In hand-to-hand combat, being taller has advantages, all else equal. If you are taller than your opponent, your reach will tend to be longer than your opponent’s, meaning you can strike from a distance that is outside your opponent’s range. To counter, your opponent has to lunge forward to reach you, making him more vulnerable. You can stay where you are to hit your opponent, but your opponent has to move to hit you. Clearly, you have the advantage.
In hand-to-hand combat, being heavier also has advantages, all else equal. If you are heavier than your opponent, you can use your weight to tire your opponent, as wrestlers do. If you punch and kick with the same speed as a smaller opponent, your heavier punches and kicks will deliver more damage. That’s why sports like boxing, wrestling, weight lifting, mixed martial arts, and others have standardized weight classes such as Lightweight, Middleweight, and Heavyweight. These standardized weight classes help to ensure fighters get matched fairly to their opponents.
In hand-to-hand combat, a fighter can make a punch or kick harder by generating more momentum. Momentum is measured by the mass of an object (like a fist or a foot) multiplied by the velocity of the object. So, to make the punch or kick harder, the fighter could increase the mass, or the velocity, or both.
Bruce Lee was neither particularly tall nor particularly heavy. As a world-famous fighter, standing just 5 feet 7 inches and weighing around 135 pounds, he punched well above his weight class. Lee’s height and weight created disadvantages relative to other fighters who were larger and heavier and created obstacles standing in his way of becoming the best kung-fu fighter of his time, which was his ambition. He knew he had to find ways to overcome his disadvantages.
In the movie Game of Death, which was released after Lee’s death, there is an iconic scene where he is wearing a yellow jumpsuit and he is fighting against basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sporting aviator shades. The scene highlighted the extreme size differences between the two opponents. Abdul-Jabbar, who studied martial arts under Lee, was 7 feet 2 inches and roughly 225 pounds. He was a foot and a half taller and 90 pounds heavier. Predictably, Lee manages to overcome his size disadvantage and — “Spoiler alert!” — he beats Abdul-Jabbar.
Possibly the greatest weapon that Lee possessed was his blinding speed. He was often regarded as the fastest martial artist of his time. The old kung fu master Ip Man said Lee was the fastest martial artist he had ever seen. Other champion fighters added their confirmation, including Sparring Grand Champion and fellow martial arts icon Chuck Norris. In a 2011 column in Black Belt magazine, Norris said, “Lee was lightning fast, very agile and incredibly strong for his size.”
In fact, there were several occasions in Lee’s movies when his moves were so fast that they could not be properly captured by a camera shooting at the standard 24 frames per second. With the standard camera speed, Lee’s move couldn’t actually be seen by the viewer. Directors would ask him to slow down his moves for the camera or, at times, they would operate the camera at higher speeds so as to better capture his moves. If you watch the mirror-fight scene in Enter the Dragon, for instance, you are actually watching Bruce Lee moving more slowly than in real life, since the camera was shooting more than 24 frames per second for projectors that played back at just 24 frames per second.
In boxing, the term to describe quickness is “hand speed.” Lee’s hand speed was arguably unbeatable. That went a long way to overcoming some of his disadvantages. Despite his below-average mass, he was able to generate above-average momentum with his exceptional velocity.
And yet there is another element of speed that often gets overlooked in discussions of fighting techniques. It is the acceleration of speed that reaches an apogee at the moment of impact. It is not only that the fist or foot is traveling at a blazingly fast speed; it’s that the fist or foot is traveling at an increasingly fast speed until it strikes its target. It’s fast, and it gets faster, rising to its fastest speed at the moment of impact. Since the fastest speed happens at the point of full extension, the foot or hand recoils back immediately after impact. This is analogous to the crack of the whip. In combat, this dynamic is sometimes referred to as “snap.”
A snapping punch has more power than a regular punch. It is also a highly efficient transfer of energy, concentrating the fighter’s momentum at the moment of impact, and allowing the fighter’s muscles to relax the instant after impact has occurred. Employing this technique allows the fighter to conserve energy, which becomes increasingly important in fights that last longer and fatigue can potentially tip the balance in one direction or the other. So, all else equal, a fighter with superior snap delivers more punching power and retains more energy as the fight progresses.
If the momentum of a punch is measured by mass times velocity times snap, Bruce Lee more than overcame his smaller-than-average mass with exceptional velocity and snap.
Defense to Offense
Bigger, heavier opponents, sensing they have the advantage in a fight, may be less guarded when they attack. On the rooftops of Hong Kong, Lee searched for ways to turn the attacks of his larger opponents to his advantage. He discovered ways to take their confidence and use it against them, to turn their strength into a vulnerability.
This is typified in a maneuver called the stop-hit. With the stop-hit, the defender confronts an incoming attack by parrying or deflecting it and simultaneously delivering a counterattack. The stop-hit can deliver a big return for a small energy expenditure because it uses the opponent’s thrust against him. A stiff jab delivered to an opponent lunging forward causes more damage than the same jab delivered to an opponent standing stationary. The impact is magnified by the combination of two objects thrown together in a head-on collision.
The intercepting dynamic of the stop-hit was such an important maneuver that Lee named his unique martial art “the way of the intercepting fist.”
Lee often lured in his opponents into the stop-hit. From his book Tao of Jeet Kune Do, he said, “The stop-hit may be drawn in a variety of ways: by use of invitation (simply exposing targets), by intentionally uncovered feints, by making false attacks with a half-lunge, or merely by stepping forward.” Lee clearly wanted his opponents to attack him so he could turn their momentum against them.
One of the most famous examples of a fighter using his opponent’s attacks against him occurred in the boxing match between heavyweights Muhammad Ali and George Foreman dubbed “The Rumble in the Jungle.” Early in the fight, Ali began to lean back on the ropes and cover up, inviting the bigger Foreman to throw punches at will. Foreman’s punches proved to be relatively ineffective due to Ali’s bobbing, weaving, deflecting, and dodging. The punches that Foreman landed were absorbed by Ali’s clenched body and the elasticity of the ropes that supported him. Meanwhile, Ali occasionally shot back a quick jab or two to Foreman’s face.
During the first seven rounds, Foreman expended massive amounts of energy with little effect. Ali expended very little energy to great effect. Soon, Foreman’s face was puffy from Ali’s jabs and his energy was spent. Ali, for his part, had absorbed several dozen punishing blows but still maintained a high amount of energy. Then in the eighth round, Ali delivered a flurry of counterpunches and knocked Foreman out to end the fight.
Later, Ali gave a name to his technique of covering up, leaning on the ropes, and inviting Foreman to expend his energy. He called it the “rope-a-dope.”
Bruce Lee was a student of Ali. He studied the boxer’s footwork, his nimble movement, his lightness on his feet, and his cleverness.
Both Ali’s rope-a-dope and Lee’s stop-hit serve as singular links. That is, the fighters receive their opponents’ attacks, convert them into vulnerabilities, and deliver counterattacks to achieve victory. The singular link wins the fight by transforming defense to offense.