Jeet kune do vs kickboxing?

Question

i was wondering what is better. I wana learn one of these, i just started kickboxing, but a jeet kune do class has opened and i wana learn the way bruce lee fought.

what should i do

Answer 1

do you want to compete or study for self defense.  if you're competing, you can't use jeet kune do, you'd have to use kickboxing.

Answer 2

Jeet Kune Do schools are basically borrowing Bruce Lee's name.

Most of the art you will train in there will be filipino art from the Dan Inosanto and have very little to do with Bruce Lee (although they will definitely say they do)

If the price is the same then by all means, I always like filipino art and stick fighting as it's the most efficient way to fight on the street. telescopic steel is easy to carry around and if you know you will be in a fight soon, a walking stick is legal to carry around by anyone.

Despite the whole Bruce Lee scam thing, Dan Inosanto is a good martial art teacher and lots of the school branches have solid training despite him making the stance closer to Bruce Lee's movie stance.

Jeet Kune Do is a philosophy, not a fighting technique, the technique that Bruce Lee initially wants to have for his MA was called Jun Fang Gung Fu, but instead he just develop his own philosophy.

I don't subscribe to that philosophy since I believe Lee as a talented Martial Artist and Performer.

He is performer first and MA second, but because of that he has media power behind him and the range of people who want to make money from his name are numerous indeed. They will try to associate themselves to his name as he is the face of MA in that time when MA was nothing but a legendary fairy tale of a person beating 10 single handedly.

btw, If you ever think of entering a ring or cage then stick with the kickboxing. It will gives you great base for your future development of MA

Answer 3

Others have already mentioned how the school is probably just using the JKD name to make money, so I'll skip that.

Learning to fight the way Bruce Lee fought kinda goes against the idea of Jeet Kune Do ( I think it goes something like: "Keep what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own".)

I'd probably stick with kickboxing. You can always learn other stuff later on when you have a good amount of kickboxing experience.

Answer 4

Why not both? Be careful with jkd. Depending on where you are you will not learn the way Bruce Lee fought. You will learn something else. People know that Bruce Lees name is a moneymaker, so they say what they teach is jkd. I would check out who the instructor learned from. If you have more questions feel free to ask me personally.