Combat Chess

Jeet kune do is a scientific approach to street fighting, a method for developing complete martial artists who are not bound by any style or system. Rather, they're able to adapt to all styles, systems, situations and circumstances. JKD, of course, is the result of Bruce Lee's search for the truth of combat, and part of that truth is that those who have mastered attacking the eyes and groin while weaponizing their awareness will have a distinct advantage in a street fight.

A street fight is like a very brief game of combat chess involving two strategists. In this context, the "queen of all moves," the most versatile technique of all, is the bil jee, or thrusting finger jab executed with the lead hand. Simply put, it's the fastest, most effective strike in the martial arts. It can be found in all traditional styles and reality-based self-defense systems. It even appears in MMA — think about how many times you've seen an accidental finger to the eye stop a UFC fight.

With the bil jee, you don't need to pierce or penetrate the target; you just need to touch the eyeball. This offers an incredible advantage from a speed and range perspective. To strike with a boxer's jab, you must get closer to your opponent and hit "through" the target in order to cause damage. That makes you slower because your fist must travel farther to make contact and then move past that point.

In chess, the aim is to attack with the queen while defending your king. The queen isn't limited to any set pattern and can strike from all angles, making it the most powerful piece on the board. Similarly, the bil jee can attack from any angle, and it can be adapted to work with any style. Further, the technique allows you to maintain the "fighting measure," or safe fighting distance, and effortlessly strike your enemy's eyes with the speed of a cobra.

Whether you choose to initiate the attack or use a counterattack, the bil jee offers an opportunity to create a flinch response or a moment of pain. This is your opportunity to steal the next beat in time and seize an open line of attack. For example, using a high-low-high strategy, you first attack the eyes (high) with a bil jee, then on the next half-beat, you attack the groin (low) with a lead-leg kick. Finally, you come back up to the eyes (high) for another bil jee.

The real power of the bil jee lies in its seamless integration with other striking, trapping and grappling tools. Depending on one tool or strategy as your be-all and end-all is not a good tactical approach. The chess master knows this, which is why he uses every piece on the board and coordinates attack and defense in an integrated fashion.

In JKD, the idea is simply to simplify. Attack the eyes and the groin, maintain the distance and intercept the space between. Use elbow and knee destructions to defang the snake and destroy the opponent's punches and kicks. Be deceptive with footwork and timing, and draw him by setting and breaking rhythms. Weaponize awareness to connect to him, create opportunities and adapt like water. When the opponent expands, contract. When the opponent contracts, expand. Recognize patterns and seize openings by waiting, observing and reading his movements and intentions.

Defend The King

As you attack with your queen, you must not forget to defend your king. The king, in this case, is your breath. In chess, the king can move only one square at a time. Similarly, breathing can be managed only one breath at a time. If you lose track of your breathing, you're doomed — in a fight and in life.

Proper breathing is important for two reasons: It allows you to conserve energy, and it helps you weaponize your awareness. When you fight, fear, stress and anxiety create tension, which can cause you to hold your breath. When you hold your breath, your energy gets depleted. Feeling slower and weaker, you start to panic. Obsessive thinking sets in, and the chatter in your mind robs you of the present moment, making you your own worst enemy.

Controlling your respiration in tense situations is a skill that must be developed. Learning to relax on demand during conflict, chaos and the ever-changing circumstances of a fight is often overlooked and usually undertrained.

Fighting changes from moment to moment based on you, your opponent and your environment. Victory is not in the end result. Rather, victory is gained by making the right decisions and adapting from one moment to the next. To effectively adapt to your opponent, you must learn to weaponize your awareness. To weaponize your awareness, you must learn to come from the center of time and space. The center of time and space is where you, the observer, should live. An observer has no thoughts, judgments or attachments. An observer knows without knowing and acts and reacts on his own. That may sound mystical, but it's really not. Consider:

While driving your car, have you ever swerved out of the way at the last moment and barely avoided an accident? It's almost like you moved before you had time to process the event, and only afterward did you realize what you'd done.

In sparring, have you ever just hit your opponent and then, in the next moment, realized that he was open? This is the phenomenon you're after. Awareness is always there; it's just that some people have lost touch with it. By reconnecting with awareness, you're not creating anything new. Rather, you're connecting with something you may have forgotten.

Weaponize Your Awarness

My tai chi master taught that to weaponize awareness and orient from the center of time and space, a martial artist needs to know the four pillars of the mind: imagination, sensation, intention and attention. They're considered the keys to weaponizing awareness because they teach you to task your mind with orienting from the perspective of the observer and not the thinker. Outlined below is the three-step process that I teach all my students, from military and law-enforcement personnel to civilian martial artists.

Heed The Wisdom of Musashi

Tactics, strategies and weapons are just knowledge, and knowledge without wisdom can be dangerous. Wisdom is the application of knowledge. You can learn about awareness, understand strategy and know the fastest move (the bil jee), but if you can't apply this knowledge, it's just useless information.

Miyamoto Musashi said, "The way is in training." Your confidence stems from experiential knowledge and knowing that you've embodied your tools and strategies so they can be adapted for use in changing situations. Only then can you be wholly in the moment and surrender to the experience by letting go of victory or defeat.

The best way to develop this ability is by using a training method that's fun and functional. It should develop your physical attributes, strategies and weapon selection while sharpening your awareness. It should be equal parts feeding drills, counter-for-counter drills and sparring against resisting opponents. Because a fight is a living exchange, your training must incorporate timing, angles, distance and progressive resistance. To help you with this, I have developed a method that gamifies the learning process.

Play Combat Chess

To absorb all the benefits of training, you need a step-by-step progression that chunks pieces of information and installs them in your subconscious mind. The greatest chess masters isolate individual pieces — for example, a king versus a king and a pawn. Chess masters learn how these isolated pieces move together on the board, and this information is stored in their subconscious. This isolation method of training accelerates the learning process, which is why Rickson Gracie made it part of his Brazilian jiu-jitsu training philosophy. When you isolate tools or positions, you have fewer options and are forced to focus on energy, awareness, timing, and the space between the strikes and positions.

The four "games" listed below can be used to functionalize any tactic or strategy, but to mesh with this article, you should focus on bil jee attacks to the eyes and lead-leg attacks to the groin. For best results, experiment with opponents of different body types and martial arts backgrounds. Start by feeding each other techniques with no resistance so the correct mechanics can be learned. Next, introduce counters so you can start to understand timing and the appropriate responses. Finally, incorporate resistance and intelligently spar using the isolated weapons and positions.

Put The Art In Martial Arts

"Creation" refers to making something that didn't exist before. When you create art, there can be no fear of the outcome, just honest self-expression. By following the combat-chess methodology, you'll start chunking information and installing the chunks in your subconscious. Your subconscious has the ability to connect the various groupings of information and create responses without conscious thought, leaving you to be the observer of the experience.

Operating as the observer will make time seem to flow more slowly and allow you to "start after but arrive before" your opponent. It's the most freeing phenomenon that can be experienced in the martial arts. It's the instinctive response that Bruce Lee was referring to when he said, "It hits all by itself."

The master key to success in this fighting process is you. Remember that results rule. Question everything and always look to explore, discover, grow and create.

Sifu Harinder Singh

Harinder Singh Sabharwal teaches jeet kune do, wing chun, tai chi, savate, kali, boxing, wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He's the founder of the Jeet Kune Do Athletic Association and Black Belt University. For information about his new online course, visit jkdforblackbelts.com.