\"WARM MARBLE\" The Lethal Physique of Bruce Lee

"WARM MAR­BLE" The Lethal Physique of Bruce Lee

By John Lit­tle
In­tro­duc­tion by Mike Mentz­er


It is ab­so­lute­ly amaz­ing how much of an im­pact that Bruce Lee's strength and phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment have had on ath­letes, body­builders and av­er­age men all over the face of the globe. As a young boy in high school, I can clear­ly re­call all of the talk among my friends about the great Bruce Lee; they all were in­ti­mate­ly fa­miliar with Bruce's films; and they would dis­cuss not just his epochal mar­tial arts skills, but, al­so, his in­cred­i­ble strength and lean, shredd­ed physique.

As Mr. Lit­tle re­ports in his ar­ti­cle, even such a per­so­n­age as Joe Wei­der re­marked on the as­tound­ing mus­cu­lar refine­ment and def­i­ni­tion of Lee's physique, es­pe­cial­ly the mas­ter's abs. As Mr. Lit­tle al­so ex­plains, Bruce Lee's physique had a re­mark­able in­flu­ence on some of to­day's top physique champs. Body­build­ing lu­mi­naries, in­clud­ing Lou Fer­rig­no, Lee Haney, Do­rian Yates, Rachel Mclish, Len­da Mur­ray, Flex Wheel­er and Shawn Ray have all spo­ken on re­cord con­cern­ing the enor­mous im­pact the physique of Bruce Lee had on them. Why? Why would the physique of the migh­ty mite, nev­er mas­sive­ly de­vel­oped along the lines of the body­build­ing greats I just enu­mer­at­ed, but de­scribed by some "as the most defined physique in the world." I leave that unan­sw­ered, as au­thor, John Lit­tle, will pro­vide an in­ci­sive, elo­quent an­sw­er...

Sub­sec­tions in the ar­ti­cle will ti­t­il­late the le­gion of ex­ist­ing Lee fa­nat­ics, and whet the ap­petite of those for whom this ar­ti­cle will serve as their ini­tial in­tro­duc­tion to the sub­ject. For in­s­tance, Func­tio­n­al Strength, Un­be­liev­able Strength, A Bat­tle in San Fran­sis­co, The Body­build­ing Con­nec­tion and The Rou­tine, will riv­et the read­er's fo­cus such that he will fin­ish this ar­ti­cle in one read­ing, and prompt him to want to re-read it and re-re-read it.

I've been ex­treme­ly im­pressed over the years as to how many body­builders are al­so high­ly trained mar­tial artists. In fact, over the years I hav­ing per­so­n­al­ly su­per­vised the train­ing of many mar­tial artists, with many of my phone clients al­ready be­ing ra­bid Lee fans, and mar­tial artists seek­ing the most ef­fi­cient man­n­er of train­ing for strength and speed; which was the goal of Lee's train­ing. Al­so, I re­ceive more e-mails, let­ters and phone calls from mar­tial artists than any other type of ath­lete. This I be­lieve fol­lows from Lee's well known con­cern with weight train­ing to de­vel­op ef­fi­cien­cy and strength.

I am ex­treme­ly proud to say that one of my best friends, for the past 22 years, wrote this ar­ti­cle, which is ex­cerpt­ed from one of the 11 books he's writ­ten on Bruce Lee. I first met John Lit­tle at Ea­ton's de­part­ment store in Toron­to where Arnold, Fran­co and I had made an ap­pear­ance for Wei­der and the IFBB, in 1979. We hit it off im­me­di­ate­ly, as John was philo­soph­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed, along with hav­ing a pas­sio­nate in­ter­est in body­build­ing. Af­ter that ini­tial meet­ing, we met at Lou Hol­lozi's gym in Toron­to in 1980, where I con­duct­ed a sem­i­nar; and, with that, John and I fur­ther ce­ment­ed our friend­ship. Sub­se­quent­ly, John made a num­ber of trips to Los An­ge­les, where he'd usu­al­ly stay with me in my apart­ment in West Hol­ly­wood. His pri­mary pur­pose in trav­el­ing to south­ern Cal­i­for­nia was to pur­sue the sub­jects of those he wrote books about, in­clud­ing Steve Reeves and Lou Fer­rig­no.

It was fi­nal­ly, in 1992, that Joe Wei­der brought John to Los An­ge­les to write for Flex. This on­ly last­ed three years, as John was more in­ter­est­ed in writ­ing free­ly about his pas­sion, name­ly - phi­lo­so­phy, mar­tial arts, the phi­lo­so­phy of Bruce Lee's, who, too, was a fer­vent stu­dent of phi­lo­so­phy, his per­so­n­al li­brary packed with phi­lo­so­phy books that ex­tend­ed from the floor to the ceil­ing and spanned the length of the room. His quest for the truth saw him avid­ly study­ing philo­so­phies rang­ing from that of Kr­ish­na­mur­ti's to our most rev­ered, Ayn Rand.

Bruce Lee's life was most in­ter­est­ing as he rose from a starv­ing, poor boy in Hong Kong to the world's most cele­brat­ed movie star in Hol­ly­wood, hav­ing a greater im­pact on more peo­ple than that of Elvis Pres­ley's, James Dean's and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe's com­bined!

I trust that you, dear read­er, will gain much knowl­edge from John Lit­tle's ar­ti­cle, along with the add­ed in­spi­ra­tion that will act to have you ap­proach your own train­ing with greater in­spi­ra­tion and mo­ti­va­tion than ev­er be­fore. Above all else, I ar­dent­ly de­sire that you will read John Lit­tle's su­perla­tive ar­ti­cle most­ly for the sheer plea­sure of it.

Mike Mentz­er

"If you're talk­ing about com­bat -- as it is -- well then, ba­by you'd bet­ter train ev­ery part of your body!" -- Bruce Lee (from the video, Bruce Lee: The Lost In­ter­view)

There's an anec­dote that has en­dured some 28 years con­cern­ing the tex­ture of the mus­cles that adorned the physique of the late mar­tial arts pi­oneer/philo­so­pher, Bruce Lee.

It con­cerns a lady named Ann Clouse, the wife of Robert Clouse, the man who di­rect­ed Lee's last film En­ter the Dra­g­on for Warn­er Bros. It seems that Clouse's wife had ven­tured on­to the set of the film and was mes­mer­ized by Lee's in­cred­i­ble physique as he went through his paces chore­o­graph­ing the fight scenes for the film, stripped to the waist un­der the hot and hu­mid Hong Kong sun. In be­tween takes, Ann ap­proached the young su­per­s­tar and asked if she could "feel his bi­ceps." "Sure," Lee re­spond­ed -- it was a re­quest he'd re­ceived on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions -- tens­ing his arm and invit­ing her to check it out for her­self. "My God!" she ex­claimed, draw­ing her hand back in­s­tant­ly, "It's like feel­ing warm mar­ble!"

It's fas­ci­nat­ing that al­most three de­cades lat­er, peo­ple are still talk­ing about the body of Bruce Lee -- al­though it is by no means sur­pris­ing. The Lee physique, once de­scribed by no less an au­thor­i­ty on such mat­ters than body­build­ing mag­nate Joe Wei­der as "the most defined body I've ev­er seen!" has at­tract­ed (much like the man's mar­tial art and phi­lo­so­phy) a fol­low­ing that not on­ly ri­vals but ex­ceeds those of Elvis Pres­ley, James Dean and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe -- com­bined! Cer­tain­ly his fol­low­ing ex­ceeds that of any body­builder of a sim­i­lar vin­tage. And even more fas­ci­nat­ing is the fact that al­most ev­ery­one gets some­thing dif­fer­ent out of Bruce Lee -- mar­tial artists re­vere his phys­i­cal dex­ter­i­ty, pow­er, speed and the ge­nius he dis­played in bring­ing sci­ence to bear on the world of mar­tial arts; movie­go­ers are im­pressed with the man's screen pres­ence and an­i­mal mag­netism, along with the fact that he sin­gle-hand­ed­ly cre­at­ed a new genre of ac­tion film thus open­ing the door to the Stal­lones, Sch­warzeneg­gers and Jackie Chans who were to fol­low in his foot­steps; philo­so­phers are im­pressed with Lee's abil­i­ty to bridge the philo­soph­i­cal chasm se­parat­ing East and the West and to syn­th­e­size the best as­pects of both cul­tures. But there ex­ists another pock­et of hu­mani­ty that sees in Lee some­thing else -- al­though not en­tire­ly un­re­lat­ed -- the body­builders. Body­builders, young and old, know from one quick glance at Lee's physique ex­act­ly how much la­bor went in­to its cre­a­tion -- and they are, one and all, very im­pressed.

Iron­i­cal­ly, body­build­ing lu­mi­naries of no less sta­ture than Flex Wheel­er, Shawn Ray, Rachel Mc­Clish, Lou Fer­rig­no, Lee Haney, Len­da Mur­ray and former Mr. Olympia, Do­rian Yates -- that is to say, the best in the busi­ness - have all spo­ken on the re­cord re­gard­ing the im­pact the physique of Bruce Lee had on their body­build­ing ca­reers. "How could this be?" I can hear you ask, per­haps some­what in­cre­d­u­lous­ly. Af­ter all, Lee was on­ly 5'7" tall and checked in at a weight that fluc­tu­at­ed be­tween 126 to 145 pounds! What could a be­he­moth like Do­rian Yates, for ex­am­ple, see in Bruce Lee's physique that would give him grounds for any form of in­spi­ra­tion? The an­sw­er, in a word, would be qual­i­ty.

There has sel­dom been seen - this side of a jun­gle cat -- the in­cred­i­ble sinewy and ripped-to-the-bone qual­i­ty of mus­cle dis­played by Bruce Lee. He was ripped in places that body­builders are just now (28 years lat­er) learn­ing they can train. Ev­ery mus­cle group on his body stood out in bold re­lief from its neigh­bor -- not sim­p­ly for show (un­like many body­builders) but for func­tion. Lee was, to quote his first stu­dent in the Unit­ed States, Seat­tle's Jesse Glover, "above all else, con­cerned with func­tion." Lee's body was not on­ly a thing of im­mense grace and beau­ty to watch in ac­tion, but it was supreme­ly func­tio­n­al. Leap­ing eight feet in the air to kick out a light bulb (as evi­denced in Lee's of­fice-wreck­ing scene in the MGM movie Mar­low), land­ing a punch from five feet away in five-hun­dredths of a se­cond and catch­ing grains of rice -- that he'd thrown in­to the air -- with chop­sticks were things Lee had trained his body (and re­flex­es) to ac­com­plish. In fact, dur­ing his fa­mous "Lost In­ter­view" Lee re­ferred to his ap­proach to train­ing as "the art of ex­press­ing the hu­man body." In­deed, per­haps nev­er be­fore has there been such an in­cred­i­ble con­flu­ence of phys­i­cal at­tributes brought to­gether in the form of one hu­man be­ing -- light­en­ing fast re­flex­es, supreme flex­i­bil­i­ty, awe­some pow­er, fe­line grace and mus­cu­lar­i­ty com­bined in one to­tal -- and very lethal -- pack­age.

Fur­ther­more, the Lee physique was bal­anced and sym­met­ri­cal and, while not ev­ery­one can be said to ad­mire the mas­sive mus­cu­la­ture of our Olympians, ev­ery­one -- or so it would seem (in­clud­ing the world's great­est body­builders) ad­mire the "to­tal pack­age" that was Bruce Lee.


Who should have won? Judge for your­self.
All of the afore­men­tioned cham­pi­on body­builders have in­di­cat­ed that Bruce Lee was a ma­jor in­flu­ence on their body­build­ing ca­reers, which is no small ac­com­plish­ment when one con­sid­ers the fact that Lee nev­er en­tered a physique con­test in his life. Iron­i­cal­ly, de­spite his in­flu­ence be­ing, felt by the hard­est of hard-core body­builders, Lee him­self was nev­er in­ter­est­ed in de­vel­op­ing a mas­sive mus­cu­la­ture. One of Lee's clos­est friends and an in­struc­tor in Lee's art of Jeet Kune Do, Ted Wong, re­calls that "Bruce trained pri­mar­i­ly for strength and speed." The physique -- while cer­tain­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed by Lee -- came al­most as a by-prod­uct of such train­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to those who met him, from Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­ers to his fel­low mar­tial artists, Lee's mus­cles car­ried con­sid­er­able im­pact. Taky Ki­mu­ra, one of Lee's clos­est friends (in fact, the best man at Lee's wed­d­ing in 1964) re­calls that Lee was nev­er loath to re­move his shirt and dis­play the re­sults of his labors in the gym -- of­ten just to see the re­ac­tions of those around him. "He had the most in­cred­i­ble set of lats I'd ev­er seen," re­called Ki­mu­ra, "and his big joke was to pre­tend that his thumb was an air hose, which he'd then put in his mouth and pre­tend to in­flate his lats with. He looked like a damn co­bra when he did that!"

Lee's physique holds up un­der scruti­ny and has sur­vived the pas­sage of time sim­p­ly be­cause it pos­sessed what many con­sid­er to have been the per­fect blend of ra­zor-sharp cuts, awe­some mus­cu­lar­i­ty, great shape and an al­most onion skin def­i­ni­tion. The mus­cles that bulged and rip­pled across the Lee physique were thick, dense, well-chis­eled from their neigh­bor and, above all, func­tio­n­al.

Func­tio­n­al Strength
Dan In­osan­to, another of Lee's close friends and him­self an in­struc­tor in Lee's art, adds that Lee was on­ly in­ter­est­ed in strength that could read­i­ly be con­vert­ed to pow­er. "I re­mem­ber once Bruce and I were walk­ing along the beach in San­ta Mon­i­ca, out by where the 'Dun­geon' (an old-time body­build­ing gym) used to be," re­calls In­osan­to, "when all of a sud­den this big, huge body­builder came walk­ing out of the Dun­geon and I said to Bruce, 'Man, look at the arms on that guy!' I'll nev­er for­get Bruce's re­ac­tion, he said 'Yeah, he's big -- but is he pow­er­ful? Can he use that ex­tra mus­cle ef­fi­cient­ly?"
Pow­er, ac­cord­ing to Lee, lay in an in­di­vi­d­u­al's abil­i­ty to use the strength de­vel­oped in the gym quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly; in other words, pow­er was the mea­sure of how quick­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly one could sum­mon and co­or­d­i­nate strength for "re­al-world" pur­pos­es. On this ba­sis, ac­cord­ing to those who worked out with Lee from time to time such as mar­tial arts ac­tor Chuck Nor­ris, Bruce Lee -- pound for pound-- might well have been one of the most pow­er­ful men in the world.

Un­be­liev­able Strength
Lee's feats of strength are the stuff of le­g­end; from per­form­ing push-ups - on one hand! - or thumbs on­ly pushups, to sup­port­ing a 125-pound bar­bell at arms length in front of him (with el­bows locked) for sev­er­al se­conds, or send­ing in­di­vi­d­u­als (who out­weighed him by as much as 100 pounds in some in­s­tances) fly­ing through the air and land­ing some 15 feet away as a re­sult of a punch that Lee de­liv­ered from on­ly one-inch away, the pow­er that Bruce Lee could gen­er­ate -- at a mere body­weight of 135 pounds -- is ab­so­lute­ly fright­en­ing. Not to men­tion some of his other nif­ty lit­tle habits like thrust­ing his fin­gers through full cans of Co­ca-Co­la and send­ing 300 pound heavy bags slap­ping against the ceil­ing with a sim­ple side kick.
Strength train­ing -- qua strength train­ing -- was Lee's pri­mary ob­jec­tive with re­sis­tance ex­er­cise. Lat­er, as we shall soon see, his train­ing evolved in­to more spe­cial­ized ap­pli­ca­tions that were ben­e­fi­cial to his spe­cif­ic goals as a mar­tial artist. But be­fore we get to there, let's first take a look at how Lee was first drawn to body­build­ing.

Ide­als & Pos­si­bil­i­ties
For a num­ber of years, Lee had made a con­cert­ed study of ex­er­cise phy­si­ol­o­gy and ana­to­my. Re­fus­ing to mere­ly ac­cept tra­di­tion for tra­di­tion's sake - a stance that made him in­creas­ing­ly un­pop­u­lar with the ma­jor­i­ty of his fel­low mar­tial artists who had been raised and were now in the pro­cess of pass­ing on (with­out ques­tion­ing) the vari­ous mar­tial tra­di­tions of the East -- Lee's back­ground in phy­si­ol­o­gy and ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy had im­bued him with the abil­i­ty to dis­cern a use­ful ex­er­cise from an un­pro­duc­tive one and there­fore he was able to avoid the ob­s­ta­cle of wast­ed time in any of his work­outs. Lee be­lieved that the stu­dent of ex­er­cise sci­ence should aim at noth­ing less than phys­i­cal per­fec­tion, with all that it im­plies in its to­tal­i­ty; he should want great strength, great speed, great co­or­d­i­na­tion, ex­u­ber­ant health, and, by no means least, the mus­cu­lar beau­ty of form which distin­guish­es a phys­i­cal­ly per­fect hu­man be­ing. To Lee, the whole se­cret of suc­cess in body­build­ing lay in the prin­ci­ple of pro­gres­sive re­sis­tance, but he al­so rec­og­nized that there was another com­po­nent that had won a place in the vo­cab­u­lary of phys­i­cal cul­ture and that word was per­sis­tence.
Cer­tain­ly Lee was noth­ing if not per­sis­tent in his quest to ful­ly ex­plore and ex­press the po­ten­tial of his body, a physique that not on­ly looked pheno­m­e­nal on a movie screen but that al­so pos­sessed a mus­cu­la­ture that was geared for func­tion. Giv­en the phy­si­o­log­i­cal fact that a stronger mus­cle is a big­ger mus­cle, it was on­ly na­t­u­ral that Lee would in time come to ap­pre­ci­ate the su­pe­ri­or health-build­ing ben­e­fits of body­build­ing -- but I'm gett­ing ahead of my­self.

Let us now ex­amine the si­t­u­a­tion that first caused Lee to ap­pre­ci­ate body­build­ing and then we shall fo­cus on what rou­tine he uti­l­ized to build the mus­cles that served him with such tre­men­dous ef­fi­cien­cy. While Lee may have been aware of the gen­er­al ben­e­fits to be had from a pro­gram of pro­gres­sive body­build­ing ex­er­cis­es, it took a vi­o­lent en­coun­ter to make him ful­ly cog­nizant of the mer­its that a more reg­u­lar and ded­i­cat­ed ap­proach to body­build­ing could pro­vide.

A Bat­tle in San Fran­cis­co
One even­ing while Lee was pre­par­ing to teach a class to a group of se­lect stu­dents in his mod­est San Fran­cis­co kwoon (kung fu school), the door to his school sud­den­ly flew open and in walked a group of Chi­nese mar­tial artists led by a prac­ti­tion­er who was con­sid­ered to be their best fight­er and the desig­nat­ed lead­er of the troupe.
Ac­cord­ing to Lee's wife, Lin­da, who was both pre­sent and eight months preg­nant with the cou­ple's first child, Bran­don, at the time, Lee had on a pri­or oc­ca­sion been served with an or­nate scroll say­ing in bold Chi­nese char­ac­ters that he had an ul­ti­ma­tum: stop teach­ing non-Chi­nese stu­dents Gung fu (the Can­to­nese pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Kung Fu) or be pre­pared to fight with San Fran­cis­co's top Kung Fu man. Now, the day of reck­on­ing had come.

Lee hand­ed the scroll dis­dain­ful­ly back to their lead­er. "I'll teach whomev­er I choose," he said calm­ly. "I don't care what col­or they are." While Lee's non-ra­cist views are to­day gen­er­al­ly ap­plaud­ed, in San Fran­cis­co's Chi­na­town in the mid 1960s they were tan­ta­mount to trea­son -- at least within the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty. In­deed, teach­ing Chi­nese com­ba­tive "se­crets" to non-Chi­nese races was per­ceived as the high­est form of trea­son in the mar­tial arts com­mu­ni­ty. By his words and de­meanor, Lee had ef­fec­tive­ly thrown the gaunt­let back at the feet of his would-be chal­lenger and, while Lee had many virtues, it is well known among his friends, fam­i­ly and stu­dents that pa­tience in suf­fer­ing fools and their ig­no­rance was not one of them.

A fight im­me­di­ate­ly broke out and, in a mat­ter of se­conds, Lee had the pre­vi­ous­ly bold and self-righ­teous kung fu "ex­pert" run­n­ing for the near­est ex­it. Fi­nal­ly, af­ter much leg­work, Lee was able to throw his man to the floor and ex­tract a sub­mis­sion from him. In a rage, Lee threw the en­tire troupe off the premis­es, curs­ing them out in Can­to­nese, en route. How­ev­er, Lee quick­ly learned -- to his shock, giv­en that the fight had last­ed all of three min­utes -- that he had ex­pend­ed a tre­men­dous amount of en­er­gy in the al­ter­ca­tion. "He was sur­prised and dis­ap­point­ed at the phys­i­cal con­di­tion he was in," re­called Lin­da of the oc­ca­sion. "He'd thought that the fight had last­ed way too long and that it was his own lack of prop­er con­di­tion­ing that made it such a lengthy set-to. He had felt in­or­d­i­nate­ly wind­ed af­ter­wards."

It was this fight more than any other sin­gle event that had giv­en Lee suf­fi­cient cause to thor­ough­ly in­vesti­gate al­ter­nate av­enues of phys­i­cal con­di­tion­ing. His con­clu­sion? He would need to de­vel­op con­sid­er­ab­ly more strength -- of both his mus­cles and car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem -- if he was ev­er to be­come the com­plete mar­tial artist he had en­vi­sioned be­com­ing.

The Body­build­ing Con­nec­tion
Know­ing that the mus­cle mag­azines were the on­ly ex­ist­ing source of cur­rent health and strength train­ing in­for­ma­tion, Lee im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan to sub­scribe to all of the body­build­ing publi­ca­tions he could find. He or­dered body­build­ing cours­es out of the mag­azines and test­ed their claims and the­o­ries. He made a habit out of fre­quent­ing se­cond-hand book­s­tores and purchas­ing books on body­build­ing and strength train­ing, in­clud­ing one writ­ten by Eu­gene San­dow en­ti­tled Strength & How to Ob­tain It -- which was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1897. Lee's hunger for knowl­edge in the field of body­build­ing ran so high, that he purchased ev­ery­thing he could get his hands on -- from "hot off the press" cours­es to back list clas­sics. No price was too high for knowl­edge, par­tic­u­lar­ly if its ap­pli­ca­tion re­sult­ed in the ac­qui­si­tion of greater bod­i­ly strength, pow­er and phys­i­cal ef­fi­cien­cy.
From this point on un­til his even­tu­al death in Ju­ly of 1973 (of a cere­bral ede­ma), Bruce Lee amassed a tre­men­dous per­so­n­al li­brary of books on phi­lo­so­phy, mar­tial art and an ex­ten­sive se­lec­tion of tomes that dealt ex­ten­sive­ly with phys­i­cal fit­ness, body­build­ing, phy­si­ol­o­gy and weight lift­ing. Lee would un­der­line cer­tain pas­sages of text that he found par­tic­u­lar­ly mean­ing­ful and would con­s­tant­ly jot down thoughts of how this in­for­ma­tion could be ap­plied to mar­tial art in the mar­gins of the books. "Bruce used to come in­to his school in L.A.'s Chi­na­town with an arm­ful of ar­ti­cles from the mus­cle mag­azines," re­calls In­osan­to. "He'd say 'look at this: th­ese body­builders all say that they do this in or­der to in­crease their strength -- it's a com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor run­n­ing through­out all of their writ­ings.' He'd look for con­sis­ten­cy in things like that and would com­pare and elim­i­nate the ad­di­tio­n­al da­ta that he felt was su­per­flu­ous."

The Rou­tine
Af­ter much re­search, and with the help of two body­builders who were al­so his close friends and stu­dents in the San Fran­cis­co Bay area, Lee de­vised a three-day-per-week body­build­ing pro­gram that he felt fit his strengthen­ing and body­build­ing needs per­fect­ly. Ac­cord­ing to one of th­ese men, Allen Joe, "James Lee and I in­tro­duced Bruce to the ba­sic weight train­ing tech­niques. We used to train with ba­sic ex­er­cis­es like squ­ats, pullovers and curls for about three sets each. Noth­ing re­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar but we were just gett­ing him start­ed." This pro­gram ac­tu­al­ly served Lee well from 1965 through un­til 1970 and fit in per­fect­ly with Lee's own phi­lo­so­phy of gett­ing the max­i­mum re­sults out of the min­i­mum -- or most eco­nom­i­cal -- ex­pen­di­ture of en­er­gy.
The ev­ery-other-day work­out al­lowed for the of­ten ne­glect­ed as­pect of re­cov­ery to take place. Lee co­or­d­i­nat­ed his body­build­ing work­outs in such a way so as to in­sure that they fell on days when he wasn't en­gaged in ei­ther en­du­rance-en­hanc­ing or over­ly stren­u­ous mar­tial art train­ing. The pro­gram worked like mag­ic; in­creas­ing Lee's body­weight from an ini­tial 130 pounds to -- at one point -- top­ping out at just over 165 pounds!

Ac­cord­ing to Glover, how­ev­er, Lee wasn't par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the add­ed mass; "I no­ticed that he was big­ger af­ter he was weight train­ing. There was a time af­ter he went to Cal­i­for­nia that he went up to 165 pounds. But I think it slowed him down be­cause that was re­al heavy for Bruce. He looked buff like a body­builder. And then, lat­er on I saw him and this was all gone. I mean, one thing that Bruce was [about] was func­tion -- and if stuff got in the way, then it had to go. Bruce want­ed his weight train­ing to com­ple­ment what he did in the mar­tial arts. A lot of what Bruce was do­ing was about be­ing able to main­tain arm po­si­tions that no­body could vi­o­late in a fight. Like, if you take most peo­ple who are in­to body­build­ing or weight train­ing, most of them are in­ter­est­ed in sim­p­ly build­ing up their mus­cles to a big­ger size, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ma­jor mus­cle groups -- not much at­ten­tion is paid to the con­nec­tive tis­sues, like lig­a­ment and ten­don strength. Well, Bruce's thing was 'let's build up the con­nec­tors and we won't wor­ry so much about the size of the mus­cle.' Again, Bruce was about func­tion."

Gear­ing his train­ing for func­tion, Lee's body­build­ing rou­tine in­cor­po­rat­ed the three core tenets of to­tal fit­ness- stretch­ing for flex­i­bil­i­ty, weight train­ing for strength and car­dio­vas­cu­lar ac­tiv­i­ty for his re­s­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem -- the orig­i­nal cross-train­er!

Bruce Lee's "Lethal Physique" Body­build­ing Pro­gram
(per­formed on Tues­days, Thurs­days and Sa­t­ur­days)

Ex­er­cise Sets Rep­e­ti­tions
Clean & Press 2 8
Squ­ats 2 12
Pullovers 2 8
Bench Press­es 2 6
Good Morn­ings 2 8
Bar­bell Curls 2 8
The Break­down of the Rou­tine:

1.) Clean & Press: Lee would be­gin this move­ment by tak­ing a shoulder-width grip on an Olympic bar­bell. Bend­ing his knees, he would squ­at down in front of the re­sis­tance and, with a quick snap of his arms and a thrust from his legs, clean the bar­bell to his ch­est and stand up. Af­ter a brief pause, Lee would then thrust the bar­bell to arms length over­head, pause brie­f­ly, and then low­er the bar­bell back to the top of his ch­est. Af­ter another brief pause, he would low­er the bar­bell back to the floor (the start­ing po­si­tion). With ab­so­lute­ly no rest, Lee would then ini­ti­ate his se­cond rep­e­ti­tion of the move­ment and cont­in­ue to do so un­til he had com­plet­ed eight rep­e­ti­tions. Af­ter a very brief rest, so as to take full ad­van­tage of the car­dio-re­s­pi­ra­to­ry ben­e­fits as well as the strength-build­ing ben­e­fits, Lee would per­form a se­cond -- and fi­nal -- set.

2.) Squ­ats: This sta­ple of body­build­ing move­ments was the corn­er­s­tone of Bruce Lee's bar­bell train­ing. He had dozens of ar­ti­cles that he'd clipped out on the me­chan­ics and ben­e­fits of squ­ats and he prac­ticed many vari­a­tions of this ex­er­cise. In his rou­tine, how­ev­er, he per­formed the ex­er­cise in the stan­dard fashion. Rest­ing a bar­bell across his shoulders, Lee would place his feet ap­prox­i­mate­ly shoulder-width apart. Mak­ing sure that he was prop­er­ly bal­anced, Lee would slow­ly as­cend to a full squ­at po­si­tion. With ab­so­lute­ly ze­ro pause in the bot­tom po­si­tion, Lee would then im­me­di­ate­ly re­turn -- us­ing the strength of his hips, glutes, ham­strings, calves and qua­dri­ceps -- to the start­ing po­si­tion, where­upon he would com­mence rep num­ber two. Lee would per­form 12 rep­e­ti­tions in this move­ment and, af­ter a short breather, re­turn and re-shoulder the bar­bell for one more set of 12 reps.

3.) Pullovers: Al­though there ex­ists no phys­i­cal evi­dence that Bruce Lee su­persett­ed bar­bell pullovers with squ­ats, there is rea­son to be­lieve that this was case -- if on­ly for the fact that such was the method ad­vo­cat­ed in the ar­ti­cles he read. Squ­ats were con­sid­ered a great "over­all" mus­cle builder, whereas pullovers were sim­p­ly con­sid­ered a "rib box ex­pan­der" or "breath­ing ex­er­cise." Conse­quent­ly, the fashion of in­cor­po­rat­ing pullovers in the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s was as a "fin­ish­ing" move­ment for squ­ats. This be­ing the case, Lee would per­form the move­ment in the stan­dard fashion; i.e., by ly­ing down on his back up­on a flat bench and tak­ing a shoulder-width grip on a bar­bell that he would then pro­ceed to press out to full ex­ten­sion above his ch­est. From this po­si­tion, Lee would low­er the bar­bell -- mak­ing sure to keep a slight bend in his el­bows so as not to strain the el­bow joint -- be­hind his head un­til it touched the floor ev­er so slight­ly and pro­vid­ed a com­fort­able stretch to his lats. From this ful­ly-ex­tend­ed po­si­tion, Lee would then slow­ly re­v­erse the mo­tion through the con­trac­tion of his lats, pecs and long-head of the tri­ceps. He would re­peat this move­ment for two sets of eight rep­e­ti­tions.

4.) Bench Press­es: Bruce Lee was able to de­vel­op an in­cred­i­ble ch­est mus­cu­la­ture. His up­per pecs were par­tic­u­lar­ly im­pres­sive, bunch­ing and splitt­ing in­to thou­sands of fi­brous bands. And, as far as his per­so­n­al train­ing re­cords in­di­cate, the on­ly di­rect bar­bell move­ment he per­formed to de­vel­op his ch­est was the good old fashioned bench press. Ly­ing down up­on a flat bench, and again tak­ing a shoulder-width grip on an Olympic bar­bell, Lee would press the weight off the sup­port pins to arms length above his ch­est. From this locked-out po­si­tion, Lee would then low­er the bar­bell to his ch­est and, ex­hal­ing, press it back up to the ful­ly-locked out (or start­ing) po­si­tion. He would re­peat this move­ment for six rep­e­ti­tions and then, af­ter a brief re­spite, re­turn to the bench for one more set of six reps.

5.) Good Morn­ings: A word of cau­tion about this ex­er­cise. Lee per­formed this move­ment to strengthen his low­er back. How­ev­er, one day in ear­ly 1970 he load­ed up the bar with 135 pounds (his body­weight at the time) and -- with­out a warm up -- pro­ceed­ed to knock off eight rep­e­ti­tions. On his last rep he felt a "pop" and found out lat­er that he had da­m­aged the fourth sacral nerve of his low­er back. The re­sult was the Lee had to en­dure in­cred­i­ble back pain for the re­main­der of his life. This is not to say that the move­ment is with­out mer­it, just make sure that you per­form an ad­e­qu­ate warm-up pri­or to em­ploy­ing, it. Plac­ing a bar­bell across his shoulders, Lee would place his feet three inch­es apart (Lee would lat­er con­fide to Dan In­osan­to "You re­al­ly don't need any weight but the emp­ty bar on your shoulders Dan -- it's more of a lim­ber­ing move­ment") and bend over from the waist keep­ing his hands on the bar­bell at all times. Lee would bend over un­til his back was at a 90 de­gree an­gle to his hips and then re­turn to the up­right po­si­tion. Lee per­formed two sets of eight rep­e­ti­tions of this move­ment.

6.) Bar­bell Curls: Bruce Lee per­formed bar­bell curls not on­ly in his garage gym on Ros­co­mare Av­enue in Bel Air, but al­so in his stu­dio of­fice in Hong Kong. They were a sta­ple or "core" move­ment in his weight train­ing rou­tine and were al­so re­spon­si­ble for build­ing a very im­pres­sive pair of bi­ceps on Lee -- not to men­tion in­cred­i­ble pulling pow­er, which he used to such good ef­fect in all of his spar­ring ses­sions! To per­form this move­ment prop­er­ly, Lee would take a com­fort­able shoulder-width grip on the bar­bell with his palms fac­ing for­wards. Keep­ing a slight bend in his knees for sta­bi­l­iza­tion pur­pos­es, Lee would then con­tract his bi­ceps and curl the bar­bell up to a point lev­el with his up­per pecs. Paus­ing brie­f­ly in this ful­ly-con­tract­ed po­si­tion, Lee would then slow­ly low­er the bar­bell back to the start­ing po­si­tion. Two sets of eight rep­e­ti­tions of this move­ment would typ­i­cal­ly wrap up Lee's body­build­ing rou­tine.


Get Mentz­er's
Lat­est Book
Mus­cles in Min­utes
Go­ing Be­yond "Rou­tine"

Ac­cord­ing to In­osan­to, Lee didn't just train with the above list­ed ex­er­cis­es. He would al­so in­cor­po­rate weight train­ing in­to his mar­tial art work­outs. "Bruce would al­ways sha­d­ow box with small weights in his hands and he'd do a drill in which he'd punch for 12 se­ries in a row, 100 punch­es per se­ries, us­ing a pyra­mid sys­tem of 1,2,3,5,7 and 10-pound weights -- and then he'd re­v­erse the pyra­mid and go 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1 and fi­nal­ly "ze­ro" weight. He had me do this drill with him and -- Man! -- what a burn you'd get in your delts and arms!"

It didn't stop there how­ev­er. When Lee wasn't train­ing with weights in his mar­tial art work­outs or dur­ing one of his three desig­nat­ed whole-body train­ing ses­sions, he could be found cur­l­ing a dumb­bell in the of­fice in his house. "He was al­ways us­ing that dumb­bell," re­calls Lin­da in look­ing back on her hus­band's train­ing habits. "Bruce had the unique abil­i­ty to be able to sev­er­al things at once. It wasn't all unu­su­al for me to find him watch­ing a box­ing match on TV, si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly per­form­ing a full side spl­its, while read­ing a book in one hand and pump­ing a dumb­bell in the other."

In­cred­i­ble Abs

By far the most im­pres­sive of all of Lee's body­parts was his ab­dom­i­nal mus­cles, which he trained dai­ly. "Bruce al­ways felt that if your sto­m­ach wasn't de­vel­oped, then you had no busi­ness spar­ring," re­calls Wong. "He was a fa­nat­ic about ab­dom­i­nal train­ing," con­curs Lin­da, "he was al­ways do­ing sit-ups, crunch­es, Ro­man Chair move­ments, Leg Rais­es and V-ups." Chuck Nor­ris has gone on re­cord re­calling the time that he went to vis­it the Lee fam­i­ly and see­ing Bruce ly­ing on the liv­ing room floor bounc­ing his son Bran­don on his ab­do­men while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly per­form­ing dumb­bell fly­es for his pecs and leg rais­es for his abs - and watch­ing tele­vi­sion to boot!

Forearms of Steel

In or­der to im­prove his grip­ping and punch­ing pow­er, Lee be­came an avid devo­tee of forearm train­ing, While many cham­pi­on body­builders shy away from di­rect forearm train­ing, Lee made it a point to train his forearms dai­ly. "He was a forearm fa­nat­ic," laughs Lin­da in ret­ro­spect. "If ev­er any body­builder -- such as Bill Pearl -- came out with a forearm course, Bruce would have to get it." Bruce even com­mis­sioned an old friend of his from San Fran­cis­co, Ge­orge Lee (no re­la­tion) to build him sev­er­al "Grip­ping machines" to which Lee would add weight for ad­di­tio­n­al re­sis­tance. "He used to send me all of th­ese de­signs for ex­er­cise equip­ment," re­calls Ge­orge Lee, "and I'd build them ac­cord­ing to his specs. How­ev­er, I wasn't al­to­gether fool­ish," he says with a laugh, "I knew that if Bruce was go­ing to use it, it must be ef­fec­tive, so I'd build one to send to him and another for me to use at home!"

Allen Joe re­calls that Lee had a fa­vorite dumb­bell ex­er­cise that he used to train his forearms with con­s­tant­ly: "Bruce was al­ways work­ing on his forearms. He'd pick up a weight and go to the edge of the so­fa and start do­ing wrist curls while he was watch­ing TV. Then he'd do his ab­dom­i­nal work -- and then he'd re­turn to his forearm train­ing. The dumb­bell curl he liked best was a Zott­man curl, where you would curl the weight up one side of your body and then you twist it and bring it down on the other side. He'd do that all the time!"

Knowl­edge Is Pow­er

For the past sev­en years I've been hard at work compil­ing all (and I mean ALL) of Bruce Lee's train­ing pro­grams, notes and an­no­ta­tions on phys­i­cal train­ing for a book se­ries that, like Lee's train­ing meth­ods, has proved to be con­s­tant­ly evolv­ing (the train­ing ma­te­rial has been pre­sent­ed in the book en­ti­tled The Art of Ex­press­ing The Hu­man Body, Tut­tle Pub­lish­ing, Bos­ton). And what amazes me af­ter hav­ing looked through all of his ma­te­rials is just how thor­ough his knowl­edge of train­ing ac­tu­al­ly was. Lee col­lect­ed over 140 books on body­build­ing, weight train­ing, phy­si­ol­o­gy and ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy dur­ing his life­time, in ad­di­tion to well over 2,000 books on phi­lo­so­phy and the mar­tial arts. Lee be­lieved that you could nev­er know "too much" about a sub­ject that could ben­e­fit your health and he lived his en­tire life try­ing to ac­quire as much knowl­edge about health and fit­ness as he could.

Al­though Lee is no longer with us, his teach­ings and his ex­am­ple live on. Cer­tain­ly this is so in the realm of ex­er­cise sci­ence. Lee epi­t­o­mized the ath­let­ic ide­als of dili­gence, hard work, bear­ing up un­der ad­ver­si­ty and re­fus­ing to short-change ei­ther one­self or one's po­ten­tial. "Low aim is the biggest crime a man can com­mit," he once told Tae Kwon Do Mas­ter, Jhoon Rhee. "Re­mem­ber, Life is a jour­ney, not a desti­na­tion."

The Ro­man philo­so­pher Sene­ca once said that, "Life, if thou know­est how to use it, is long enough." If this is so, then Bruce Lee's life was long enough to be a ful­filling one, per­haps - giv­en what he ac­com­plished and the en­dur­ing in­flu­ence of his ex­am­ple -- it might just be con­sid­ered one of the more mean­ing­ful lives of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. And it was Lee's com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence - and to a prin­ci­pled ap­proach to train­ing - that re­sult­ed in the cre­a­tion of one of the great­est physiques in mod­ern his­to­ry.