Discard What Doesn't Work For You

Whether Bruce Lee was the individual first to brake the mold of tradition and inspire us to look beyond our individual style (not likely), or just the person responsible for making it "OK" (more likely), the martial arts do owe him a debt of gratitude.

However, that doesn't make martial arts traditions or styles bad. I disagree with Lee on this key aspect: I believe they are essential in one's martial arts journey.

One must have a foundation upon which to build. Whether you choose a style of Karate, Kung Fu, Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, etc., you cannot begin to trim down to the essentials until you have something with which to work.

For example, kicks. Clearly kicks are effective, generating much more power than hand techniques. However, that does not make all kicks good for me. But I will not understand this until I have learned and practiced my style's kicks countless times.

In my style we rely heavily on the front kick, the roundhouse kick, the Muay Thai-style round kick, and the side kick; these are pretty standard. We learn to execute them with both the front and rear leg. But they are not all effective from the rear leg. The rear leg side kick is largely useless in combat or the ring; it's simple physics.

In the rear leg side kick you bring the rear leg all the way around the front of the body, cock it, then release it at your target. You do not gain any added energy prior to reaching the cocked position than you do by simply cocking your front leg (if anything, you lose power through the act of having to stop and reverse the motion of the leg). And what you lose is time and stealth; I can spot a rear leg side kick LONG before it is actually released. Heck my father, who is not a martial artist, certainly could.

But I wouldn't know this unless I had learned and practiced it countless times. I wouldn't know that the more effective alternative if one must use the rear leg is the "spinning" back kick (which actually does crank the power factor way up over a front leg side kick).

Whatever one's style, one should commit to it and learn it to a basic level of proficiency (and I'm not talking about a green or blue belt here; think advanced brown or black, depending on your school).

And once you have reached that level of proficiency, seek out a completely different style. If you are a striker, study grappling. If you are a ground fighter, study stand-up fighting. You get the picture.

Pick a style. Study it. Learn it. But don't be so wedded to it that you can't determine what works and what doesn't. As the old saying goes, "There are no superior martial arts, only superior martial artists."

But, whatever you do, don't think that you can skip a style and a skilled teacher. If you go to your garage and think you're going to figure it out for yourself, you'll just get yourself hurt. (As my dad once told me, "you know just enough to get yourself hurt or killed." Shortly thereafter he caught my side kick in mid-air and proceeded to demonstrate what he meant by that.)

All of us must have a parent to give us life. This does not mean we have to "grow up" to be just like them.