JKD Wednesday Night Group instructor Shawn King talks martial arts and self defense training, nutrition, mindset, and more. His background in Law Enforcement, Security, Jeet Kune Do, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu give the podcast a unique flavor. Follow @simpledirectjkd on Instagram.
In this episode: JKD footwork – Is it good?
Podcast excerpts:
01:16
I recently worked out at another gym on a guest pass. It was a weightlifting gym. I say this because what I saw there was not what you would expect to see at a typical weightlifting workout-type gym. I observed a guy with his hands wrapped like a typical boxer, and not the type of hand wrapping you see at like, get-in-shape, aerobic kickboxing, if anybody’s old enough, Tae Bo-type ‘let’s get in shape’ gym. He had the whole white bandage and padding on the knuckles and then he had blue hand wraps over the top. Anyways, he was over by the bench press when I first saw him and in between doing bench press sets, he would get up and shadow box. And I watched him and I could tell immediately he had actually done some real boxing training. The stance and punches were both really sharp. But that wasn’t what caught my attention the most, it was his footwork. It was really smooth and fluid. It almost looked like it was effortless like he was floating on the ground. I was really impressed. It was me witnessing this that brings me to today’s topic of footwork.
03:58
With JKD, because it’s greatly influenced by fencing and has fencing-type footwork, we mostly think of footwork for the rapid forward closing of the distance to land a lead strike, like a finger jab or lead straight punch, or rapid backward footwork to evade oncoming and incoming strikes. Similar to sort of how a fencing match looks. We go forward trying to strike with the sword and they move backwards to avoid it. Well, being able to move forward rapidly and backward is important. I think in JKD, we may practice it so much, at the expense of our other footwork. I believe the angling footwork that mostly comes from boxing is just as important, if not more important at times, especially if we look to the real world and self defense, combat, fighting, whatever you want to call it.
Listen to the full episode (12min 55sec).
*Link to article mentioned at the end of the episode: https://jkdjoaquinmarcelo.com/entrevistas/TheScienceofFootwork.pdf