Bob Breen in Paris (by Lionel Chaumeau)

Bob Breen, Michel Rozzi and his students from left to right :
Benjamin C, Pascal B, Ibrahima S, Michel Rozzi, Bob Breen, Cyril T, Nicolas P, Stéphane S
Eric G. , Jérôme D, Roland K, Dan D, Olivier L

I've been practicing JKD for 3,5 years now. Unfortunately, I had no direct access to a JKD teacher for most of that time, and had to rely on videos to work. I?ve tried many different videos, Inosanto's, Breen's, Laulagnet's, Vunak's, Cucci's, Balicki's, Bersabal's, Elmore's, Williams'... Bob Breen's series have been the best tool (by far) for me to understand the principles behind the art and to get access to the techniques illustrating them.

It has been thus with some emotion that I took the train to
Paris, to attend my first seminar with JKD's father in Europe. I was
expecting a lot from this seminar and fearing a bit to be disappointed. My fear turned out to be pointless and I even got more than I was expecting. The man is definitively up to his reputation.

The work he made us do is principle-based; I particularly enjoyed the way he made us revisit the basics, giving us insights into the simplicity of it and the richness underlying it. We did reactive answers to basic boxing strikes, the way to go from there to panantukan techniques, the body mechanics underlying single stick work (and also spada y daga work), and the answers to knife attacks, through the mechanisms behind a palasut exercice. The description of the seminar's content is quickly done, but gives no respect to the amount of knowledge Bob shared with us about how to move, how to remain in control of the central line, how to educate ourselves to keep being the "chasseur" even under attack, and avoid finishing like a "saucisson".

There is only one aspect that I enjoyed less: on Sunday, the
rhythm was more broken. The sparring work was often interupted by his explanations: they were really interesting, but to my opinion, they tended to override the application work, giving us sometimes too little time to feel.

All in all, the week-end has been a great experience; I finished it with a lot more understanding of my art than I would have expected of only 10 hours of practice.

Thank you very much Bob, and thanks also to Michel Rozzi who made this seminar possible.