Break Your Chains Part 2

The next day, Bruce greeted the morning fog with a fire in his eyes. His ragged breaths from the fight echoed in his mind like a bad earworm. Three minutes of fury, then gasping like a drowning man. Never again.  

He struck the pavement, each step cracking like a hammer on stone. He passed a few of his neighbors who gawked at the sight of this running? This early? They shook their heads in discontent. Jogging wasn’t a thing back then. But Bruce didn’t care, he was carving himself into something new. 

Moving at a decent pace, he rounded a blind turn and saw a steep incline looming before him like a mountain.  

Of course, he said to himself, grinning. 

Weakness started whispering sweet nothings in his ear. "Turn back, "You've gone far enough". it said. He silenced it and drove into the hill.

Left. Right. Left. Right.  

His stride shortened, his legs screamed, the hill pouring fire into his muscles. The whisper pressed harder, but he answered with violence. He summoned the fight in his mind, air ripping into his lungs. Then came the second wind. His body opened like a cheetah closing for the kill.

At the crest, a knot seized his ribs. He staggered to a trash can, dry heaving.

He wiped his face and took a deep breath.  

Back to it. 

He coasted down, then locked back into rhythm. Left. Right. Left. Right. Storefronts, parked cars, those same neighbors giving him the side eye.

By the final stretch, his chest heaved like a furnace. But he made it. He was gasping—but it was on his terms.

After catching his breath and doing some stretches, he found his notebook and logged the training. 

4 miles. Big hill... No match for me.  

Still slick with sweat, he hit the kitchen and dropped into a chair and threw back one of his signature shakes.  

Bruce didn’t invent protein shakes, but he saw their versatility and was, let's just say he got creative...raw eggs, powdered milk, bananas, peanut butter, wheat germ, brewer’s yeast. Sometimes even raw beef, royal jelly or ginseng. It wasn’t pretty, but it was fuel, and for Bruce, fuel was everything. 

A fencing manual sat on the kitchen table. He thumbed through the pages and froze. Stop-hit. Simple, brutal: strike as the opponent launches. His brother, Peter Lee, had been a Hong Kong champion, a world-class fencer. Proof enough it worked.

Bruce pictured the move, then stood and tested it. His shadow opponent lunged; he cut it off with a fist mid-attack, the stop-hit in motion.

He froze. His wife, Linda was in the doorway, smiling.

“Hit him before he hits you. End it before it even begins, Linda” he said with a child-like grin.  

“Ok honey, I will.” she said, kissing him on the cheek as she passed.

Linda was his rock—an anchor of stability, a mother to his children, and the one who grounded him when his mind spun with ideas. And there were always ideas. Bruce lived for discovery. The drill, the next layer of the fight.

When he wasn’t pounding the pavement or dripping sweat in the gym, he was glued to the projector. Ali’s tapes, Dempsey’s Championship Fighting—he borrowed their footwork, their mechanics, even their conditioning. From Ali he learned to control distance, circle, cut angles. From Dempsey, how to drive power from the ground, coil through the hips, detonate with rotation.

He weaved fencing’s intercept, boxing’s rhythm, Wing Chun’s traps into something unique, something of his own creation. Something that was an expression of Bruce's art but also effective in real combat. It didn’t have a name yet, but it was already his.

Bruce also went hard on the weights—but not like a bodybuilder. No way. He trained for endurance and efficiency, speed and function over bulk. His philosophy was the opposite of the gym-rat culture: lighter weights, higher reps, movements that built usable power. 

He could train like a monk, but the landlord still wanted his rent. His Oakland kwoon paid the bills, but barely. To make ends meet, he returned to his childhood roots as an actor. Back in Hong Kong he’d starred in nearly 20 films, a child actor known as “Little Phoenix”.

In Hollywood, he landed the role of Kato, the masked sidekick in The Green Hornet. It gave him a chance to show his art to the world, to put Chinese culture on screen. But Kato wasn’t the lead. Bruce was there to fight, not to speak. A silent helper to a white hero.  

Hollywood still saw Asians as comic relief or servants, and Bruce refused to play along. He was determined to show the truth of his culture, even if it cost him. And it did. He and Linda went broke more than once, gambling everything on his vision. 

But he also made connections. His living room soon doubled as a kwoon, training grounds for A-list stars. Steve McQueen, James Coburn, even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came through his door.  

Bruce drilled them the same way he drilled his fighters: low kicks, intercepts, hand speed, conditioning. Word spread, and celebrity clients gave him just enough money to keep chasing his larger vision. 

He also trained with American karate champions—Chuck Norris, Joe Lewis, Mike Stone. He trained with them and acted as a teacher. He sharpened their timing, footwork, and efficiency. Several went on to even greater success, carrying his philosophy with them.