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Our Story
Hi there, my name is Sifu Lak Loi. I'm a Wednesday Night Group Jeet Kune Do instructor under the Legendary Tim Tackett. The mission of our group is to preserve and promote Bruce Lee's teachings Jeet Kune Do, to help define and teach the core curriculum, not to confine us but to liberate us and to discover our own personal expression.
Our history of the Wednesday Night Group goes all the way back to Bruce himself. Bruce taught a chap called Dan Inosanto, who was one of his best friends and closest confidantes. Dan also ran Bruce's LA Chinatown school when Bruce was away traveling. And Bruce actually handed over a lot of his latest Jeet Kune Do teachings to him whenever he came back from his travels.
Bruce had actually asked Dan not to teach JKD openly just before Bruce died, and Dan had taken JKD into a private group, which became known as the infamous Backyard Group. And it was as part of that Backyard Group that Dan certified a chap called Tim Tackett with a senior first ranking, and also stated that he was the most knowledgeable JKD practitioner in his famous book, Jeet Kune Do, The Art and Philosophy of Bruce Lee. And it's these teachings that we are privileged to pass on to you, the authentic or what we call old school JKD.
My martial arts journey started when I was a kid from the age of four or five. My father actually did drip fed me and my brother Bruce Lee movies when we were kids, and the passion for martial arts grew from there. You know, watching Bruce on the big screen, me and my brother would just get into altercations and play fight all the time. Eventually my father got sick and tired of scrapping and enrolled us in martial arts classes close by. It wasn't the same actually, because my father enrolled us into some Karate classes from the age of seven. That's really where my martial arts journey began in life.
It wasn't until my wife and I were expecting our first child that I decided to take up martial arts again and pursue Bruce's teachings. In the early 2000’s searching Google for Bruce Lee's martial art wasn't really bringing back any results. It was really hard to find Jeet Kune Do let alone find materials on it at that time.
It was just by accident while I was living in Manhattan at the time, that I popped into a local health club while I was consulting up in Midtown, that I found some Bruce Lee Jeet Kune Do classes running at my local club. I've never looked back since. I trained with the New York Martial Arts Academy for a year. It was an authentic Bruce Lee Jeet Kune Do school affiliated with Bruce's sparring partner, Ted Wong, and later affiliated with Chris Kent, who was Dan Inosanto’s youngest backyard group member from the age of 17 years old. Shortly after that time, I returned back to the UK, and I was fortunate enough that I found another JKD school in my hometown, where I continued with my Jeet Kune Do journey.
It was never my intention to teach Jeet Kune Do, and once I started I just got hooked. It was basically due to two main reasons. Firstly, it just made sense, and secondly, it was effective. It worked. I truly believe that I'm very, very lucky and very grateful to have the opportunity to be teaching. It was through practice that my instructor got me to teach and cover the odd class and cover the odd drill. Before you know it, I was teaching a six classes per week for him, and before you know it, I moved down to London and set up my own school.
JKD has never been about the money or a commercial venture. I would never sacrifice the integrity of Bruce's art for commercial gain. For me, it's a labour of love, it's a passion of mine. I have a day job and that provides my bread and butter. So, it keeps JKD fresh and alive. So it never feels like it's work.
In Bruce's traditional keeping, I try to create a family environment in my classes. We've got people from all walks of life, people that have prior martial arts experience to people with no martial arts experience. We've got people that are very fit to people that are deconditioned. But the whole point is you have to start somewhere.
As Bruce said, "Knowing is not enough, you must apply. Willing is not enough, you must do." So get out there and do something. The fact about creating the family environment is basically we don't take anybody on that has any egos. Because it just takes one bad egg to spit the atmosphere. So we just like to focus on creating a friendly environment so that you can learn without these added pressures.
We look forward to welcoming you!
Peace, respect and love, Sifu Lak Loi
Elite Fitness Training at JKD London
Testimonials
Why Join JKD London?
If you will Walk the Martial Path in accordance with the guidelines given, you will come to know a great deal of truth about yourself, discover how to rid yourself of many hangups, and encumbrances that hitherto have held you back from making use of your full potential, and come to realise what it is you want to be. Each direction is a path of true initiation. Not the kind that confines you to a group, club, school, style, method, system or cult, or shackles you with rules and regulations, doctrines and dogmas devised by others, but one that Admit yourself into the reality of your ‘self’ by your Self. Unlike many philosophical teachers, religious teachers, spiritual guides and gurus, the true martial arts teacher seeks no followers. A wise man once told me,
‘Never try to follow me, look up to me, or bow down to me. You have asked me to be your guide, and this I will be because you asked from your heart. As a guide I will be a friend and we can share discoveries. But this is your path and you are on it to discover your own truth and to be empowered in your own “medicine” and only you can find it and be responsible.’
When we parted after several days together, he looked in my eyes and repeated advice I had been given earlier: ‘Walk your talk, my brother. Walk your talk.’ Walking the Martial Way can never just be verbal adherence to a set of beliefs. It is a way of doing, a way of being and a way of becoming.
To set the record straight, I have NOT invented a new style, composite, modified or otherwise, that is, a style or method set within distinct form and laws apart from “this” style or “that” method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns or molds. More about this later, but in the meantime, do remember that the term Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirror in which we see ourselves. The brand name is really nothing special.
Unlike the traditional approach, there is not a series of rules, a classification of techniques, and so forth, that constitute a so-called JKD method of fighting. To begin with, let me be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as a method of fighting. To create such a method is pretty much like putting a pound of water into wrapping paper and shaping it – although [many] futile arguments exist nowadays as to the choice of colors, textures, and so forth, of the wrapping paper.
Briefly, JKD is not a form of specialized conditioning with a set of beliefs and a particular approach. So basically it is not a “mass” art. Structurally, it does not look at combat from a certain angle but from all possible angles, because it is not bound by any system. And, consequently, its techniques cannot be reduced to a system. And, although it utilizes all ways and means to serve its end (efficiency is anything that scores), it is bound by none, and it is therefore free from all ways and means. In other words, JKD, although possessed of all angles, is itself not possessed; for as previously mentioned, any structure, however efficiently designed, becomes a cage if the practitioner is obsessed with it. To define JKD as a style (gung fu, karate, kickboxing, and so forth) is to miss the point completely, for its teaching method cannot be reduced to a system. If JKD is not a style or a method, maybe it is neutral or maybe it is indifferent. However, this is not the case either, for JKD is both at once “this” and “not this”, and JKD is neither opposed to styles nor not opposed to them. To understand fully, one must transcend the duality of “for” and “against” and look at one organic whole. Within the totality there is simply no distinction; everything IS. A good JKD artist rests in direct intuition.
Artist of Life, Bruce Lee
“Basically, I have always been a martial artist by choice and actor by profession. But, above all, I am hoping to actualize myself to be an ‘Artist of Life’ along the way”. “Artist of Life” refers to the process of being an individual who, through the use of his own independent judgment, sought to fully actualize himself as a total human being (i.e. physically, mentally, spiritually). Lee once told a journalist, “It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and then feel pretty cool. Or I can do all kinds of phony things and be blinded by it. Or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself – that my friend, is very hard to do” – Bruce Lee.
Benefits
*Official statistics from JKD London student survey, December 2018
Press & Media
Articles written by Sifu Lak Loi for WOMA Magazine