Straight Lead. Teri Tom

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      Figure 15: Once your center of gravity overtakes your front knee, it falls outside the base of the triangle. You’ll lose not only balance but leverage and power as well.

      On the subject of balance and stability, Bruce was heavily influenced by Edwin Haislet, who argued the importance of body alignment. The greatest contributor to balance, Haislet argued, is foot position. Your feet, of course, are connected to your legs, which are connected to your trunk, which in turn is connected to your arms. So proper alignment must start with correct foot position. The arm, according to Haislet, is merely a “vehicle of body force.” The fist may get all the glory, but it’s really only along for the ride. Your body does all the work. And this starts with the stance. You will have to experiment to find the width of stance for optimal stability and mobility, but always remember that your center of gravity must fall within the base determined by your foot position.⁹

      T H E U P P E R B O D Y : C A T S A N D C O B R A S

       A N D G R E A S E D L I G H T N I N G

      When we discuss the JKD stance at rest, think of yourself as storing potential energy; at any moment you may uncoil and lash out with tremendous power and speed. With this in mind, you’ll want to hunch your back a little, which gives you more space for uncoiling at the shoulder. This serves to decrease your target area as well and puts your right shoulder in a position to protect your chin or roll away from punches. In describing this storing of energy, Bruce had this to say:

      Slight crouch—balance evenly on your right foot and the ball of your left foot, with your knees slightly bent—more on the order of a cat with his back hunched up and ready to spring (except that you are relaxed), or like a cobra coiled in a relaxed position. Like a cobra you must be able to strike so that your touch is felt before it’s seen.¹⁰

      Compare with Nadi:

      To fence well is to be greased lightning with the potential forward speed of a coiled spring. Like the cobra, a fencer must remain coiled in a relaxed position having at the same time the potentiality of leaping from absolute immobility to top speed, power and precision. The guard position is the only position from which one can attack efficiently. Like the cobra, the fencer must be able to strike (with the point of his blade) so that his touch is felt before it is seen.¹¹ See Figures 16 and 17.

      From Figure 16, you’ll see that there is a slight bend at the waist (but remember to keep your center of gravity low), and the back is slightly hunched. The point here is that you want be slightly curled up—to protect yourself by making yourself a smaller target, but also to give yourself more room from which to uncoil. You’re storing more potential energy from which to unleash that lead punch.

      T H E P O W E R L I N E

      When we think of stances, we usually think of a static position, an at-rest position. But we’ve already established that the JKD stance is designed to maximize mobility and force production. We stand in the on-guard position so that when we do hit, we’ll be in the most favorable position to relay force. With this in mind, we need to consider what proper alignment will look like at the point of impact, and one of the most important elements of the stance at impact is the power line.

      Figure 16: The slightly coiled JKD stance. The back is slightly hunched, and the right hand is completely relaxed.

      Figure 17: Side view of upper-body coil.

      The power line is the reason why we punch “thumbs up,” as opposed to the palm-down fist we see in modern boxing. It’s also why we use the bottom three knuckles as our striking surface instead of the top two knuckles used in other martial arts.

      The power line is quite simply determined by our anatomy. If you extend your arm and make a fist, you’ll see that there is a straight line from your shoulder to those bottom three knuckles, not to the top two knuckles.

      The origins of the power line may be traced to Jack Dempsey. Chapter 9 of Championship Fighting is heavily underlined in Bruce Lee’s copy.¹² Dempsey defined the power line as a straight line that runs from your shoulder and exits at your bottom fist knuckle. Because of the way we are anatomically structured, this is the purest, most solid point of contact. To use the top knuckles disrupts the focus of the power line.¹³ I don’t make the rules. We’re just built this way.

      In accordance with Bruce Lee’s advocating of kinesthetic learning, I recommend that you try the following. Stand in front of a wall in the JKD stance. Extend your arm and fist. Rest the bottom three knuckles on the wall. Take a moment to feel the solidity of contact. Try lightly tapping the wall as you go through the motion of throwing a straight. This is how you should land every time you throw a straight lead. See Figure 18.

      Figure 18: Line up against a wall to feel the solidity of the power line.

      Now do the same thing, but with the top two knuckles resting on the wall. Do you feel how you’ve deviated from the power line? Instead of forming a stable straight line from your shoulder to your fist, you’ve actually created an angle at your wrist with your fist and forearm. Feel how unstable this is. Try tapping against the wall. Can you imagine throwing all of your body weight with your wrist in such a precarious position? This is how hand and wrist injuries occur. See Figure 19. Just thinking about hitting with those two knuckles makes me queasy!

      Figure СКАЧАТЬ