Quotes From Bruce's Friends about his Amazing Feats:
Herb Jackson - "Bruce was interested in becoming as strong as possible".
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".
Herb Jackson - "The biggest problem in designing equipment for Bruce was that he'd go through it so damn fast. I had to reinforce his wooden dummy with automobile parts so he could train on it without breaking it. I had started to build him a mobile dummy that could actually attack and retreat to better simulate "Live" combat, sadly Bruce died before the machine was built. It would have been strung up by big high-tension cables that I was going to connect between two posts, one on either side of his backyard. The reason for the machine was simply because no one could stand up to his full force punches and kicks, Bruce's strength and skill had evolved to point where he had to fight machines. Bruce was very interested in strength training, you could say that he was obsessed with it".
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???".
Chuck Norris - "Lee, pound for pound, might well have been one of the strongest men in the world, and certainly one of the quickest".
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 had tremendous strength in holding a weight out horizontally in a standing position. I know because I've seen it. He'd take a 125lb barbell and hold it straight out".
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".
Jesse Glover - "Bruce was gravitating more and more toward weight training as he would use the weighted wall pulleys and do series upon series with them. He'd also grab one of the old rusty barbells that littered the floor at the YMCA and would roll it up and down his forearms, which is no small feat when you consider that the barbell weighed 70lbs".
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".
Danny Inosanto - "Bruce would always shadow box with small weights in his hands and he'd do a drill in which he'd punch for 12 series in a row. 100 punches per series, using a pyramid system of 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10lb dumbbells and then he'd reverse the pyramid and go 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1 and finally zero weight. He had me do this drill with him and man what a burn you'd get in your delts and arms."
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".
Van Williams (Green Hornet) - "Me and Bruce used to have these wrist wrestling contests. The two combatants arms are fully extended with the aim of twisting the opponent's wrist in a counter-clockwise direction to win. I was the only known person to best Bruce at this and he used to get really mad at that. But it was simply a matter of weight ratios, I outweighed him by damn near 40lbs. Still, Bruce had a pair of the biggest forearms I've ever seen".
Herb Jackson - "Bruce used to beat all other comers at this type of wrist wrestling and even joked that he wanted to be world champion at it".
Taki Kimura - "If you ever grabbed hold of Bruce's forearm, it was like getting hold of a baseball bat".
Danny Inosanto - "Bruce was so obsessed with strengthening his forearms that he used to train them every day. He said "The forearm muscle was very, very dense, so you had to pump that muscle every day to make it stronger".
Van Williams - "Bruce used to pack up Linda and Brandon and drive over to visit my wife and me at the weekends. He'd always bring with him some new gadget that he'd designed to build this or that part of the body. He was always working out and never smoked or drank. He was a real clean-cut, educated and wonderful person. I've got to admit that when I last saw him, which was a month or so before his death, he was looking great, his physique was looking as hard as a rock. Bruce had great respect for me and as a joke he placed a sticker in the back window of his automobile that read, "This car is protected by the Green Hornet".
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".
Chuck Norris - "I remember visiting the Lee household and seeing Bruce bouncing his little boy, Brandon, on his abdomen while simultaneously performing leg raises and dumbell flyes."
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".
Bolo Yeung - "Bruce had devised a particularly difficult exercise that he called "The Flag". While lying on a bench, he would grasp the uprights attached to the bench with both hands and raise himself off the bench, supported only by his shoulders. Then with his knees locked straight and his lower back raised off the bench, he'd perform leg raises. He was able to keep himself perfectly horizontal in midair. He was incredible, in 100 years there will never be another like him".
Linda Lee - "Bruce's waist measurement certainly benefited from all of the attention he paid to his ab program. At it's largest, his waist was 28 inches. At it's smallest, his waist measured under 26 inches".
Bob Wall - "Bruce was pretty much of a five mile runner, but then Bruce was one of those guys who just challenged the heck out of himself. He ran backwards, he ran wind sprints where he'd run a mile, walk a mile, run a mile. Whenever I ran with Bruce, it was always a different kind of run. Bruce was one of those total athletes. It wasn't easy training with him. He pushed you beyond where you wanted to go and then some".
Karreem Abdul Jabbar - "I used to run with him up and down Roscamore Road in Bel Air when we trained together during the summer of 1970. It was a very hilly terrain, which Bruce loved, and we'd do that at the beginning of each of our workouts".
Mito Uhera - "He'd ride a stationary bike for 45 minutes straight (10 Miles) until the sweat would form in pools on the floor beneath him."
Herb Jackson - "Bruce would wear a Weider Waist Shaper (a type of sauna belt) when riding his stationary bike. It was all black and made out of neoprene. He'd put it on before getting on the stationary bike. Then he'd turn the resistance up on it. He'd pedal the hell out of the bike. Sweat would pour out of him. He'd ride that bike for a series of 10 minute sessions. He felt that the sauna belt focused the heat onto his stomach and helped keep the fat off. Now maybe it worked and maybe it didn't, but you'd be hard pressed to find any fat anywhere on his body".
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".
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".
Ted Wong - "Bruce would do a lot of different types of sit ups and bench presses. He was also using a technique like the Weider Heavy/Light Principle, working up to 160lbs in the bench press for three sets of 10 on his heavy days and then repping out for 20-30 reps with 100lbs on his light days. Bruce experimented successfully with partial reps, movements performed in only the strongest motion. He liked the fact that they were very explosive, sometimes he would do the bench press, using just the last 3 inches of the range of motion. It was the same range in which he would do some of his isometric exercises".
Linda Lee - "Bruce's physique reached its absolute peak during the later part of 1971. I think his physique looked just as good in '73, but he had been working really hard from '72 on. It was just one movie after another when we lived in Hong Kong. So he was having less time to do all the training he would have liked to".
Dorian Yates (Mr Olympia) - "He used to do that thing where he'd spread his scapulas and then tense every muscle in his body, he had an incredible physique".
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".
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".
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".
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".
