According to Pieratt, Bruce Lee’s workouts combined:

• Martial arts and speed drills: ‘Shadow boxing, heavy bag work, and speed training.’
• Compound strength training: ‘Olympic lifts, isometrics, and body-weight mastery.’
• Explosive power training: ‘Sprinting and jump variations for maximum athleticism.’
• High-intensity conditioning: ‘Hill sprints, jump rope, and endurance work.’
• Core and flexibility: ‘Isometric holds, ab circuits, and stretching.’

Pieratt says, ‘Bruce Lee’s training was a mix of athletic hybrid martial arts training with little bits of his own custom style of bodybuilding and I found it really enjoyable. For the athletic training – a lot of jumps [and] fast-twitch exercises – I felt really activated in my nervous system. I could see myself over the 30 days successfully getting faster and more coordinated at doing things at high speed, so that was very, very cool.

‘The way that he approached bodybuilding was interesting,’ notes Pieratt, as Lee typically only did two sets of 8 to 12 reps. ‘I realised pretty quickly that when you’re doing more sets you tend to short-change yourself on those sets,’ says Pieratt, ‘Like, you’re not really taking yourself to the absolute brink and when you’re doing just two sets of an exercise, you realise pretty quick, “okay I’m going to put everything I have in these two sets” – you actually get more from the set.

‘For a couple weeks I was not too surprised when I started to see some pretty significant gains in my physique.’

According to Pieratt, Lee didn’t eat any dairy, so that was the main adjustment he struggled with. ‘Bruce’s diet was pretty solid all around,’ he says, ‘It was a mix of Eastern Chinese medicinal principles and Western performance principles fused into a single diet.

‘One of my common breakfasts on his diet is just steak and eggs with a side of sauteed greens.

‘Chicken stir-fry was one of his common dinners, again lots of veggies and protein, it’s nice – not something I normally eat – but it was very easy to see how he could get all the nutrients he needed eating stuff like that.’ Pieratt explains that Lee’s favourite dinner was beef and oyster sauce – ‘which, full disclosure, I was not looking forward to trying. It did not seem like something I was going to like, but I ended up loving it.’

‘His protein shake recipe was a bit unorthodox, but it actually didn’t taste too bad,’ Pieratt adds. The shake included:

• 1-2 raw eggs with the shell
• Non-fat dry milk powder
• Banana
• Wheat germ oil
• Peanut butter
• Brewer’s yeast
• Granular lecithin
• Inositol

Pieratt says that Lee experimented with different supplements to fuel his intense training and recovery. These included:

• Royal jelly and ginseng: ‘For energy and endurance.’
• Vitamin C and multivitamins: ‘To boost immunity and recovery.’
• Vitamin E: ‘Powerful antioxidant.’
• Vitamin B complex: ‘Essential for energy production and metabolism.’
• Protein powder: ‘To support muscle repair.’
• Wheat germ oil: ‘Rich in Vitamin E for circulation and recovery.’
• Bee pollen: ‘Believed to boost stamina.’

Pieratt says the last thing that he did during his 30-day Bruce Lee experiment was look at his mindset. ‘Now, Bruce Lee had an incredible mindset,’ he says, ‘but it can really be boiled down to just a few key focuses.’

These were:

• Adaptability: ‘This is talking about being able to be comfortable in any situation while also being authentic. That’s something that we would call adaptability.’
• Strength: ‘Bruce tended to look at strength as a fluidity: [like] a panther.’
• Flexibility: ‘Flexibility would be responding to situations as they change and as they happen without getting rattled.’

Lee reinforced these focuses every day with affirmations, says Pieratt – ‘and this is another thing I did every single day of my 30-day experiment. Now if you want to do this too, this is what you do. You write five to seven affirmations down on a note card. Bruce Lee did this and he carried this card around with him everywhere. The note card would have these five to seven affirmations that all came together to one final goal.

‘Every single day, between one and three times per day, he would read these affirmations to himself and as he did he would try to feel the emotion behind each one – this was a very important part of his visualisation. Whether you believe in anything metaphysical or not, this is conditioning the brain. You’re literally brainwashing yourself into the mindset that you want. This was a big part of his mental training.’

Pierrat fully immersed himself in the challenge, travelling to Lee’s first school. ‘I interviewed his old students, who are now elderly people,’ he says. ‘I talked to locals and I fully immersed myself in everything that it means to be Bruce Lee.

‘You can see I’m considerably leaner,’ says Pieratt. ‘I actually got a little bit stronger across all my lifts [and] much faster – my physique improved across the board. I lost a total of 13 lbs and all in all my physique looks significantly better and my mindset is more dialled in.’

Pieratt explained that he will permanently adopt some of Lee’s routines, especially the vitamin E supplementation. ‘This month was all in all a huge success for me,’ he shares. ‘I really enjoyed the process. I thought that walking in the footsteps of the Dragon was a privilege, to be honest.’

Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.