A trained core is essential for MMA and all forms of martial arts and grappling. Bruce Lee's abdominal training is the best of both worlds. It produces a powerful explosive core and will chisel out your abs. Bruce always sought out the best exercises for strength and speed to make himself better. Over the years of training, Lee understood that all movement is generated from the center, the hips and the core. Your abdominals are the source of power to kick, punch, jump, and run. The spine also uses the core for stability.
The core is so vital that Bruce Lee trained them every day. His purpose was not to crush but stimulate them to be stronger over time. I don't know of anyone who trained their abs more than Bruce. I also don't know professionals who are as fast and explosive as Bruce. Even Bolo Yeung, who doubted Bruce Lee's strength, said Bruce is not just quick and explosive but strong. So, I believe if Bruce's main focus of power and explosiveness was his abs, then maybe we need to look into it.
You can train your abs every day. They are constantly used when sitting, standing up, walking, running, strength training, or doing martial arts. Their strength is based on tension and stability that initiate explosive movements. You can train strength and slow-twitch muscles one day and fast-twitch muscles and explosiveness another. Training every day is ok. It just depends on the intensity and how you do it. You cannot train explosive every day.
Bruce Lee’s Ab training Pointers
1) Train your movements fast and concentrate, focus, and feel the quality of each rep. Do not just do mindless movement. If you just move mindlessly, then your abs will not develop effectively.
2) When you cannot do any more reps, continue by doing short burst half reps. Bruce believed that these short bursts caused more separation and development when the abs burned.
3) At the end of each abdominal session, do static isometric contractions.
4) Exercise your abs daily and with patience. Results will come.
5) The abdominals and waist region coordinate all body movements and act as the center or generator. Therefore, you can promote the ability to control the body's action and master your will more easily.
6) The proper way of doing a sit-up is not just going up and down, but to curl yourself up, to curl yourself back up, like rolling up a roll of paper.
Watch this video to see how to do Bruce Lee’s abdominal exercises.
Lee believed the food you ate is what produces the thickness and esthetics of your abs. So, he always ate the proper nutrition and had a solid diet free of starches, sugars, fried foods, and alcohol.
Lee used these five basic exercises.
Waist Twist- 4 sets of 70
Sit-Up Twist- 4 sets of 20
Leg Raises- 4 sets of 20
Leaning Twist- 4 sets of 50
Frog Kicks- 4 sets as many as you can
Stomach and Waist Exercises (2 Sets)
- Roman Chair Sit-Up
- Leg Raises
- Side Bends
He also used isometric holds, for example:
Bruce used high reps and till exhaustion like waist twists, static isometric contractions like dragon flags, and short bursts after exhaustion to train his abdominals. Using all three methods developed Bruce's defined explosive core. So, the strength of their stability leads to generate tension rapidly to kick or punch explosively. The abs are constantly working to stabilize your spine, so they need to be fatigue resistant.
The abdominal training pointers and exercises are referenced from the book "Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body by John Little."
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That a director of my city's opera company would call me seemed a little odd. There are probably some monkeys who know more about opera than I do. But the director was inviting me to lunch, so of course I went.
It turned out the company was producing a performance of Madame Butterfly, the Puccini opera that tells the story of a doomed love between a French military officer and a geisha in early 19th-century Japan. The opera has come under fire for its stereotyped, utterly fanciful depictions of Japanese culture. The local company was trying to anticipate such criticism, and the director asked me, since I serve on the board of some organizations related to Japanese culture, what I thought.
I said most Japanese and Japanese-Americans probably view the opera as so ridiculously fictional that no one could take it as a serious historical commentary. In fact, I'd already heard from some traditional Japanese dance groups whose members hoped to audition for nonspeaking roles in the opera. I pointed out, however, that the promotional illustrations the company had come up with for the opera were "wrong." The director was confused. One illustration showed a woman in a kimono, holding her infant. She was clearly meant to depict Madame Butterfly.
"You have her hair in a long and straight ponytail," I said. "That style had gone out of fashion in Japan hundreds of years before the period of the opera."
"But she looks Japanese," the director said.
"Think about an illustration for Downton Abbey," I said, referring to the popular drama about life in early 20th-century England, "where the character depicted was dressed like Henry VIII. Imagine someone pointing out the historical inaccuracy and the illustrator replying, 'But the guy looks British.'"
I was reminded of this recently when I saw some people who claimed to follow a classical school of Japanese swordsmanship. Several of them were wearing bright pastel-red hakama skirts that had no stiff straps at the rear. These were colorful, to be sure. However, they are also the kind and color of kimono worn by miko, young women who serve as attendants at Shinto shrines.
My guess is that these hakama were offered for sale somewhere. (Buddhist temples in many Japanese cities have monthly flea markets where all kinds of goods find their way.) The practitioners probably saw a good deal and, lacking a sense of cultural context, decided to buy.
Western practitioners of Japanese martial arts must be cognizant of these cultural contexts, both to avoid looking silly and clueless (these would-be modern samurai furiously swinging their swords in what looks like the equivalent of a schoolgirl's uniform automatically removes them from serious consideration as martial artists) and to gain an accurate sense of what they're doing.
While not directly martial arts–related, perhaps you've seen women in a dojo or at a public event affecting an "Oriental" look by wearing their hair in a bun that's fastened with chopsticks stuck through it. Certainly, it appears ridiculous if you know that what look like chopsticks in formally dressed Japanese women's hair are actually kanzashi, or hairpins — which, by the way, doubled as weapons in close-quarters encounters.
The reader may say, "Hey, this isn't a fashion magazine. No dojo has any responsibility to correctly present Japanese culture as part of its training. Martial artists are not military re-enactors who strive to get every detail of their uniforms and behavior historically accurate.
"I agree. Frankly, I think much of karate training would be better if participants wore sweatpants or some other loose-fitting clothing. The culture of traditional Japan, however, is obviously important in many dojo, so if it's going to be integrated into training, why not do it as faithfully and correctly as possible?
The way to maintain a culturally accurate atmosphere in the dojo as it relates to Japan is not best approached by watching movies or relying on the advice of self-styled experts. Often, karateka who have spent limited time in Japan see traditions but don't really understand them in context. Which is why a strange hybrid version crops up in some American martial arts schools.
Shinto tori gates find their way onto the front walls. Statues of the Buddha sit in corners. Images of dragons and tigers are everywhere. It's all supposed to look like something out of the exotic East. For the most part, however, it looks like there was a big sale at an import shop.
Sometimes well-meaning practitioners will ask Japanese people in their communities about the right way of doing things. You only need to visit your local sushi restaurant and see the katana displayed upside down and backward to know that this isn't always a solution.
Unfortunately, there's no easy way to acquire the knowledge necessary to do things the right way in a traditional dojo. Even if one has a teacher who knows these things, it's a slow process. Be willing to learn. Be willing to be embarrassed when your mistakes are pointed out. Always be ready to learn more.
And above all, don't wear a pastel hakama.
Dave Lowry has written Karate Way since 1986. For more information about his articles and books, visit blackbeltmag.com and type his name into the search box.
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Apologies in advance for the title if it gives impressions that this is going to be all that poetic. It's not this presentation that is all that literary, but something else. Haikus and pentameter aside, MMA has moments that are nothing less than poetic on a pretty astral level. Not long ago, irony at the nauseating level (unless you are a psychopath) happened when former UFC Middleweight Champion Chris Weidman broke his leg on Uriah Hall's leg in an eerily similar way as the other former champ Anderson Silva did on Chris's in their title rematch. If you know anything at all about MMA and did not know this story, you have to have been living under a rock. Save your energy and do not go look at pictures of either event as it is nightmare material.
By itself, the ridiculous coincidence of those two being two of only three (RIP to the 3rd man, Corey Hill) to ever have that happen, is unbelievable. But it defies credulity that it not only happened to two people, and not only two people who were opponents of one another, but that it happened in one of their fights. If we did not have record, it truly is in the most literal sense of the word – incredible. There have been breaks e.g. Conor McGregor's at UFC 264, but not on his opponent's leg (unless Porier was right in his hypothesis about Conor).
Weidman and Silva were going to be inexorably tied together with each other in MMA's history even if all that had happened was Weidman dethroning the reigning king and GOAT contender the way he did. He won that very middleweight belt from him as a matter of fact prior to the rematch containing the injury. And he did it by making Silva pay for being Silva in his clowning antics. The second Silva did the thing that caused paralysis in other opponents by dropping his hands and playing Drunken Master, Weidman – very much unlike those previously mentioned vexed opponents – swung perfectly, touched the off-button, and went home a champion. This story was already rife with drama in Chris's rise to that opportunity, both within the ranks of the sport and outside the cage in overcoming pretty staggering obstacles to get there. Harrowing is the right word.
Their story (operative word being their) could have already been cemented had it ended there. It is a self- contained story of a giant falling to the underdog with all that entails; including how it might have been a fluke, the great one got caught, 9 out of 10 times it doesn't happen that way, ad infinitum. Then in the rematch the story was elevated in the worst way. Like the Temple of Doom or Empire Strikes Back, the sequel took a very dark turn when Silva shattered his leg on Chris's in the rematch. Everyone heard the scream and everyone (except the aforementioned potential psychopaths) felt it. Fast-forward to a paradoxical, other-dimensional type replay of the fateful event; only this time it is Weidman's leg disintegrating on someone else's and it is more than the half- considerate soul can bear.
Then comes the beauty. Once the pain is dealt with. The surgeries are done. The mending begins – inside and out, we learn of the strength of both men. We watched Silva attempt to mount a comeback in the sport and while he fell short in the actual recorded competition and hit a few alleged legal bumps in the road, there was the internal victory of being able to even compete again post destruction (mentioned in previous piece, look that word up in this context for even more poignancy). This former opponent, having lost to the man who took his belt and his leg, did something amazing. Very much in contrast to the ugliness witnessed surrounding the McGregor/Porier rematch, Silva was an early encourager to the fallen Weidman. Immediate sympathy and camaraderie. Zero vengefulness. Zero shouts of justice or vindication. Only respect, love, and words of hope. And the stanzas of beauty continue! You must at least view the opening minutes of the podcast/interview of their conversation and hear Chris apologize and Anderson refuse it in good faith and honor – insisting there is no apology necessary. It is an absolute privilege to watch this unfold.
This writer has said on many an occasion when asked, "How can you watch that stuff? It is so brutal!"; "I watch it and love it for its humanity, and I can see that in spite of its brutality." If you have any acceptance that the A in MMA is indeed Art, then you should see this beautiful progression of Weidman and Silva as nothing less than poetry. Even more so in light of other vitriolic rivalries. There was a time when they were enemies in battle. When everything was at stake and they gave all they had to take from the other. Then on their respective journeys life took so much from them. Now here we are seeing them not only not take, but give to each other. And it is suggested here, they gave something to us who have been reading their verses too.
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