By Prince Bell & Ashe Higgs
Key Takeaways
- Lee experimented with a variety of strength & conditioning methods
- Lee used training techniques from old-time strongmen as well as isometrics
- Lee also continued to use traditional methods of strength training from Chinese Kung Fu
- Lee focused heavily on the strength of his core and stabilizer muscles
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The Untold Details On Bruce Lee’s Powerful Workout Methods
It’s hard to think about Bruce Lee without thinking of the washboard abs, those lats that spread out like a cobra, and the ripped and shredded physique. Bruce accomplished his iconic look in a time when there were even professional football players in the NFL who did not believe in lifting weights or following a strength & conditioning program.
The results of Bruce Lee’s workouts were so impressive that they continue to inspire millions of people today, nearly 50 years after his death, including many of the world’s top bodybuilders.
Champions such as Dorian Yates, Lou Ferrigno, Lee Haney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger were all inspired by Bruce’s physique.
4-time Arnold Classic Winner, Flex Wheeler, said that “Bruce was a pioneer by incorporating bodybuilding into his training as a martial artist. He took inspiration from bodybuilders and made his training more sports specific.”
“Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.”
Bruce was a trailblazer in many areas. He felt he should draw on many sources, only keeping what worked for him, discarding what didn’t, and then adding something uniquely his to the process.
When it came to strength and conditioning for martial arts, Bruce Lee was at least a generation ahead of everyone else at the time.
When many people think about the chiseled physique of a seasoned martial artist, Bruce Lee is probably the first person they picture.
Nearly a half-century after his death, the methods and techniques used by Lee to create his sleek, muscular appearance is something people still find fascinating today.
Like his death, many myths, legends, and controversies exist regarding Bruce Lee’s workout methods.
Bruce Lee’s Training History
In May 1965, Bruce Lee visited Hak Keung Gymn in Hong Kong and saved his workout card from his workout that day. Detractors of Bruce Lee like to use this as part of their argument for why they believe Bruce Lee is an overhyped fraud.
Before we can really look more closely at his training from that day, it’s important to rewind the clock further and understand the events that led to Bruce Lee radically overhauling his approach to his martial arts workout.
Bruce Lee’s Most Famous Real Fight
Cause and effect arise together. For better or worse, pioneers are also frequently disruptive, and Bruce Lee was no exception in this regard. Lee was already making waves in the West coast Kung Fu community in 1964. In August of that year, Lee gave a demonstration at the Sun Sing theater in Oakland.
Matthew Polly, the author of the biography “Bruce Lee: A Life,” documents the events leading up to the infamous Wong Jack Man fight thusly:
After demonstrating his martial arts, Lee proclaimed on stage, “In China, 80 percent of what they teach is nonsense; here in America, it’s 90 percent.”
“These old tigers, they have no teeth.”
Before leaving the stage, Lee made a statement that could only be interpreted as an open challenge to Chinatown’s traditional kung fu community; if anyone wanted a lesson in his art, they could find him at his Oakland school.
(In traditional kung fu culture, showing up at someone’s school unannounced and asking for a “lesson” in their style or “offering” someone a lesson is a polite way of saying you’re asking for a challenge match.)
Southern Fist vs. Northern Kicks
In November of 1964, the late, renowned master of Tibetan Hop Gar, David Chin, then just in his early 20s, along with Wong Jack Man and several others, showed up at Lee’s school in Oakland to settle the grudge match.
While accounts of the exact details of the fight vary, one thing was certain: Lee felt that the fight had lasted too long, and he was far too tired and winded (or “gassed”) afterward. Lee realized he was woefully unprepared for the intensity of an all-out brawl. The fight with Wong caused him to reevaluate and reorient his training program radically.
Before the fight with Wong, when Lee was still in Seattle, he was already experimenting with strength training and various conditioning methods, but he wasn’t yet taking them seriously. In one interview, Lee said that “the practice of kung fu is more important than calisthenics.”
That all changed after the Wong Jack Man fight.
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The Evolution of Bruce Lee’s Workout Program
Bruce Lee turned to his students and friends in Oakland, James Lee and Allen Joe, to help him develop the program he was using when he visited the Hong Kong gym.
Allen Joe, at one time, used to work out with Hollywood legend Steve Reeves, so they had Bruce Lee following a bodybuilder’s routine focusing on hypertrophy (growth) rather than pure strength and performance.
Training with James Lee and Allen Joe, Bruce would eventually go from 140 to 165 lbs. At that point, Lee shifted his focus to a strength and conditioning program that complemented his martial arts practice instead of adding muscle just to be bigger. Lee rightly felt the extra mass by itself hadn’t improved his performance.
When Bruce Lee returned from Hong Kong, he was under contract for Number One Son, which eventually morphed into his role as Kato on “The Green Hornet.” At that point in his career, Lee was trying to balance several competing demands.
Lee Ditches Bodybuilding
As an actor, Lee needed to train for aesthetics to maintain his on-camera appearance. But, at the same time, he also needed to train with a focus on performance as a martial artist and a martial arts teacher, as well as maintaining the readiness to meet the grueling demands involved with the long days on set filming fight scenes and stunts.
At this point in the 1960s-America, Asian martial arts were experiencing something of a heyday, thanks largely to US servicemen returning home from serving overseas in countries like Korea and Japan, where they had picked up martial arts like Judo and Karate.
Many of these former servicemen were putting the strength and conditioning methods they had learned in the military to good use on the tournament circuit. However, when it came to his physical preparation, Lee set himself apart from his contemporaries.
Bruce Lee & Eugen Sandow
Bruce Lee was a voracious reader with an extensive library. He devoured all the material he could find on physical conditioning. Initially, Lee studied the material of Jack Lalanne, who was the era’s biggest “fitness influencer.” Lee also set himself apart from other martial artists at the time by studying the works of old-time strongmen like “The Mighty Atom,” Alexander Zass– the Amazing Samson, and Eugen Sandow.
Eugen Sandow’s “Strength and How to Obtain It” was one of the volumes found in Bruce Lee’s vast collection of books on strength training and bodybuilding. Figures like Sandow and Zass were not big men at all, but they were considered some of the strongest men in the world of their time.
Sandow could perform amazing feats of strength and lift heavy weights, but he did not have the hulking physique most people typically associate with bodybuilders and powerlifters of today. Instead, Sandow’s physique resembled Michaelangelo’s David.
Sandow advocated using light weights in training, but the real secret of his training method was using the mind.
In “Strength and How To Obtain It,” Sandow wrote, “you can all become strong if you have the will and use it in the right direction. But in the first place, you must learn to exercise your mind. This first of all lessons in physical training is of the utmost importance. For on it, the whole of my system depends.”
With his background in Chinese Kung Fu, these words must have resonated with Lee in a familiar way.
The concept of yi 意, or the “will,” “intent,” or “the mind,” is a cornerstone of Chinese martial arts, and arts like Yiquan, Xingyiquan, and I Liq Chuan all emphasize that the body is merely a tool for training the mind.
What We Can Learn From How Bruce Worked Out
Was Eugene Sandow’s high repetition, light weights program the secret to Bruce Lee’s incredible power? Not really, at least not exclusively.
Although Lee experimented with the old-time strong man’s methods, the real insight Lee gained from Sandow, and other old-time strongmen, was that it was possible to become extremely strong without becoming “musclebound” or sacrificing performance.
American karate champion and actor Joe Lewis, who knew Bruce Lee, recounts that Lee could hold a 120lbs barbell straight out in front of himself at arm’s length. Lewis also recounted that Lee’s training focused heavily on his deeper stabilizer muscles rather than the more superficial “mirror muscles” of a bodybuilding program.
Isometric Strength
Isometrics is one of the most overlooked parts of Bruce Lee’s training that helped him develop his amazing strength and power.
Isometric training became very popular in the mid-to-late 60s, but it mostly fell out of favor. Many bodybuilders using isometrics in their training also used anabolic steroids, so people dismissed the hard work these athletes were doing in the gym.
Bill Starr was himself a legend and pioneer in the American strength training and Olympic weightlifting community. He was an Olympian and an Olympic Team Coach.
In an article written by Bill Starr on isometric training published on the Starting Strength website, Starr concludes the article by saying, “In my mind, it’s the ultimate strength exercise, and it’s in danger of being lost. That can’t be allowed to happen.”
In the 60s and 70s, a very forward-thinking Bruce Lee looked into isometric training, especially the works of Bob Hoffman. Hoffman advocated for using eight basic isometric exercises based on the Olympic lifts, the clean-and-jerk, and the snatch.
The Basic 8 Exercises
- Overhead Press Lockout
- Overhead Press Start
- High Pull
- Parallel Squat
- Shrug
- Deadlift (start)
- Deadlift (lockout)
- Quarter Squat
After a thorough warmup, each exercise is done for one set of six to 12-second repetitions, or “reps.” The goal is to generate maximum muscle tension for the duration. The training should take place daily. This is a program for raw strength, not size. The benefits of such a program are a minimal investment of time (about 15 minutes in total) with very little space or equipment required. Strength gains when training isometrics are
Bruce Lee made the “iso-chain” and Hoffman’s 8 Basics a staple of his training regimen.
Although less common today, you can still find savvy athletes using isometrics as part of their training routine. The founder of “Kinstretch,” Dr. Andreo Spina, uses isometric contractions at the end range of movement as part of his “internal strength training” model. If you want to integrate isometrics into your training program, Dragon Door has upgraded Bruce Lee’s Isochain for the 21st century.
Plyometrics
Lee also incorporated explosive plyometrics into his training program. Plyometrics training is a contentious subject, often misunderstood and misapplied in training programs.
Power can be looked at as force divided by time. The same amount of force applied faster is more powerful. We often would describe this as “explosiveness.”
Explosiveness is largely determined by genetics and exposure to testosterone in the womb and during puberty. Dedicated plyometric training seems only to be able to improve explosiveness by 10-15%.
Vertical leap is an excellent measure of an individual’s raw explosive potential. The average male has a vertical jump of about 20″ or so. With smart, dedicated training; he might see an improvement of 2-3″. By comparison, elite male vertical jumps start at ~30 “+.
However, for gifted athletes like Lee, looking to eke out every last percent in performance, a 15% improvement in power can mean the difference between never making it past college ball and the pros; for martial arts, it can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
Traditional Chinese Kung Fu has always incorporated specialized exercises called fa jin 發勁 or fa li 發力, along with esoteric breathing exercises for maximizing power generation.
Bruce Lee owned a 300 lbs punching bag gifted to him by Bob Wall. Lee used it to develop his kicking power as part of his overall training for explosiveness.
Bruce Lee was a pioneer when it came to strength & conditioning. He experimented with a variety of methods, from old-time strongmen to isometrics. He also continued to use traditional strength training methods from Chinese Kung Fu. Lee focused heavily on the strength of his core and stabilizer muscles. This made him incredibly strong and agile, which helped him become one of the most famous martial artists of all time.
If you enjoyed this article, you can read more in our series about Bruce Lee.
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