JKD effectiveness

Discussion in 'Jeet Kune Do' started by Rmjim, Aug 4, 2019.

  1. Rmjim

    Rmjim Member

    So I have another post asking about bjj at different schools. One of the schools has JKD as part of the curriculum. It’s directly from Dan Inosanto so I guess it’d fall under Concepts? Ron Balicki will be visiting in November at this school. My question is, is JKD (in this particular branch I guess you’d say) effective for self defense? What are it’s pros and cons?
     
  2. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    As is often the case with these types of questions, it's really a question of two parts.
    Effective self defence requires effective training for self defence involving dialogue skills, control of distance during non violent interactions, body language cues for potential attack, social and asocial violence dynamics, adrenal stress training etc etc
    Our own John Titchen provides excellent material on these subjects, I'd recommend reading his blog, as well as checking out people like Rory Miller and Tony Blauer
    With that in mind, the question becomes does JKDC provide an effective toolkit of self defence combatives?
    This is a question with a variety of answers
    Inosanto Lineage JKD is ery much about providing people with training development to develop their own identity. The extreme end of this scale is Erik Paulson's CSW and STX MMA and kickboxing programs which are essentially his expression of JKD in a combat sports setting
    Obviously potentially this could lead to instructors at the other extreme, but I've not really seen it, and I guess the perfect middle ground would be someone like Burton Richardson who embraces the MMA and real contact stick fighting scenes but also delves into self defence heavily and promotes the Filipino and Indonesian systems.
    The bulk of my exposure to JKDC has been through the Minnesota Kali Group guys, which has a heavy thread of Muay Thai running through it so everyone tends to have solid striking basics anyway
    So then we come down to two questions
    What is taught in the JKD class? It could be a straight Jun Fan Kung Fu class or it could be a mixed class with elements of Jun Fan, Kali, Silat, Muay Thai, Savate etc
    As a system the Jun Fan promoted by the inosanto line is pretty decent (again caveat here within the MKG material it's split into Jun Fan kickboxing and Jun Fan trapping) with solid striking skills, a good emphasis on entries and some not typical self defence orientated kicks. Trapping is trapping, you can take it or leave it, it's kinda fun in itself and has some developmental benefits, a lot of people don't like it combatively (although if you look for it you'll see it in a lot of combat sports)
    Obviously if it's a mixed syllabus you get a broad variety of skills, although there is a risk that the balance of the class isn't what you want. If it's loads of Kali and Silat and you're doing endless double stick and kneeling drills but no panantukan or knife defence then it's probably not what you want.
    How is the material taught? I'm firmly of the belief that effectiveness is built on realistic training with gloved drills and realistic, gloved sparring. Now depending on the school, it may be that they run Muay Thai/STX and CSW classes and say they're for that and the JKDC class is more about toolkit development, and while I'd think that was a shame, I wouldn't see it as a dealbreaker.
    I hope that's given you some useful information to think about.
     
    Monkey_Magic likes this.
  3. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    JKDC = Jun fan Gung Fu + combat sports + kali
    OJKD = JunFan Gung Fu
     
    Monkey_Magic and Dead_pool like this.

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