Being Water: how key ideas from the practice of Bruce Lee align with contemporary theorizing in movement skill acquisition

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this insight article is to explore the relevance and value of some of Bruce Lee’s ideas that influenced his coaching philosophy, (re)viewed through the lens of contemporary discussions in movement skill acquisition. To achieve this aim, we highlight empirical and anecdotal examples of many of the important concepts that support Bruce Lee’s interpretation of martial arts, Jeet Kune Do (JKD). We contend that Lee’s approach to coaching and skill refinement was deeply aligned with ideas that underpin an ecological dynamics framework. Central to the philosophy of Bruce Lee and JKD is the need for coaches, practitioners, and athletes to embrace and express more water-like adaptability throughout their practice. Examining the various, nuanced insights of Bruce Lee, we can observe many practical lessons which have stood the test of time, remaining highly applicable to athletes of today seeking to move skillfully in sports.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecological dynamics
• information-movement coupling
• affordances
• skill adaptation
• martial arts
• representative learning design

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Self-actualize: To be yourself and raise your human vibration, reaching for your greatest potential, expressing it outwardly as you move through life at the highest level possible, whatever that may be. Further, as Shannon Lee states in her book titled Be Water, My Friend, ‘to self-actualize is to know oneself and express the uniqueness of oneself in the world with such skill and with such ease that, like water, it will flow naturally from you’ (Lee, 2020, pp. 29–30).

2 Longtime President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Dana White, even went as far as claiming that ‘we needed Bruce Lee, when he came at that time, to help martial arts grow the way that it did; he was the father of mixed martial arts’ (Nguyen, 2020).

3 Metastable or Metastability: System component parts both coupling together while still tending to express independent behavior with the capacity of switching between two or more movement strategies/actions/patterns (Kelso, 2012).

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Funding

No funding was obtained or sought for the construction of this paper.