Chris Kent – How I got started in JKD
Chris Kent is a well known and highly regarded JKD instructor who was the very last student accepted into Dan Inosanto’s backyard class when he was only 17 years old. He has authored numerous books and videos on the art of Jeet Kune Do, including having co-written the classic “Jun Fan/Jeet Kune Do – The Textbook” with Tim Tackett.
Here Sifu Chris tells the story of how he got started in JKD.
Transcription:
“I was lucky enough – fortunate enough at the age of 17 and a half to become the last student – backyard Jeet Kune Do student under Dan Inosanto who was in charge of running Bruce Lee’s Chinatown school and assisting Bruce Lee at the time. This was 1973. Bruce Lee was over in Hong Kong making movies. Dan Inosanto was teaching one class in Jeet Kune Do in his backyard gym that he had built. He was a physical education teacher at the same time.
I contacted him and again, through fate, design, divine intervention, whatever you want to call it I was lucky enough to become the – to be accepted as his student when I was 17 and a half years old. That’s how I began my training as a student. Then when we opened the Filipino Kali Academy in Torrance, about a year after Bruce died, again still a student, began working as an assistant for him – basically a teaching dummy that he could demonstrate to the students and assist the students and through that traveling with him and assisting him on seminars and workshops across the country and internationally.
Out of that basically organically progressed into an assistant teaching role and then a teaching role. From there I was with Sifu Dan Inosanto from 1973 to 1986 at which time I branched out on my own and have been doing that ever since.”
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Sifu Kent actively teaches at his school in Boise, Idaho as well at various seminars around the world. He can be reached through his website at: CKJKD.com
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