Did Bruce Lee Say Something About Swimming?

 

Did Bruce Lee Say Something About Swimming? 

Introduction

A fellow member of the Martial Arts Studies Facebook group asked for a source of the following supposed Bruce Lee quote:

"If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you."

It appears in the usual meme and quote locations on the Internet, so I volunteered to track it down.

The Sources

Bruce Lee: The Tao of Gung Fu, Bruce Lee and John Little, 1997

I checked the Bruce Lee Library and other sources and found something like it in volume 2, Bruce Lee: The Tao of Gung Fu: A Study in the Way of Chinese Martial Art. It is from the foreword by Bruce's student Taky Kimura. It reads:

"Bruce preached to us about the cold facts of life: for example, if you want to become a swimmer, you cannot do so on dry land, you must enter the water."

Bruce Lee: Words of the Dragon, Bruce Lee and John Little, 1997

I also found something similar in volume 1, Bruce Lee: Words of the Dragon: Interviews, 1958-1973. It is from a story in the St. Paul Dispatch, July 18, 1968, titled Deadly Simple Fighter, by P. M. Clepper:

"What good would it do a boxer to learn to meditate? He’s a fighter, not a monk. It’s all too ritualistic, what with bowing and posturing. 

That sort of Oriental self-defense is like swimming on land. You can learn all the swimming strokes, but if you’re never in the water, it’s nonsense."

Bruce Lee: Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way, Bruce Lee and John Little, 1997 

A third book has a similar message. Volume 3, Bruce Lee: Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way, contains the following, direct from Mr. Lee himself:

"The best way to learn how to swim is to actually get into the water and swim; the best way to learn jeet kune do is to spar."

Bruce Lee: Letters of the Dragon, Bruce Lee and John Little, 1998

A fourth book has another related quote. It appears in the third book mentioned above, but this source is explicit about the origin. It appears in Volume 5, Bruce Lee: Letters of the Dragon, in a letter to William Cheung, posted from Los Angeles on January 4, 1969, Mr. Lee wrote:

"William, I’ve lost faith in the Chinese classical arts—though I still call mine Chinese—because basically all styles are products of land swimming, even the Wing Chun school. 

So my line of training is more toward efficient street fighting with everything goes, wearing head gear, gloves, chest guard, shin/knee guards, etc. For the past five years now I’ve been training the hardest and for a purpose, not just dissipated hit-miss training."

This concept of "land swimming" as a way to describe the limitations of classical martial arts is a theme that appears in several places in the library.

Conclusion

Bruce Lee was clearly a fan of the idea of learning swimming by getting into the water. However, there is no evidence he said anything about having a "frame of mind" on "dry land." 

This quote, therefore, is false as far as the wording, but true to the message.

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