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About Cornerstone
Don’t Be A Copy – Become An Original
We aim to equip students with the right theory and practice so that they can get Bruce Lee-like results from this amazingly simple, logical, and devastating fighting method. Our articles, books, and videos are all efforts to help you – personally – gain better self-defense skill through JKD. We aren’t a Bruce Lee fanboy organization and we don’t care if you look like Bruce when he was in his ready position. We care if what you are doing works in a real fight. Period. It’s your life, after all. Don’t be a copy – become an original through understanding the true foundations of Lee’s fighting method.
About Jeet Kune Do
The True Jeet Kune Do Concepts
First, we want to clear away so much nonsense about what JKD is and isn’t. It’s not doing whatever Bruce Lee did in the blind attempt to put it all together and yell, Dr. Frankenstein style, “it’s alive!” That’s the so-called original method. The problem with copying Bruce is you wouldn’t know why he discarded something and/or added something else. If you follow this approach, you’re a slave to your instructor (the alleged keeper of the flame) because he can always claim more Bruce knowledge than you. That’s all a bunch of hooey (technical term, that).
And JKD isn’t just a concept either. Notice that the people who teach this never actually get around to defining what that concept is, in fact. Is the JKD Concept efficiency? Well, then, Toyota is doing JKD when it makes an efficient engine. Is it adaptability? Then a BJJ guy is doing JKD when he adapts his grappling to work in an MMA fight. You see, that’s nonsense too. The primary thing to know is that Cornerstone isn’t trying to advance itself or its instructors – we’re trying to help you actually defend yourself, which was, we imagine, Bruce Lee’s actual goal. Imagine that!
Fighters and Philosophers
What are these? Well, simple: Bruce trained in Ip Man Wing Chun and, as we point out in some of our articles (and detailed in the book JKD Pure & Simple) seeking to better apply his Wing Chun principles in combat, he went on to add old-school boxing to his method. This wasn’t just any old boxing, be warned, but fencing influenced, British style, vertical fist, bare-knuckle boxing.
Ted Wong told us that Lee found this in the work of the great Welsh boxer, Jim Driscoll. Peerless Jim, as he was known, was one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters of all time. Please let that sink in for a moment. Bruce was interested in results and he knew that results came from proper principles and practice. Driscoll, like Lee’s Wing Chun mentor, Wong Shun Leung (Ip Man’s top fighter who had around 100 witnessed challenge fights in which he was undefeated!) was an accomplished fighter. And Driscoll did it all with virtually one hand – using his straight left to deadly effect. These weren’t fellows with lots of certificates and seminars; they were fighters and philosophers. Wong Shun Leung and Jim Driscoll are Lee’s fathers in martial arts and we’ll introduce you to their ideas and tactics so that you can see them for yourself.
So, JKD should be no great secret. It’s simple, but not easy. And we aim to provide anyone interested in it the true road map to Bruce Lee-like results, absent the hero worship and politics. Jeet Kune Do is a specific street fighting method developed by Bruce Lee and founded on the true and tested principles, tactics and techniques of Ip Man Wing Chun and Driscoll era boxing. JKD is not merely a nebulous concept, never clearly defined, nor is it only what Lee himself physically practiced. It is Lee’s brilliant and ingenious method of counter-attack based on the long straight-lead, footwork, non-telegraphic striking, elusiveness, and deceptiveness. It isn’t merely Wing Chun or boxing/fencing but an altogether brilliant adaptation of the principles found within those systems.