Bruce Lee Was an Iso Cat

Why he trained for real-world power, and why you might want to take notes.

That Instagram-ready physique? What can you actually DO with it? Train like Bruce Lee (and me 😜), for life, not selfies.

Your antisocial media feed is probably filled with the unrealistic, pumped-up physiques of our impressionable Internet era. And recently, it's gotten worse. Try doing an image search for "fitness motivation" and prepare to be overwhelmed by AI-generated slop. Go ahead, I'll wait. Unlike many, I see a positive side to this trend. It might make the Schwarzenegger physique less compelling for youngsters trying to achieve it through steroids and PEDs. Maybe it will save lives in the long run.

I want to talk about Bruce Lee for a moment and tell you about something you might not know about him. He was an iso cat. (Yes, I just invented this term, but it fits.) Let me explain.

I realized some time ago that his approach to fitness bears a lot of resemblance to mine. (Notwithstanding the most notable difference that he died at 32, while I've been slogging away through this vale of tears and despair long enough to have more than 10 years of experience of being over 40. Damn.)

I wish I could say he was an inspiration, but that's not exactly true. I stumbled alone for 10 years in the fitness wilderness and had to reinvent the wheel of fitness for myself. However, when I read his book The Art of Expressing the Human Body, I saw a lot of parallels between his training and mine (and many notable differences too, of course).

Here's where the intellectual and philosophical kinship with the great kung fu master comes in.

Bruce Lee's Pivotal Moment

There were three minutes in Bruce Lee's life that were pivotal for his path toward greatness. He was challenged by the more old-school kung fu masters in the Bay Area to a fight for teaching kung fu to non-Chinese. If he lost, he’d have to stop. The challenger was, of course, the best of the best that they had.

Bruce Lee defeated his opponent after chasing him around the fight's venue three times. Bruce finally caught him, pinned him to the ground, and forced a concession. The victory was decisive. It took him the whole of three minutes to accomplish. At the end of it, he found himself very winded and disappointed that he couldn’t deal with the man immediately because he didn’t have enough stamina to catch up to the running man fast enough.

That day changed his life. He embarked upon a quest to train smart and efficient for what he wanted to do, which was martial arts. He was to become the best fighting machine of all time and, pound for pound, the strongest man alive and the founder of his own martial arts style: jeet kune do.

The longest fight of my life took three years, and it was an uphill battle with my PhD adviser...

The lesson? Sometimes, the smartest fight is knowing when to walk away. But through it all, staying strong - mentally and physically - was what kept me sane. Hiking, swimming, breathing, cold exposure (including shirtless cross-country skiing)… that was how I was fighting for my life.

In the end, I came to the same conclusion as Bruce Lee did about kung fu: that doing the sports you like is not enough to be fit and strong and powerful. You need to do something else to give you that extra oomph that’s needed to rise to your leisure activities as well as to what life throws at you in other ways.

I too was on the quest to be fit. I did not found a new martial arts, but I did come up with my own approach to fitness, from my 10 years of experiments and research, which I called the Sendyka Method.

The Iso Cat Approach

Some people proudly call themselves "gym rats" and spend many hours a week in the gym pushing various weights and mounting all sorts of equipment. If that’s you and you find it fun, more power to you. But if that’s not you, like it is not me, just know that there is another way, which takes seconds and minutes instead of hours.

I'm talking about isometrics, one of the conclusions that both Bruce Lee and I came to. Isometrics are the best-kept fitness hack there is. I use them exclusively for strength, don’t bother about the gym or the weights (I gave away my kettle bell—I used it as a doorstop), and am the strongest I’ve ever been.

Isometrics aren’t a trending topic. You won’t find them on YouTube or hear about them much unless you’re actively looking. And there’s a good reason for it: if applied at scale, they have the power to lay waste to the entire fitness industry as we know it. For now they can change your life. This ancient hack is the ultimate disruptor. It’s the low-time, high-power, zero-pretense approach to strength. So call us “iso cats”. We don’t live at the gym. We don’t pose for selfies. We train our own way (like cats go their own way) to feel strong, move well, and stay powerful as we get older.

What Are Isometrics?

In isometric exercises, you contract the muscle and exert force without moving. There are two types: yielding isometrics (like horse stance and planks, where gravity will eventually get you) and overcoming isometrics - the kind when "an unstoppable force meets an immovable object" (think doing a bicep curl with a rope or squeezing a wall). The magic of these exercises is that they only take seconds of maximum effort (five if you are a newbie) to get results.

Isometrics are a very ancient hack. They were most likely practiced, together with calisthenics, by the ancient Greeks. And don’t you sneer at their results, because their troops managed to stop the Persians!

Why bother with isometrics?

• Take seconds, not hours - no long gym sessions

• Build real-world strength - power you can actually use

• Fit into daily life - do it at home, at work, or while waiting for your coffee

• Scale with age - get stronger without breaking yourself

• Minimalist - no gear, no noise (except your own painful moans LOL), just you and the wall

Bruce Lee, the scion of an ancient martial art, learned about isometrics from bodybuilding magazines out of Philadelphia. But the bodybuilders who were publishing their impressive results ("gains") using these techniques were later found out to be juiced up to the gills with steroids. But you have to remember, these were the sixties, steroids were legal, and everyone was using them (yes, that’s how Arnie built his Terminator physique, in case you wondered).

Yet somehow, isometrics were the ones discredited. But Bruce Lee was not perturbed. "Adopt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add that which is specifically your own" is one of his more memorable quotes. He found great value in isometrics, and his routine took less than 90 seconds.

Of course, he was a martial arts master, and he didn’t give up on weight training entirely, though he too made drastic cuts compared to what the gym rats might expect. (For anyone interested, you can read more about his training routines in his book, see the Useful Links and References section at the end of this article.)

I’m no Bruce Lee, so my isometrics sessions take me three minutes, sometimes more, because I never go to the gym. The only reason to go would be to measure the "gains" in muscle strength and size. But since I don’t obsess about those things like YouTube gym bros, the general, unmeasured feeling of being much stronger in my daily life and sports is enough for me.

I’m not chasing any metrics, except my subjective feeling of being strong, capable, and flexible in my own body. And this is where Bruce Lee would agree with me, as the following anecdote from one of his close friends illustrates:

"I remember once Bruce and I were walking along the beach in Santa Monica, out by where The Dungeon [a gym originally owned by famed Muscle Beach denizen Vic Tanny] used to be, when all of a sudden, this big, huge bodybuilder came out of The Dungeon..."

"I said to Bruce, 'Man, look at the arms on that guy!' I'll never forget Bruce's reaction. He said, 'Yeah, he's big—but is he powerful? Can he use that extra muscle efficiently?'."

I’m not chasing an Instagram body. If meatheads want to laugh at my muscles, they can knock themselves out. I’m interested in being able to quickly and efficiently deploy the strength I’ve gained through my isometric routines for real-world purposes. In short, I’m an isometric cat. Why a cat? Because like cats, I don't care what people think.

If that sounds like you, you’re already part of the iso cats movement. Maybe you’ve walked away from gym bro culture already, or maybe you were never in it, because gyms suck and you’ve always trained your own way (or not trained at all?). Either way, welcome. Want to know how to start? Check out the video below.

Meow.

😼

Useful Links and References

• Bruce Lee’s book: The Art of Expressing the Human Body (compiled and edited by John Little)

• My isometrics video (currently unloved by the algorithm)

• More info? Only if you seek me out. This isn’t a trending topic on YouTube. The few videos I’ve posted got a handful of views… and a ton of enraged meathead comments. 😁