Proven tips for understanding Bruce Lee’s four combat ranges in Jeet Kune Do, by an expert

In any sport, people always say that if you know the basics better than anyone else, you’re probably going to win. I agree with that. You can know a lot of sophisticated things, but if you don’t master the basics. You’ll get your ass kicked by someone who does. So let’s go straight to lesson 1: fighting ranges.

Rank one is kick rank. The kicking field is where you would use all sorts of different types of martial arts like: tae kwon do, karate, thai and savate. Now, not all martial arts that use kick range have the same value here. Some are not as fluid as others and some are very cheap. For example, some arts ask you to do weird punch after kick. What you want here is functional art that doesn’t require you to follow a set pattern. For example, the Dog Brothers put out the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen; this is what they did. They were showing a series of pictures of techniques and they basically called it defending against a man in a three piece suit. The reasoning behind this sequence of images and techniques (and why it was so much fun) was that you will almost never fight a man in a three-piece suit, especially following the set pattern they just showed. And that’s the problem with most martial arts, especially in the field of kicking; they expect a certain set of moves to actually happen during a fight. Now, this would be nice if the fights weren’t really “alive”, and what I mean when I say alive is to say that it’s constantly changing. This is one of Bruce Lee’s biggest revelations that fights don’t follow a set pattern; they can transform, mutate, and always change. So it’s almost ridiculous to have an established pattern of overloading blocks (they take too long to learn) to work on the fairway. So what you’re looking for here again isn’t a cheap style that doesn’t eliminate the fact (and the truth) that fights are never pretty… And they’re never predictable.

The next range is the piercing range.. This one is pretty obvious, when the best thing you can do is learn western boxing. The style itself has some gaps because as I mentioned in some of my other shows. This is why if you choose to fight a guy or girl in boxing range and they are bigger than you, they will probably win. Why is this? Easy, it’s because his fists are bigger. The reason this is important is because they have more weight than you, so they can hit much harder. So if you’re fighting and with a guy who weighs more than you, buy 100 pounds… That’s like getting hit by a bowling ball when you hit him with a baseball. What you need to know, though, is what to do here, so you’re playing “Punch me as hard as you can in the face and I’ll punch you as hard as you can in the face and we’ll see who wins.” But, like anything else, there are limitations to this range. However, the best thing you can do is learn western boxing for this range. Of course, there are other arts you can use within this range, just like you can at any other range, but it’s the economy of movement that really counts. And how well you understand time, rhythm, how well you fake, and a myriad of other things that are too deep to mention in this guide.

So the third range is the capture range. This is my favorite, not a lot of people fight and a lot of Jeet Kune Do people have actually abandoned this rank in favor of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Which may or may not be a bug, depending on who you’re fighting, how your body is set up, where your hands are during the fight, etc. For me this range works very well because not many people understand it or know how to use it. But hitting something in this range is like hitting a home run. But… Hitting a home run here is great. Knowing the catch range and using it on someone who doesn’t is like running a hot knife through butter. It’s too easy, and it’s fun. The arts that combat this range are Wing Chun, a bit of tai chi and Filipino martial arts. There are more, but I can’t think of them out of my head. Most fights end here, and in many fights, if people knew how to fight at this range, the fight would be over very quickly. So if you’re looking to get in and quickly with someone you could fight, try learning a few cheats. So let’s not take a microscopic view of catching range, this range is not just catching, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fits in there as well. The idea behind capturing is that you are capturing limbs, so every time you do it you are in capturing range. But, there are times when Wing Chun is the most effective and times when Brazilian jiu-jitsu is the best way to go. It all comes down to training.

The ultimate combat rank. The one I will go into is the grappling range, this is the brazilian martial art range or ground grappling. This could be a shooting fight, pancreation, or any kind of grappling art. This art is very necessary to learn for a martial artist or anyone trying to defend themselves on the street. You should learn this range because a lot of fights will end up on the ground, but again, you don’t want to focus solely on this range because it’s just one range. So what do you do when you have a massive attack? Remember, fights always mutate, they always change. So you should have different paths to go to when the fight turns. That is what Jeet Kune Do is all about. It is about changing with the environment when it changes. That’s why Bruce Lee always talked about how water always changes depending on the environment it’s in. As a martial artist, as a person, you want to do this in your life, you always have to change the environment to better suit how you survive. This is why you must learn all 4 ranks to be as effective as you can be in combat.