Bruce Lee has become a world-renowned superstar who was a master of martial arts, a brilliant film star and a role model for many generations. Over the course of his somewhat short life, Bruce Lee managed to find a place in the hearts of millions of fans. Sadly, Bruce Lee would pass away at the age of just 32 back in 1973. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t leave behind a legacy that would last many lifetimes.
Bruce Lee was such an incredible martial artist that it led many people to question if he could be a real world superhuman. Today, we’ll discuss several of his many physical abilities that have left many people with their jaws on the floor. So stay tuned. Also, if you like this video and want to see more just like it, be sure to hit that like button and ring the notification bell. And if you really want to be blown away, stick around for number 2.
Dragon Flag
I’m sure all of us are aware that no matter what skills we may have, those skills can easily be lost if you don’t continue to train them. These skills could involve typing, gaming, singing, or countless other skills that many of us possess. However, for Bruce Lee, his most obvious skill was his physical ability. According to Bruce’s wife, he would spend almost every minute of every day honing his skills and working out. He knew that if he wanted to be the world’s greatest martial artist he would have to spend countless hours practicing and exercising.
However, Bruce wasn’t one to train with the common folk. He found that ordinary exercises were not good enough to help him stay in shape. This meant that he needed to develop his own style of exercising, which would eventually become known as Dragon Flag. For Bruce, most of his workouts involved his torso and core muscles. These muscles were vital to his martial arts techniques. So he developed Dragon Flags specifically to appeal to these muscles. At the beginning of this workout session, Bruce would lay flat on a bench then lift the rest of his body from the bench using nothing but his shoulders. This workout would hone nearly every muscle in the core of his body, helping him to achieve unsurpassed levels of physical fitness. These days, Bruce’s Dragon Flag workouts have become a staple in the martial arts community with Bruce’s technique helping martial artists all around the world to realize just how important your core body strength is.
He Caught Grains of Rice with Chopsticks
If you’re a fan of martial arts films, chances are you’ve already seen the Karate Kid at some point. If you think back on the film, you’ll likely recall a scene in which Daniel LaRusso trains to catch a fly with a pair of chopsticks. What seems simple at first, proves to be very difficult. But Bruce Lee would take things a step further. Unfortunately, this feat was never perfectly captured on camera.
However, Bruce Lee would reportedly toss pieces of rice in the air and catch them with chopsticks. He did this to hone his reflexes in one of the most impressive ways possible. It’s been reported that he was a master of this and could catch the rice almost every time it was thrown in the air. His lightning-fast reflexes were far greater than any of his opponents at the time. And no one has been able to match or surpass his success after all these years. In fact, these days, many people wonder if Bruce Lee was able to master this feat at all as it seems completely impossible. Yet, this is just another example of how Bruce Lee was superhuman.
Bruce’s Superhuman Strength
One of the accomplishments of Bruce Lee that many people overlook is his sheer strength. It may seem obvious that a martial artist needs to be strong but most people don’t realize just how strong Bruce Lee really was. For the most part, people associate strength with having very large muscles. When you think about someone that’s very strong, you probably picture someone who’s about 6 feet tall and has more muscles than they could realistically use. However, Bruce Lee had a fairly small body. Yet, he was stronger than most people could ever dream of being. An easy way to prove this is to look at his training bags. Most people practice punches and kicks on training bags, Bruce did this as well. However, he would tear through these bags very quickly.
Eventually, it became a hassle for him to use normal punching bags because he would regularly punch through them or cause them to burst. This meant that Bruce needed to find heavier and denser bags that could withstand the force of his incredible strength. Keep in mind, a normal punching bag weighs about 50 kg. However, the bags that Bruce needed to use would often weigh more than 135 kg. To make things even more remarkable, it’s been reported that Bruce was able to kick these bags several feet in the air. If you were to try to kick one of these bags yourself, chances are they’d only move an inch or two when you made contact, though for Bruce, he could send these bags flying.
Push-Ups And Pull-Ups
For anyone who likes to stay in shape or even those of you who may be interested in bodybuilding, it’s no secret that push-ups and pull-ups are an important part of almost every exercise routine. These tasks help to build your upper body strength unlike anything else you can imagine. Think about how many push-ups you’re able to complete in one attempt. No matter how impressive that number may seem to you, I can confirm that it’s nothing when compared to Bruce Lee. This man was a master of the human body. Not only was he able to do an incredibly high number of push-ups, but he was also able to do them one-handed. At one point, he was tested to see how many push-ups he could do. Bruce decided to raise the bar a bit and offered to do push-ups one-handed while only using two fingers. In this attempt, he managed to pull off more than 200 push-ups. Later on, he raised the bar even higher and managed to do at least 100 push-ups using nothing but a single thumb. If this wasn’t enough, he would regularly do hundreds of single-hand pull-ups. However, there’s yet another feat that is truly remarkable. If you were to grade him strictly for his normal two-handed push-ups, Bruce Lee was able to do more than 1,500 in a row without stopping. That’s absolutely unbelievable but it is the truth. This man was a legend.
This is a fairly common fact that has been shared among Bruce Lee fans but many of us, who may not be in touch with martial arts, may not know this. When Bruce Lee became a movie star back in the 1960s and 70s, he was hailed as being one of the greatest martial arts actors in the world. However, he almost didn’t make it in the movie business. Why, you might ask. Because he was simply too fast. When filmmakers worked on The Green Hornet, one of Bruce Lee’s most popular TV shows, they were unable to record his moves in real time. These days we have cameras that can film in 30, 60, 120, or even 240 frames per second. However, back in the 1960s and 70s, most cameras were struggling to record film that was merely 24 frames per second. This meant that most of Bruce Lee’s fight scenes did not show up correctly on camera. As the filmmakers would soon learn, Bruce was able to punch up to nine times in one second. He was also able to kick six times in one second. When you try to record these motions through a camera that can only record 24 frames a second at best, it means that many of Bruce’s fight scenes looked as though he was standing still.
According to producers who were on the set at the time, the film that they recorded looked as though Bruce was standing there motionless while his enemies were falling around him. However, in reality, his skill was simply too great for the films to keep up with. To help remedy the situation, the filmmakers had to ask Bruce to slow down so that they could actually follow what he was doing. However, even after doing so, his motions are still very blurry on camera.
The One-Inch Punch
Anyone who’s heard of Bruce Lee has likely heard of his legendary one-inch punch. This was an extremely powerful punch that Bruce Lee was able to carry out time and time again, knocking out opponents of all shapes and sizes, even opponents that were much larger than him. He would place his hand very close to his opponent, then let go of a punch that would send them flying back as far as 5 metres.
One of the most important aspects of martial arts is to be able to land punches that will keep your opponent incapacitated for as long as possible. The longer the opponent’s recovery time, the more time you have to land hits. Thus, Bruce Lee developed the one-inch punch technique so that he could send his opponent flying. Then, using these valuable seconds to land as many punches as possible, ensuring that he was able to win almost every fight he ever took part in. What’s scary and interesting about his technique is that only one person has managed to master the one-inch punch since Bruce Lee passed away. This man was a Shaolin monk who performed the feat in front of cameras and a group of physics experts. When performing the attack, he was watched very closely. The experts would soon determine that the force of the impact from the one-inch punch was the equivalent of a car crash that took place at about 50 kmph. To say that this punch was devastating would be an understatement. I would not want to be caught on the wrong side of this man’s fist.
A Magic Trick
If you’ve ever been in close proximity with a magician, you’ve probably seen this classic magic trick of pulling a coin from behind someone’s ear. This is a very rudimentary trick that most magicians learn at some point in their careers. Believe it or not, Bruce Lee had a very similar trick that he would perform with his fans. Instead of finding a coin behind your ear, Bruce Lee would offer a coin and place it in the palm of your hand. He would ask you to stretch your palm as flat as possible. Then, as soon as you saw him move in the slightest bit, you were tasked with closing your palm before Bruce could grab the coin from you. This man moved so quickly that as far as we know, no one was ever able to keep him from removing the coin from their palm.
However, as the years passed by, Bruce added on to the trick and made it even more unbelievable. Rather than simply grabbing the coin before someone was able to close their hand, Bruce would also replace the coin with another one. Just when you thought you managed to outsmart him, he would open your hand to reveal that an entirely new coin had been placed inside. Just imagine if this man had used his skills for evil instead of good. He would have been a master pickpocket. Thankfully, Bruce chose a much more noble path in life.
Bruce Was Too Nimble
One of Bruce Lee’s most popular and powerful quotes ends with the phrase; “be water my friend”. This is a reference to Bruce’s ability to be incredibly nimble, so much so that his opponents could rarely ever lay a hand on him. On multiple occasions, it’s been said that Bruce’s opponents tried their hardest but never landed a single hit throughout their entire fight with him. Another one of the most important lessons that a martial artist can learn is how to calculate your enemy’s attack; remain nimble and avoid their punches, or use their own bodies against them. To say that Bruce perfected this technique would be a dramatic understatement.
Bruce would often use the phrase “be water my friend” to explain that in order to fight well, you must be as free formless and nimble as water. However, there’s a much darker side note to this that many people are unaware of. In contrast to Bruce telling his opponents to be water, he actually had a deep fear of large bodies of water. When he was a small child, he pranked his sister and pushed her into a pool when she wasn’t watching. As payback, his sister grabbed him and held him underwater until he promised to never do such a thing again. When he emerged from a pool, he dried himself off and never got in a pool again for the rest of his life. Talk about a lesson learned.
Thanks so much for watching. Do you know of any other Bruce Lee facts that we didn’t mention in this video? If so, be sure to share them in the comments below so we can keep his memory alive. Also, be sure to hit that like button and ring the notification bell for more great videos.
