Bruce Lee's Entry Into Martial Arts

Bruce Lee's entry into martial arts evidently beganSeattle teaching what he called Jun Fan Gung Fu
with his father who taught Bruce the basics ofor "Bruce Lee's Kung Fu". His first student was
the Wu style of tai Chi. At the age of 13 in 1954,Jesse Glover whom Bruce had met at school.
Bruce started learning Wing Chung underJesse was already a boxer and studied Judo.
Grandmaster Yip Man. After some time, some ofJesse was the first to introduce Judo to Lee.
Yip Mans other students did not want to trainJesse was with Lee for 5 years and was his first
with Lee because he was not of full Chineseteaching assistant.
heritage.It was about 1959 that Bruce started his Jeet
From that point Lee trained only with Yip Man oneKune Do. It was after the match with Wong Jack
on one and with his friend William Cheung outsideMan that Bruce realized that traditional martial arts
of the school. Supposedly Bruce would get intowas too restrictive, he needed to develop a style
street fights and one time an opponent wasthat used only what was useful from different
believed to have mafia background and may havestyles and merge them into a new, more flexible
had a hit out on him. His parents decided to packway to fight. It was also at this time that Bruce
him up and send him to San Francisco to live withstarted training to improve his strength and
his sister, Bruce was 18 at this time. He eventuallyendurance, we know how impressive his physique
wound up in Seattle.became from this.
Bruce starting teaching martial arts in 1959 in