Bruce was able to explode 100lb bags with a simple sidekick.
Bruce would ride for 45 minutes (10 Miles) on a stationary bike, when he'd finished, a huge pool of sweat was beneath him.
Bruce once caved in a protective headgear made from heavy steel rods, rods that had previously withstood several blows from a sledgehammer.
Bruce's last movie "Enter the Dragon" was made for a modest $600,000 in 1973. To date, is has grossed over $300,000,000.
Quotes From Bruce's Friends about his Amazing
Feats
Chuck Norris - "Lee, pound for pound, might well have been one of the strongest men in the world, and certainly one of the quickest".
Herb Jackson - "Bruce was interested in becoming as strong as possible".
Bob Wall - "Every room of his house in Hong Kong had some kind of workout equipment in it, which he'd use whenever the mood overtook him. His garage, well he never had a car in his garage because it was always filled with equipment. He had a complete Marcy gym that was located just off the kitchen. Everywhere he went, even in his office, he had barbells and dumbbells. He literally trained all the time. His bodybuilding system consisted of lifting weights on a two days on, two days off type of program. However I also know that he changed things around a lot. Generally, his program consisted of three sets per exercise and usually about 15 reps. He was doing a lot of cable work at the time, when he'd pull one way and then the other way, he was into angles and he'd never do the exact same angle twice in a single workout. He was always trying to do things in a slightly different way".
Danny Inosanto - "Bruce would be constantly reading through the muscle magazines and looking for new products that would help make him leaner. If he found such an item, he'd read all about it, order it, and then try it out to see if the claims made for it were true or not. If he found that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, he'd discard it and try something else. He was forever experimenting".
James Coburn - "Bruce and I were training out on my patio one day, we were using this giant bag for side kicks, I guess it weighed about 150lbs. Bruce looked at it and just went Bang, it shot up out into the lawn about 15ft in the air, it then busted in the middle. It was filled with little bits and pieces of rag, we were picking up bits of rag for months".
Michael Gutierrez - "Bruce Lee is very hot these days. So hot in fact, that a 8x10 sheet of paper that Bruce wrote on and signed in 1969 recently went for a cool $29,000 at the Bruce Lee Estate Auction in Beverly Hills last August".
Jesse Glover - "When he could do push ups on his thumbs and push ups with 250lbs on his back, he moved on to other exercises".
Joe Lewis - "Bruce was incredibly strong for his size. He could take a 75lb barbell and from a standing position with the barbell held flush against his chest, he could slowly stick his arms out, lock them and hold the barbell there for 20 seconds, that's pretty damn tough for a guy who at the time only weighed 138lbs. I know 200lb weight lifters who can't do that."
Danny Inosanto - "Bruce told me to come along with him one day to Joe Weider's store in Santa Monica to help him buy a 110lb cast iron weight set for his son Brandon. I thought this was an odd gift since Brandon was only 5 years old. Bruce bought this beautiful Weider barbell/dumbell set from Joe's store, and when we pulled into my driveway, he said "I'm just joking, Dan. I bought this for you".
Danny Inosanto - "Bruce was only interested in strength that he could readily convert to power. I remember once Bruce and I were walking along the beach in Santa Monica. All of a sudden this huge bodybuilder came walking by, and I said to Bruce "Man, look at the arms on that guy" I'll never forget his reaction, he said "Yeah, he's big, but is he powerful???".
Jesse Glover
- "Bruce would take hold of a 70lb dumbbell with one arm and raise it to a lateral position, level to his shoulder and then he'd hold the contraction for a few seconds. Nobody else I knew could even get it up there, let it alone hold it up there".
Wally Jay - "I last saw Bruce after he moved from Culver City to Bel Air. He had a big heavy bag hanging out on his patio. It weighed 300lbs. I could hardly move it at all. Bruce said to me "Hey, Wally, watch this" and he jumped back and kicked it and this monster of a heavy bag went up to the ceiling, Thump!!! And came back down. I still can't believe the power that guy had".
Hayward Nishioka - "Bruce had this trademark "One Inch Punch", he could send individuals (Some of whom outweighed him by over 100lbs) flying through the air where they'd crash to the ground 15 feet away. I remember getting knocked up against the wall by that punch. I didn't think it was possible that he could generate so much power in his punch, especially when he was just laying his hand against my chest, he just twitched a bit and Wham!!!, I went flying backward and bounced off a wall. I took him very seriously after that."
Jesse Glover - "The power that Lee was capable of instantly generating was absolutely frightening to his fellow martial artists, especially his sparring partners, and his speed was equally intimidating. We timed him with an electric timer once, and Bruce's quickest movements were around five hundredths of a second, his slowest were around eight hundredths. This was punching from a relaxed position with his hands down at his sides from a distance between 18-24 inches. Not only was he amazingly quick, but he could read you too. He could pick up on small subtle things that you were getting ready to do and then he'd just shut you down".
Doug Palmer - "Bruce was like the Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali in his prime, somebody who stood above everyone else. It's not that the other martial artists weren't good. It's just that this guy was great".
Herb Jackson - "He never trained in a gym, he thought he could concentrate better at home, so he worked out on his patio. He had a small weight set, something like a standard 100lb cast-iron set. In addition, he had a 310lb Olympic barbell set, a bench press and some dumbbells, both solid and adjustable".
Karreem Abdul Jabbar - "Bruce put me on a weight training program during the summer of 1970. It was a three days a week program, comprised mainly of the same stuff he was doing for the major muscle groups. I think I was doing about 2 sets of 12 reps, but it worked".
Linda Lee - "Bruce was forever pumping a dumbell which he kept in the house. He had the unique ability to do several things at once. It wasn't at all unusual for me to find him watching a boxing match on TV, while simultaneously performing full side splits, reading a book in one hand and pumping the dumbell up and down with the other. Bruce was a big believer in forearm training to improve his gripping and punching power. He was a forearm fanatic, if ever anyone came out with a new forearm course, Bruce would have to get it."
George Lee - "He used to send me all of these designs for exercise equipment and I'd build them according to his specs. However I wasn't altogether foolish, 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."
Bob Wall - "Bruce had the biggest forearms proportionate to anybody's body that I've ever seen. I mean, his forearms were huge. He had incredibly powerful wrists and fingers, his arms were just extraordinary".
Mito Uhera - "Bruce always felt that if your stomach wasn't developed, then you had no business doing any hard sparring".
Linda Lee - "He was a fanatic about ab training, he was always doing sit ups, crunches, roman chair movements, leg raises and V-ups".
Herb Jackson - "He did a lot of sit ups to develop that fantastic abdomen. He told me "The proper way of doing sit ups isn't just to go up and down but to curl yourself up, like rolling up a roll of paper, doing them this way effectively isolates the abdominal muscles". He would also perform sit ups where he'd twist an elbow to the opposite knee when he rolled himself up".
Jhoon Rhee - "You could show him a tremendously difficult technique that took years to perfect and the next time you saw him, he would do it better than you".
This page was made by Christopher K in July 2002. It was last updated on 22 September - 2006