Thinking About Taking JKD, But Have A Few Question

I have taken a few martial arts classes in the past and want to start back.

In my area, there are a couple of schools that teach JKD, but I am not familiar with it.

From reading here and Wikipedia, I have a few ideas and wanted to see if I am correct.

To start off, I am looking for a style that is good for self defense and one that helps to give you the confidence of knowing it (if that makes sense).

It appears from Wiki that JKD will involve kicking, striking, and grappling. Is that correct? If so, that is actually what I am looking for.

Does it work on how to strike and how to kick? I ask that because I took American Karate for a short period and all they cared about was me putting this foot forward, punch, kick, back to start. Not anything you could use in a fight.

If it is what it kind of ssounds like I will check out some local schools.

Any tips or suggestions or other infor would be greatly appreciated.

Completely depends. Some JKD is taught like garbage. The best thing you could do is go by the school, observe training, talk with the people there and see if the place resonates with you. If so, join. Ask questions and test yourself always. Really, if you do those things, you'll be good to go.


-John

A good JKD school is going to train punch range kicking range, and grappling range. Theres going to be contact an progressive resistance. Most likely it will consist of western boxing, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jujitsu but that isnt necessarily the rule. Go to the schools in your area and if you have the time an patience check them all out then go from there.

It's not really the art as much as the school you attend. I trained the classical combat modified wing chun form of jkd for nearly 8 years. But over the last couple I've been learning kickboxing and BJJ. A lot of the stuff i trained diligently on now looks almost useless to me. No matter what you do though there will always be drills like the kick, punch, back to start you mentioned, it's important to drill the techniques many times especially at the beginning and intermediate stages.
Anyway, things to look for in a class include - like the others said- boxing, muay thai and BJJ, but any technique works when you pick the right time to perform it. More importantly than the actual techniques is the sparring element, if you don't see training with resistance more or less every class, then run a mile. You can only really learn to fight by fighting. Some people have excellent technique but can't spar well just because they haven't learned to apply what they've learned.
Check also for well trained students. I'd rather attend a school with 8 black belt students than 1, and Make sure people are enthusiastic and friendly.

We work on striking, grappling, throwing, clinching, stick, knife, you name it. My instructor includes Savate techniques as well as MT and sub wrestling. Yes you will work on how to strike and kick. we mostly use shins rather than feet when kicking.

Some of the JKD school here seem to be Concept people they work Western boxing, Thai boxnig, Kali/Filipino hand and weapon arts (from stick to sword) and BJJ with a dash of savate and very little wing chun/Juan-fa. They train full range and pracitical applications.

Usually no kias and absolutely no movie Bruce Lee shouts, I mention this bc some JKD schools here are caught in the past imo usually fake, not all the time.

Mostly JKD schools are blood and sweat. Good stuff if you find a good coach.

It would probably help to have done martial arts before JKD, just so you know basic form, and will find it easier to adapt to another form. but, the JKD instructor should be able to teach you from the beginning, yes.