped interest young people into martial arts.

Tips

• There are no limits - if there are, break them.
• Life is short, as his life reminds us!
• Read books about Bruce Lee to understand more. Reading his words helps you gain insight about the man.

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Sources and Citations

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