Bruce Lee's Staff Fighting Secrets REVEALED

When I was training with Jerry Poteet we had private sessions that were often up to three times or more per week.   It got to a point that he mentioned I learned and excelled in the core principles and attributes of Jeet Kune Do.  All except for sticky hands which comes with practice and something I really wasn't interested in learning so he asked me if I wanted to go beyond JKD and learn other aspects of what he knew.  I was honored that he would say that and I was exploring stick fighting on my own at the time.  This sparked a new passion in me to make training weapons.

I had a desktop editing studio which everyone has nowadays and just purchased a Digital Video camera with my site on making short films and instructional videos.  YouTube wasn't a thing yet.

It took a lot of time and effort to persuade Jerry it was time for a new video series but once the spark happened he became very interested.

During our brainstorming sessions I asked if we would include weapons training as it pertained to each subject of the video because this is something no one has honestly done as Bruce taught it. This illuminated in him when Bruce Lee taught staff fighting techniques during the Los Angeles private backyard era classes.  However he confided in me that he was very reluctant to teach this to every student.  

Why did he want to withhold this wealth of knowledge?  

All I can think of is that Jerry was a very private person and it took a lot of convincing at times to get him in the public eye more often.  This was mostly due to his health issues at the time, which he also told me.  I feel very fortunate for the advanced information he taught me and I will be writing more on this in future blogs.  Far as I know I have never seen this from any of his students.

Jerry and I discussed a five part video series that would cross reference each other.  It was all standard JKD core principles that he didn't present in his first series and how they interacted with each other.  For now I will just say things did not go as planned and only two videos were produced.  The third video on ADVANCED TRAPPING was filmed but never edited and completed.  That sucked for me because it's the one I am featured in.  More information for another blog entry.

The production of those two videos took it's toll on on me and one of the many reasons I quit private lessons with him but that's also another story.

While moving last August I found a Digital Video tape with the label "JKD DIARY 2002" that I had forgotten about.  My DV camera was no longer working so I took it to CVS to get it transferred to DVD.  The information on it brought back a lot of memories.  It's an hours worth of advanced Jeet Kune Do information that I have not seen available or talked about online.  I will be posting all segments on YouTube.

In this video you will hear me speaking out loud all that was taught to me in that lesson.  I repeat things often and make sound effects.  Nothing is edited out much to my embarrassment.  This was never meant to be seen by anyone but me because it was much easier than taking notes.  

My opinions on quarter staff fighting have changed over the years mostly due to training with Ray Floro Fighting Systems.

Looking back on this lesson I see that all of this was used in ENTER THE DRAGON and RETURN OF THE DRAGON and it must have been something to see something on screen that Bruce Lee developed with his students.  They were his action team at the time.  Today the amount of coordination and choreography is done with months of preparation, training, and filming with teams of people but Bruce did this by himself.  Another aspect for him to be revered over.