# Learning Tai Chi online



## Robert Agar-Hutton (Feb 24, 2019)

Hi 

I'm working on a new website that will contain information about learning Tai Chi online. If you know of any online training that does NOT come up on a Google search for "learn tai chi online", I'd love to hear about it - Thanks.


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## Flying Crane (Feb 24, 2019)

hi Robert,

I think you’ll find that most people here are not terribly supportive of video instruction, if that is the only or the primary mode of instruction.

The right video ( not just any video) can be a good supplemental tool for a student, but that’s about all the credit I am willing to give it.


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## Robert Agar-Hutton (Feb 24, 2019)

Hi Michael, 

The new site will list pros and cons but I also want to provide links to places that offer tuition. The fact that some people may or may not be able to learn via video (and I always find learning via video quite tough myself) is not going to change the fact that many people (again including myself) offer video coaching.


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## ChenAn (Mar 10, 2019)

You cannot learn online. However, if you learn in person, you can use videos as reference 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Headhunter (Mar 11, 2019)

Robert Agar-Hutton said:


> Hi Michael,
> 
> The new site will list pros and cons but I also want to provide links to places that offer tuition. The fact that some people may or may not be able to learn via video (and I always find learning via video quite tough myself) is not going to change the fact that many people (again including myself) offer video coaching.


So basically you don't believe in it and know it's very difficult to do yet you're still doing it? Hmm 


You can't learn online. You can use it for assistance but you can't learn from scratch and be able to be competent and definetely not able to actually use it. The most it will do is a cardio workout


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## mograph (Mar 12, 2019)

One can learn a choreographed routine from a video. 
However, if one thinks that Taijiquan is just a choreographed routine, or that the depth of the art lies in performing the choreography, then, well ...


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## MetalBoar (Mar 14, 2019)

So I know I disagree with the majority here but I think that some people can learn martial arts online. I think there is one thing and only one thing that's an absolute requirement to learn the "martial" part of martial arts and not just choreographed movements and that thing is at least one training partner. Now the forms/kata and single person drills that (hopefully) support the martial aspects of an art can be learned solo, but I would argue that it's very difficult to impossible to get very good at learning to fight without someone to practice with. With real time video conferencing plus the ability to asynchronously exchange videos of practice, ask questions via email, etc. and get solid feedback I think a well thought out and sincerely intended online instructional model could produce great results - if done well and assuming at least two students who can work directly together.

Now, what I'm envisioning for an ideal online class is much different than just putting up a web site with some pre-recorded videos and instructional text. I think learning from just video and text alone is going to be a lot harder. That being said, I really don't understand the prevailing belief on this site that it's not possible to learn martial arts from video. People learn an amazing array of physical skills from watching videos with no feedback at all. I learned how to carpet a room by watching a couple of youtube videos and doing a little practice. I've learned how to perform a number of automotive repairs the same way. I've met a guy who learned to play the guitar just from youtube and he was really good. The list goes on and on. What makes martial arts so magically unique?

I feel strongly that if you have just the necessary training equipment, a good book and a training partner that you can gain a reasonable level of proficiency in most any martial art if you put enough effort into it. It may not look exactly like what someone else is doing but if you go into any two taiji schools here in Seattle you'll find that they don't teach the same way or produce the same results. Some arts are going to be a lot harder than others to learn this way but that doesn't make it impossible. And that's assuming there's no feedback or interaction with an instructor at all.

I took fencing in college and I got pretty good at it before I ever paid for private lessons. My first instructor was unnecessary and in fact less useful than our textbook because they pretty much just repeated what was in the book without all the details. I got good at it because I had something like 30 other people to fence with, I loved it, about 10 of those 30 other students loved it too and we did a LOT of training and practice together. If I'd had good instructional videos to go with the book I would have progressed faster. If I'd had a good instructor, like I did later, I'd have progressed faster still, but if I'd waited for that I'd have never started.


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## ChenAn (Mar 14, 2019)

You can’t learn martial arts online period. You can pretend that you know, work with partner, sparr, kick punching bag, or convince yourself that you “stable genius “ But after the first stress test you will quickly find out that “we told you so”

P.S. All online martial classes has only one goal in mind - make money on people ignorance.




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## MetalBoar (Mar 14, 2019)

ChenAn said:


> You can’t learn martial arts online period. You can pretend that you know, work with partner, sparr, kick punching bag, or convince yourself that you “stable genius “ But after the first stress test you will quickly find out that “we told you so”
> 
> P.S. All online martial classes has only one goal in mind - make money on people ignorance.
> 
> ...



Why do you believe martial arts are different from any other physical skill? What's special about martial arts that make them so different in your opinion? Or is it just taiji? Or do you not believe that people learn to play musical instruments and learn dance routines and all kinds of other things just from watching videos without even the benefits of feedback and correction that could be had from a good online course? A lot of people who teach in person are completely hands off. They will never spar with a student nor touch a student to make a correction. How is this different from a live video feed where corrections are made verbally in real time?

How is learning other martial arts online different from my learning fencing essentially from a book, except that if done right online classes could provide feedback and corrections? I didn't have any problem with my first stress test with fencing. I didn't win my first tournament but I came in much closer to first than last. I beat my first A rated fencer (A is the highest rating there is in USFA fencing) without ever having a real instructor other than a book. Is there something I'm missing? Do you not consider fencing a martial art? Do you think I'm lying? Do you think an "instructor" who doesn't offer feedback or correction and provides less information than a book is somehow better than what a knowledgeable instructor could provide online?

I don't know anyone trying to teach martial arts online, nor have I ever taken an online martial arts class, but I suspect you're right that a lot of them are only in it for the money. A lot of commercial strip mall martial arts schools are only in it for the money too. I don't know if anyone is doing quality martial arts instruction online but I don't think there's anything about it that makes it inherently fraudulent or that prevents someone with a sincere desire to provide quality training from doing so in that format.

@Flying Crane - I see you agree with ChenAn, besides telling me I'm full of it and comparing me to Mr. Trump, do you have anything to say to the points I've raised?


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## Flying Crane (Mar 14, 2019)

When did I say you are full of it, or compare you to trump?


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## MetalBoar (Mar 14, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> When did I say you are full of it, or compare you to trump?


You did not, but ChenAn's reply had no real content except to imply I was ignorant and obliquely compare me to Trump and you agreed with that post (Google "stable genius" if you're confused on that last part). While I do find this a little offensive I usually find both your posts and ChenAn's to be interesting and informative. So, I'm primarily interested in hearing some reasoned arguments as to why online training could not possibly be done well or at least adequately rather than being told that I'm foolish to state that I think online training has some potential.


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## O'Malley (Mar 14, 2019)

Learning martial arts requires the in-person supervision of someone that knows what he's doing, at least if you want any kind of quality instruction. Someone seeing you in video will not be able to see errors from certain angles and will not be able to feel body structure (I could think of other disadvantages but those two are already more than enough). Also, it requires someone that throws at you the challenges that that style was meant to respond to. You can find a training partner but if he has no experience in that particular style he will probably make mistakes (e.g. non-functional movements, movements that are dangerous for him, movements that are dangerous for you as a partner, movements that might be decent but do not "fit" with the other moves of the style and undermine them, etc.). You will then train with different parameters and will end up doing something different from the style you are trying to learn. If, on the contrary, your training partner has enough experience in the style in question so that he avoids most beginner's mistakes, then you have a teacher.

Also, I wouldn't rely too much on the fact that there are bad instructors out there to justify learning something online. If you want quality instruction, neither of those are good options.


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## O'Malley (Mar 14, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> You did not, but ChenAn's reply had no real content except to imply I was ignorant and obliquely compare me to Trump and you agreed with that post. While I do find this a little offensive I usually find both your posts and ChenAn's to be interesting and informative. So, I'm primarily interested in hearing some reasoned arguments as to why online training could not possibly be done well or at least adequately rather than being told that I'm foolish to state that I think online training has some potential.



You made all that up. Chill.


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## ChenAn (Mar 14, 2019)

Metal Boar: 
I guess you can learn yoga online and then teach others clueless practitioners how to do yoga.

However there are a lot of places where you can’t learn things online 

For example: you can’t learn online how to fly airplane. Or you can’t learn online how to fight. It just a common sense!


I really don’t care if your believes make you feel better. I’m just here to state facts.

You think people can learn taiji online? Go ahead who cares really? No one will give you money back when you find out that your taiji utterly suck lol 


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## Flying Crane (Mar 15, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> You did not, but ChenAn's reply had no real content except to imply I was ignorant and obliquely compare me to Trump and you agreed with that post (Google "stable genius" if you're confused on that last part). While I do find this a little offensive I usually find both your posts and ChenAn's to be interesting and informative. So, I'm primarily interested in hearing some reasoned arguments as to why online training could not possibly be done well or at least adequately rather than being told that I'm foolish to state that I think online training has some potential.


Ok, I did not get the stable genius reference, but now that I’ve looked it up, the Stable Genius Act introduced by Rep Brendan Boyle (see Wikipedia) is downright hilarious, ya gotta admit.  But no, it was not my intention to compare you to trump.  My gawd, no.

The problem with video instruction is the lack of hands-on interaction with the teacher, which puts the onus of correction onto the student.  Meaning: the student needs to be able to recognize his own mistakes, and then correct them and know that he has in fact corrected them and that they stay corrected.  This is unrealistic.

Having a training partner is great, but you need the face-to-face physical interaction with the teacher.  There are a lot of subtle details that are easy to miss or simply get them wrong, and that often cannot be spotted by the teacher thru video.  The teacher needs to make corrections by physically moving you into proper posture.  Without that physical interaction, the student is very likely to be doing it wrong.  The same corrections need to be made over and over because it takes time and work before the student begins to get it right.  That takes a lot of face-to-face and hands-on training time.  Subtle details can make the difference between a technique working, or not.  The student cannot be reliably self-correcting until he has reached some level of genuine skill and understanding.

My own system has a lot of subtleties that I can guarantee a student would fail to grasp without the interaction of a good teacher, and that makes the difference between learning something that is pure junk and learning something that can be devastating.  The teacher needs to be there with the student, in person, to make the required corrections and keep the student on track.  

I will admit that some people who are athletically inclined may be able to pick up some ideas that could help them to fight better.  But that is a far cry from learning and understanding the method of a martial system.  What such a person would get is a low level of some rudimentary skills.  This can be deceptive though because it isn’t really that difficult to hurt someone.  An untrained person who is athletically inclined could be pretty effective in a fight with raw aggression and attitude alone.  So with those low level rudimentary skills he could fool himself into thinking he has really learned something about a martial art.  The truth is that what he learned from the video gave him only a slight improvement over what he could already do with his natural abilities.


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## 23rdwave (Apr 4, 2019)

Derek Notman
Xin Yi Liu  He Quan
12 Rivers | Tai Chi & Jin Shin Jyutsu | Derek Notman


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 4, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> So I know I disagree with the majority here but I think that some people can learn martial arts online.


If one can slow down the video and make it into repeatable GIF file, it's possible to learn from it.

Here is an example.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 4, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> If one can slow down the video and make it into repeatable GIF file, it's possible to learn from it.
> 
> Here is an example.


You can learn to mimick.  That’s about it.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 4, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> You can learn to mimick.  That’s about it.


If you teach a group of students, do your students just mimic you?


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## ChenAn (Apr 4, 2019)

Just to end this pointless argument. Show me one pro fighter who learn martial arts online and succeed 


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## Bruce7 (Apr 5, 2019)

I agree everyone is right. 

I agree with flying crane and other, to truly learn a MA you need a great teacher.
Video will never replace a great teacher.
I also agree it is very hard to learn without any teacher great or not.

I agree with Metaltboar and others, most teachers just show you the physical movements.
So having a teacher is not as big a deal as it once was.

The quality of the video instruction now days is amazing nowadays.
Some of the video is better than instruction in class from average teachers.
I was able to learn and perform Tiger Rocks Progressive form all the way throw red belt on my own
In 2 months from video.I could perform the forms as well as anyone in the school. 
I had the advantage of knowing all of the TKD Techniques before learning Tiger Rocks progressive form from previous training.
Of course I was not allow to perform past yellow belt part of form,but that is a different issue.

I would have to strongly agree I don't think I could have learn long fist on line.
I would not stay in a horse stance for half an hour and there would be no one to hit 
me with a bo when I did something wrong. There would be no one to make me humble.
There is so much to learn that is not physical movement.

So you can see you are both right.


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## Bruce7 (Apr 5, 2019)

IMO Trump should not be brought in this form. He noway represents MA. Please do not insult people by comparisons to Trump.


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## Xue Sheng (Apr 5, 2019)

ChenAn said:


> Just to end this pointless argument. Show me one pro fighter who learn martial arts online and succeed
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



And how many here would go to, and stay in a class, if the instructor said he learned everything from a DVD or online


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## Xue Sheng (Apr 5, 2019)

Bruce7 said:


> I agree everyone is right.
> 
> I agree with flying crane and other, to truly learn a MA you need a great teacher.
> Video will never replace a great teacher.
> ...



Why Dr Yang, of YMAA was still in Boston, I thought he had a fairly good set up for DVD learning, if you followed it.
He had seminars 2 weeks a year and you could get the DVD (actually VHS tapes back then) and work with that for 6 months, then go to the associated seminars twice a year.

Would it be as good as learning with him in Boston full time? Well no. But it was not to bad and considerably better than just using the tapes to teach yourself with the possible assistance of a friend


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## Flying Crane (Apr 5, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> If you teach a group of students, do your students just mimic you?


No.


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## Bruce7 (Apr 5, 2019)

Xue Sheng said:


> And how many here would go to, and stay in a class, if the instructor said he learned everything from a DVD or online



What I have seen is the teacher shows the student *many* technique and when the student does it wrong,  They just keep going. I asked about it and was told they will learn the right way in time.
The video on the proper way to move from front stance to front stance was better than any TKD schools I have seen so far.

I guess my point is unless you find a really good teacher.
A really good video maybe have better instruction than going to an average school.


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## Xue Sheng (Apr 5, 2019)

Bruce7 said:


> What I have seen is the teacher shows the student *many* technique and when the student does it wrong,  They just keep going. I asked about it and was told they will learn the right way in time.
> The video on the proper way to move from front stance to front stance was better than any TKD schools I have seen so far.
> 
> I guess my point is unless you find a really good teacher.
> A really good video maybe have better instruction than going to an average school.



 I have known one person and talked with another who were extremely talented. Neither was new to martial arts, both had year of experience in other styles and they are not the norm for most video/distance learners.

The one I knew also had some training in Baguazhang with my first shifu. He decided he wanted to learn from Park Bok-Nam, but he was not near where Park Bok-Nam taught so he got all the videos available of Park Bok-Nam's Pa Kua Chang and trained it. He later had the opportunity to train with Park and was asked who his teacher was, because his Pakua was very good. He said he learned a bit from the teacher he trained bagua with originally, but the rest was from Park's videos.

Talked with another guy who had trained, I believe Yang style, but really liked Chen style, so he got all the DVDs of Chen Zhenglei he could find, and taught himself Chinese. He later decided to travel to China to train with Chen Zhenglei and was told by Chen that his Taijiquan teacher should be proud of him since his taijiquan was so good. This guy did not tell him he had learned all his Chen from Chen Zhenglei videos, he just said Xièxiè. He continued to travel to China to train with Chen Zhenglei after that.

However it should be noted that these were not the norm for video learning. They both were incredibly talented, with a lot of background in martial arts, with great ability to observe and focus and the drive to train over and over until they got it as correct as possible. This is not the norm for most who do this and even though many will think they have that drive, focus, powers of observation, and talent, they don't. In both cases they both trained with these teachers afterwards for awhile. The Chen guy I believe went on to teach Chen with the permission of Chen Zhenglei after training with him awhile. The Bagua guy returned to focus solely on Yang style and was a student of my shifu (he was one of the old war horses I use to train with)

Another thing to take into account here, especially when attempting to learn anything from a DVD (VCD) out of China. These guy occasionally change the form, just a little, in the video. So they are able to look at someone, claiming to be there student, and tell if they trained with them personally, or from their video


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## Flying Crane (Apr 5, 2019)

The other thing that I pointed out earlier and will do so again, is that no matter how high is the quality of the instructional video, it places the onus of correction on the student.  The student becomes responsible for identifying and correcting his own mistakes.  Outside of the rare exceptions such as @Xue Sheng pointed out, that is simply unreasonable.  It takes a fair bit of knowledge and skill and understanding before someone can reliably and consistently self-correct.  And the details do matter.  That is where the real problems with distance/ video instruction come from.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 5, 2019)

Good teacher > good video > bad teacher


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## Flying Crane (Apr 5, 2019)

Good video and bad teacher are both bad options.


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## seasoned (Apr 5, 2019)

Tai Chi as with all arts has a physical movement aspect that has to be learned. But, there is the feeling aspect of movement of power, yours and theirs. Also learning to move and feeling their movement which can't be taught but must be felt. It's this feeling aspect that could take years to grasp, but, never from a book or video.


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## Buka (Apr 5, 2019)

I think we all tend to get too one sided or the other concerning learning by video.

I don't believe you can learn Martial Arts by video if you've never trained. But if you're an experienced Martial Artists and you see something on video that grabs your attention, you should be able to tear it apart and pick it up - _if it's similar to your experience_. A striker isn't going to learn applicable grappling from video alone, and vice versa.

I learned one of my all time favorite chokes from an instructional video I once saw by Renzo Gracie. I remember seeing it for the first time, sitting up tall and thinking "Oh, my, that's sweet." I immediately called a friend, a fellow Martial Artist, and told him about it. He came right over. We rolled around my living room floor for several hours, much to the delight of my dogs, then brought the tape down to the dojo the next day and ran through it with a bunch of people. 

I've been doing that choke for twenty years now. (against resisting opponents of course). It's one of my favorite things and I don't even know the proper name for it. (some may find that sacrilegious not knowing it's proper name, but as they say around here, "me no care")

As for Tai Chi, I've done some Tai Chi, done some recently, done some many years ago. I love Tai Chi big time. So......if somebody had a good Tai Chi video, AND gave good verbal instruction in addition to what the video showed.....I'm sure I'd learn something. Maybe not a lot, but _something_ .....but that's because I've actually done Tai-Chi before.

So you can learn......but you really need a good base understanding and experience of the Arts.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 5, 2019)

Buka said:


> I think we all tend to get too one sided or the other concerning learning by video.
> 
> I don't believe you can learn Martial Arts by video if you've never trained. But if you're an experienced Martial Artists and you see something on video that grabs your attention, you should be able to tear it apart and pick it up - _if it's similar to your experience_. A striker isn't going to learn applicable grappling from video alone, and vice versa.
> 
> ...


I absolutely agree with you here.  Certainly “things” can be learned from video, and the more experience and knowledge and skill one already has, the more they can learn from video.

We used to pick apart videos of capoeira games, focus in on some interesting combinations and fluid movements that the senior level folks did, and see if we could work it up so we could pull it off in the roda too.  But we were already trained and actively training capoeiristas, so we were simply adding to our capoeira-relevant experiences.

But I think the question about video instruction generally comes from the direction of folks who have no training, or very little training, who want to learn a martial art from video.  Lacking any basis of knowledge, I say they will learn little and it will be mostly an exercise in frustration.

Can these people still learn “things” from video?  Sure. They may pick up some tricks or ideas that they find they can use.  But likely these tricks will lack polish and efficiency, and they will never be able to learn a comprehensive martial system in this way.

As I’ve said many times before, it is not difficult to hurt someone.  An untrained person with athletic ability and an aggressive personality can be a fearsome fighter.  A high level of skill in a sophisticated martial art is not a requirement to be able to fight.  Such a person may be able to put such “things” and “tricks” to good use.  But again, he has not learned a martial system.

Those rare folks who could actually learn a system via video such as @Xue Sheng described, who already have a deep knowledge and skill, I argue are exactly the people who do not need it.  Their skill is such that to collect another system via video is, in my opinion, unnecessary and a waste of time.  If they choose to spend their time and energy in this way, that of course is their choice.  But I still say they do not need it.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 5, 2019)

Buka said:


> So you can learn......but you really need a good base understanding and experience of the Arts.


When knuth's MIX assemble language came out (1975 ?), I was a teaching assistant in the UT Austin computer science department. My professor asked me to teach that class. I told him that I didn't know MIX (but I had learned CDC 6600 assemble language). He said, "Nobody in our graduate school know that MIX assemble language. You just have to learn yourself and teach at the same time." In that semester, I learned one chapter and taught one chapter until the whole class was finished.

Not only I could learn from book, I could also learn today and teach it tomorrow.


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## Buka (Apr 5, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> When knuth's MIX assemble language came out (1975 ?), I was a teaching assistant in the UT Austin computer science department. My professor asked me to teach that class. I told him that I didn't know MIX (but I had learned CDC 6600 assemble language). He said, "Nobody in our graduate school know that MIX assemble language. You just have to learn yourself and teach at the same time." In that semester, I learned one chapter and taught one chapter until the whole class was finished.
> 
> Not only I could learn from book, I could also learn today and teach it tomorrow.



I wish more people could envision the possibilities of things like this.

And that pretty much describes how I started teaching Martial Arts as a white belt. It was only to other white belts, but still. The people I was teaching all thanked me because they couldn't understand what the hell the Black Belt was trying to teach them.


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## _Simon_ (Apr 5, 2019)

Buka said:


> I think we all tend to get too one sided or the other concerning learning by video.
> 
> I don't believe you can learn Martial Arts by video if you've never trained. But if you're an experienced Martial Artists and you see something on video that grabs your attention, you should be able to tear it apart and pick it up - _if it's similar to your experience_. A striker isn't going to learn applicable grappling from video alone, and vice versa.
> 
> ...


Very well said mate , and ah the dogs would have totally loved that haha


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## Flying Crane (Apr 5, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> When knuth's MIX assemble language came out (1975 ?), I was a teaching assistant in the UT Austin computer science department. My professor asked me to teach that class. I told him that I didn't know MIX (but I had learned CDC 6600 assemble language). He said, "Nobody in our graduate school know that MIX assemble language. You just have to learn yourself and teach at the same time." In that semester, I learned one chapter and taught one chapter until the whole class was finished.
> 
> Not only I could learn from book, I could also learn today and teach it tomorrow.


Obviously some things can be learned via video or books.  Some things can be self-taught with those kinds of materials.

Other things cannot.


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## Monkey Turned Wolf (Apr 5, 2019)

ChenAn said:


> Just to end this pointless argument. Show me one pro fighter who learn martial arts online and succeed
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


@drop bear didn't you bring up a fighter who mainly learned online in a past argument? This was a while ago so I might be getting posters confused..


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## drop bear (Apr 5, 2019)

kempodisciple said:


> @drop bear didn't you bring up a fighter who mainly learned online in a past argument? This was a while ago so I might be getting posters confused..



Anton was basically training himself there for a while.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 5, 2019)

ChenAn said:


> Just to end this pointless argument. Show me one pro fighter who learn martial arts online and succeed


If you can find a new student who is willing to spend his next 3 years to train this "1 kick, 3 punches" both solo drill and bag work, he will be a good fighter.

MA training is not that complicate. You just have to be able to do 1 thing better than others.


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## Tez3 (Apr 6, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> If you teach a group of students, do your students just mimic you?




No, because there are follow up corrections and instruction relevant to individual students which is the vital element missing from videos.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 6, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> Why do you believe martial arts are different from any other physical skill? What's special about martial arts that make them so different in your opinion? Or is it just taiji? Or do you not believe that people learn to play musical instruments and learn dance routines and all kinds of other things just from watching videos without even the benefits of feedback and correction that could be had from a good online course? A lot of people who teach in person are completely hands off. They will never spar with a student nor touch a student to make a correction. How is this different from a live video feed where corrections are made verbally in real time?
> 
> How is learning other martial arts online different from my learning fencing essentially from a book, except that if done right online classes could provide feedback and corrections? I didn't have any problem with my first stress test with fencing. I didn't win my first tournament but I came in much closer to first than last. I beat my first A rated fencer (A is the highest rating there is in USFA fencing) without ever having a real instructor other than a book. Is there something I'm missing? Do you not consider fencing a martial art? Do you think I'm lying? Do you think an "instructor" who doesn't offer feedback or correction and provides less information than a book is somehow better than what a knowledgeable instructor could provide online?
> 
> ...


I think the issue is with how feedback works. If you use guitar videos to learn (which I have and do), and you manage to play something on the guitar (which I have), then you've learned to play the guitar using that video content. If it sounds good, it's working.

But with martial arts - particularly something like Tai Chi - the feedback needs more levels. Firstly, there's a difference between something that works, and something that works properly. Someone can work out a punch or kick that actually delivers power, but are they missing anything important in it? Are they putting a joint at risk because of poor form (which I might be doing with those guitar videos)? Are they getting decent power by putting everything they have into it, when they should be able to get that power with half that effort? Are they leaving themselves horribly exposed to counters? Some of that will show up with a sparring partner, but they may not recognize it (and a beginning-level partner may be less than useful). All of those concerns - with different factors - come up at least as much with grappling, trapping, etc.

Then we get to the question of whether they're learning the art in question. If I put up a bunch of NGA videos, and someone uses those to learn to fight against their new sparring partner, but they miss key principles (because beginners ALWAYS miss those), have they actually learned NGA? I'd say not.

So, is it possible to learn something from videos? Absolutely. If you have any kind of base at all, you'll likely be able to learn something quite useful quite quickly (@Tony Dismukes probably can get 1000% more out of a guitar video in 1/10 of the time). I do that all the time with BJJ videos. But - especially with beginners - there's some risk of mis-learning, possibly even in ways that create risk for them or their partner. And they may learn useful skill, but not the art they're wanting to learn. (That latter doesn't happen with guitar videos - I won't accidentally learn to play ukulele instead).


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 6, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> If one can slow down the video and make it into repeatable GIF file, it's possible to learn from it.
> 
> Here is an example.


For someone with a base to start from, I'd agree. I cringe at what I'm certain most beginners would do when trying to replicate such a move. No amount of explanation seems to stop that from happening.

Ground technique seems to be the partial exception, when it's style-agnostic (as I consider BJJ to be), because most movement is very low-risk, can be done realistically at a low speed, and can be kept technical (meaning leaving the strength out of it) for beginners. Obviously, the same issues apply to ground grappling, but to a lesser degree than elsewhere.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 6, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> If you teach a group of students, do your students just mimic you?


When they start, they do. Or, rather, they try to. Most do a very bad job of it, and need correction. The range of errors they can manifest - even when seeing themselves in a mirror - is quite impressive.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 6, 2019)

Bruce7 said:


> What I have seen is the teacher shows the student *many* technique and when the student does it wrong,  They just keep going. I asked about it and was told they will learn the right way in time.
> The video on the proper way to move from front stance to front stance was better than any TKD schools I have seen so far.
> 
> I guess my point is unless you find a really good teacher.
> A really good video maybe have better instruction than going to an average school.


There are some mistakes you let pass, because they cannot readily be corrected yet. When a student gets the basic movement and principles down a bit, then other corrections can be made.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 6, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> Good video and bad teacher are both bad options.


Used properly, I think a bit more can be learned from good video. At least you're unlikely to be taught something improperly, which is more likely with the bad instructor. So, perhaps the good video is the lesser of two evils.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 6, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> If you can find a new student who is willing to spend his next 3 years to train this "1 kick, 3 punches" both solo drill and bag work, he will be a good fighter.
> 
> MA training is not that complicate. You just have to be able to do 1 thing better than others.


I disagree. No matter how good your 1 kick, 3 punches are, you still have to be able to stop the other guy from knocking you out first. Amazing offense only holds up until the other guy gets one shot in.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 6, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> Used properly, I think a bit more can be learned from good video. At least you're unlikely to be taught something improperly, which is more likely with the bad instructor. So, perhaps the good video is the lesser of two evils.


It still comes down to self-correction which is unrealistic unless the person already has a lot of experience, and even then may be unrealistic depending on how similar or dissimilar the video material and method is to what the person has experience with.

I hold that they are both poor options.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 6, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> It still comes down to self-correction which is unrealistic unless the person already has a lot of experience, and even then may be unrealistic depending on how similar or dissimilar the video material and method is to what the person has experience with.
> 
> I hold that they are both poor options.


I agree it's down to self-correction. I think the student stands a marginally better chance of making some of the corrections with a better example and better explanation. If the instructor is really bad, they're either not making those corrections...or possibly even making some that are wrong.

But yeah, for starting from scratch, both are poor options.


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## Xue Sheng (Apr 7, 2019)

Just as a note... I have been trained in the Yang Long form by my Shifu. However If I go off and decide to go to videos and learn the Yang Long form of the current Yang family, it is different in places. If I watch videos of Tung Hu Ling (same lineage as I am and learned from the same teacher my shifu learned from) it is also different. Not as different as the Yang families form is from mine, but it is still a little different in places. If I then decide to go and learn the Tung Long form, from videos from Alex Dong (source is my shigong and he is the grandson of my shigong) it is ver different again. I have also watched others, that will remain nameless, that are absolutely horrible and yet people by them to teach themselves. And to be honest, if that is what they want to do, I really have no issue with it My issue comes in when they do this, then turn around and start teaching ti to others. Then things go down hill from there. 

I also know someone and have trained with him, he is very skilled, however he is also into the distance learning business, as well as having his own school, and he is highly qualified to teach. But I have seen some of what comes out of his distance learning program and there are some that are good, but they go train with him a few times a year and for a week every summer. But there are those that go pretty much full on video training and they are questionable at best. 

Now I know, based on my background, which ones appear better (this would be my opinion of course, but a trained opinion) as it applies to martial applications, health benefits, proper "safe" form. However no one, just starting out, would have a clue, nor would they even know what to look for, and for the most part, with styles like Yang you end up with something similar to taijiquan, or bad taijiquan, but not good. However in styles like Southern Wu you can easily end up with injuries, especially to the knees, seen a lot of folks in bad Southern Wu Posture that I know will lead to knee issues if they continue,  and Chen, well its low stance and especially the fajin, that can hurt too. You need a teacher for these styles, or a lot of background in them prior to looking to videos.

Of course I am only talking taijiquan here, there are multiple other styles from a variety of cultures out there that can be good, or equally as bad to dangerous. If you have no background in a style, you need a teacher.And in many cases even if you have background in a style, you need a teacher. I would never recommend attempting to learn any of the fast forms from Tung Ying Chieh by video, even if  you have years of long form behind you. 

For me, if this is what someone wants to do, I have no problem with it. They are responsible for their own actions. It is when the call themselves a teacher and start teaching, I have an issue.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 7, 2019)

Xue Sheng said:


> Just as a note... I have been trained in the Yang Long form by my Shifu. However If I go off and decide to go to videos and learn the Yang Long form of the current Yang family, it is different in places. If I watch videos of Tung Hu Ling (same lineage as I am and learned from the same teacher my shifu learned from) it is also different. Not as different as the Yang families form is from mine, but it is still a little different in places. If I then decide to go and learn the Tung Long form, from videos from Alex Dong (source is my shigong and he is the grandson of my shigong) it is ver different again. I have also watched others, that will remain nameless, that are absolutely horrible and yet people by them to teach themselves. And to be honest, if that is what they want to do, I really have no issue with it My issue comes in when they do this, then turn around and start teaching ti to others. Then things go down hill from there.
> 
> I also know someone and have trained with him, he is very skilled, however he is also into the distance learning business, as well as having his own school, and he is highly qualified to teach. But I have seen some of what comes out of his distance learning program and there are some that are good, but they go train with him a few times a year and for a week every summer. But there are those that go pretty much full on video training and they are questionable at best.
> 
> ...


This is a good write-up, Xue. It got me thinking. While I can - and often do - pick up useful techniques from Judo, BJJ, and wrestling videos, I don't get much from most (Ueshiba-origin) Aikido videos. The principles as they apply them are just different enough that I don't find them as useful to me. Their approach to "aiki" is different enough from my own that some of their techniques don't even translate. And that's a closely related art. I think "soft" principles are the hardest to convey via video, and the hardest to correct remotely. That would apply even to the relaxation used in BJJ. It often takes an instructor's eyes (someone who understands the principle of relaxation) to help a student understand how NOT relaxed they are.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 7, 2019)

Xue Sheng said:


> Just as a note... I have been trained in the Yang Long form by my Shifu. However If I go off and decide to go to videos and learn the Yang Long form of the current Yang family, it is different in places. If I watch videos of Tung Hu Ling (same lineage as I am and learned from the same teacher my shifu learned from) it is also different. Not as different as the Yang families form is from mine, but it is still a little different in places. If I then decide to go and learn the Tung Long form, from videos from Alex Dong (source is my shigong and he is the grandson of my shigong) it is ver different again. I have also watched others, that will remain nameless, that are absolutely horrible and yet people by them to teach themselves. And to be honest, if that is what they want to do, I really have no issue with it My issue comes in when they do this, then turn around and start teaching ti to others. Then things go down hill from there.
> 
> I also know someone and have trained with him, he is very skilled, however he is also into the distance learning business, as well as having his own school, and he is highly qualified to teach. But I have seen some of what comes out of his distance learning program and there are some that are good, but they go train with him a few times a year and for a week every summer. But there are those that go pretty much full on video training and they are questionable at best.
> 
> ...


I will simply add to this by saying that yes, people can do whatever they want to do.  But if they come here asking if it is a good idea, or asking for video recommendations, or looking to offer their own video instruction to others, then I am going to speak up and point out the many problems inherent in the approach and i will not encourage it.


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## Xue Sheng (Apr 7, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> This is a good write-up, Xue. It got me thinking. While I can - and often do - pick up useful techniques from Judo, BJJ, and wrestling videos, I don't get much from most (Ueshiba-origin) Aikido videos. The principles as they apply them are just different enough that I don't find them as useful to me. Their approach to "aiki" is different enough from my own that some of their techniques don't even translate. And that's a closely related art. I think "soft" principles are the hardest to convey via video, and the hardest to correct remotely. That would apply even to the relaxation used in BJJ. It often takes an instructor's eyes (someone who understands the principle of relaxation) to help a student understand how NOT relaxed they are.



Exactly. 

You need a teacher, especially for the softer (internal) side of things. And sometimes it takes more than one instructors eyes. I never realized I had good upper and lower unity in my forms until I was told by 2 teachers (one Xingyiquan) that were not my Yang shifu (he never tells you anything, he corrects you and if he stops correcting, well, you got it right). Never new my push hands was any good, until 2 other teachers told me so (one of those was a Dachengquan Shifu) Again, my shifu corrects, that is about it. In almost 25 years of training with him, I believe he only said I was good about half a dozen times. His style of teaching even though he is a Southern Chinese Shifu (they generally talk more) is like his shifu, who is Northern Chinese (they generally talk less) My shifu actually told me this one day about his Shifu and that is when I caught on to what was going on.


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## Xue Sheng (Apr 7, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> I will simply add to this by saying that yes, people can do whatever they want to do.  But if they come here asking if it is a good idea, or asking for video recommendations, or looking to offer their own video instruction to others, then I am going to speak up and point out the many problems inherent in the approach and i will not encourage it.



Also don't start belittling the style when their video only learning fails to do what they want it to do. I have seen, and used a Jerry Poteet video when I was looking at going back to JKD. But I was looking at it for the foot work, which I had been shown before. But if someone just gets that video to learn JKD and learn how to fight. My guess is they will get their butt kicked sooner or later. And if that is what happens, then don't start downing JKD, they should start downing their own training


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 7, 2019)

If you want to create instruction video, voice or text is important. The 1st clip has no audio. The 2nd clip says, "The most important ...".


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 7, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> If you want to create instruction video, voice or text is important. The 1st clip has no audio. The 2nd clip says, "The most important ...".


Agreed. I'll even go a step further on that, John, and say voice-over is nearly imperative. Being able to time the instruction to motion on the video adds a lot of clarity. When we teach, we sometimes demonstrate slowly, so we can say "and right here, you should...."


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 7, 2019)

I will add audio such as:

- The 1st clip shows uniform stance (same side) entering. The 2nd clip shows mirror stance (different side) entering. The 2nd clip can generate more momentum (the 1st step is farther).
- The 2nd clip entering is safer. He pushes his opponent's leading arm away from his entering path.
- It's important to control your opponent's back leg.
- ...

IMO, sometimes even a teacher still doesn't give enough detail during teaching. If you include this level detail with your video, the result will be better.

Of course the "self-correction" can be another issue. If students can send his video back to the teacher, the teacher can correct it through E-mail.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 7, 2019)

Wow! Go away for a week or so and this thread blew up!

So, I had a long response written to @Flying Crane and then my cat stepped on my computer's power button and I lost motivation to continue this discussion but I see that a lot of people have been inspired to write so I guess I'll wade back in a little. As a side note, a genuine thank you to @Flying Crane and everyone else who's given this a thoughtful reply.

First off, I think there's a big distinction between training from video, that's been available since the VCR got cheap, whether it be online or from DVD's or whatever and the sort of online training that I envision. I don't know what is being done online at present but I think that to be done well there would need to be interaction between the student and instructor, ideally some real time, video conferencing style interaction plus some exchange of asynchronous recorded video and feedback along with more conventional training videos. Done that way I think a student could learn a lot of (though maybe not all) martial arts to a reasonable level of competence, *assuming they had a partner, and preferably multiple partners, to train with*.

This is where @gpseymour and I disagree, with a guitar you can hear what you're doing and get feedback that way, you can also play for an audience and see what they think. I'd say if you can try techniques on your training partner(s) you're getting good feedback. If you can find people from other martial arts schools to try them out on you're getting better feedback than many students in brick and mortar schools. The more you can try these techniques against resistance the more sure you can be of the feedback. If we're just talking about watching non-interactive videos online, then I agree that it's going to be much harder to progress without any background in MA, though I'm still not sure it's impossible, merely hard, slow and potentially more dangerous.

The next thing is, we may disagree about what learning a martial art means. We see this in a lot of MMA vs. TMA threads. How do you determine when someone has learned a martial art? Is it when they've learned a form well enough to win a forms competition? What level of forms competition, in their school, regional, international? When they do it the way well respected instructor A thinks they should, but not the way well respected (by other people, who think instructor A is an imbecile) instructor B thinks they should? Or do forms have nothing to do with it? Is it when the student can regularly do well in tournaments? If that's the standard, then that raises some more questions; what level of contact is required? How big a tournament, again, their school, regional, international, professional? What does their record need to look like, and is it valid if it wasn't in the UFC, or K1 or Rajadamnern stadium? My definition would be that it's an acceptable martial arts school if the student is getting what they want out of it, and if we need a little more clarity than that, I'd say one objective test (though not the only one necessarily and it doesn't meet everyone's needs) is if the student can effectively apply it against a resisting opponent with a similar level of brick and mortar training from an average school (preferably) in their area.

What's your definition? What percentage of brick and mortar schools meet it? If it requires that the instructor has produced successful professional fighters as someone suggested above, tell me how many instructors in the US (and the nation in which you reside) meet that standard and are any of them teaching in Seattle, or maybe more to the point, Bismark, North Dakota or Cheyenne, Wyoming?

I agree that tai chi seems like one of the more challenging arts to learn through remote instruction, I'm on my 4th attempt (all in brick and mortar schools, no video training) right now. The thing is, the middle two instructors were very little better than watching a video and I think a really good interactive online experience would have been far superior. They were pretty hands off and did not give much feedback and mostly just demonstrated the form and talked about the principles of the art. Some of their students seemed good and they seemed to be skilled themselves (which is why I trained with them rather than the double handful of instructors I talked to that seemed terrible) but I don't think they really started paying attention to their students until they'd been there for over a year. It would not have been hard to get better instruction from an engaged online instructor.

My primary objection to the idea that one can't possibly learn from a remote instructor is from my own experience. I'll state it once again, I effectively learned sport foil fencing from a book. Oh sure, we had an "instructor", but they were a PE instructor from the college that got roped into teaching fencing. They read the same book that was assigned to the class before the session started and then taught directly out of it. I learned more from reading the book than I did from the instructor because they didn't go into the same level of depth. I can say that I have two measures of success; one, I had a complete blast with the class and two I beat my first A rated fencer with no other instruction than books and an instructor regurgitating the first book I read. Yeah, I got a whole lot better when I started taking private lessons from a retired Hungarian Olympic coach, but if that's your requirement for a qualified instructor good luck finding one in the art of your choice even in a big city, I  drove over 300 miles round trip 1-2 times/week to train with the gentleman I found. I got good before that because I read and practiced. I practiced _a lot _against resisting opponents and then I analyzed what went well and what went poorly and then I drilled to correct the problems that I saw and refined my style to maximize my strengths. And it wasn't just me, there were about 10 other people in the area that were at a similar skill level that had no other training.

I find it really funny that I see people who are normally part of the MMA crowd who claim that pressure testing and results in the ring are the sole measures of an art's effectiveness that don't get this, or maybe they think I'm lying. So, maybe some martial arts would be difficult of impossible to learn without a physically present instructor, and some arts would be hard to test because there's no appropriate venue and to some degree the practitioners just choose to trust that what they're learning works, brick and mortar or online, either one. Sport arts though shouldn't have this problem. I've done enough boxing to feel confident that if I was 20 again and had 30-40 training partners like I did for fencing and a stack of good books on the subject I could get to be pretty good at it if I put in the same kind of work that I did with fencing. That's probably true of judo, BJJ and other sport arts too, though I think there might be more risk or broken bones and dislocations. I think the same holds true for FMA, take your sticks (or whatever practice weapon) and drill based on books and/or video and then spar a lot and I think you'd get to where you were pretty good. If you sparred as much as I fenced and you had a similar number of training partners I can't imagine that you wouldn't get pretty good. Going back to tai chi, if you learned it strictly online I really believe that if you practiced fixed step or moving step push hands regularly with a resisting partner, using competition rules, that you'd get a lot better at competitive push hands than students at the vast majority of tai chi schools. Of course I've read that competition push hands isn't really tai chi, and I'm fine with that as I'm not personally all that interested in push hands competition at this time, but then we still need a definition of what tai chi is.

Now, I fully admit that I've got some prejudice against online training at present and those offering online training. There's an instructor locally that has come very highly recommended from both TMA and MMA people that I know and when I saw on his website that he was offering online training my reflex reaction was to assume he must be some sort of money grubbing fraud. I still haven't tried his classes (online or local) so I don't know what he's actually doing with either of them, but the online thing did turn me off. My point isn't that I know of anyone doing good training in that format now, I just think that from my own experience learning from a book that a good instructor who was really conversant with the current technology for online instruction could do a better job than all the mediocre and poor instructors do face to face and if you live in someplace other than a large city good online training (if it is offered) would be light years ahead of doing nothing.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 7, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> I will add audio such as:
> 
> - The 1st clip shows uniform stance (same side) entering. The 2nd clip shows mirror stance (different side) entering. The 2nd clip can generate more momentum (the 1st step is farther).
> - The 2nd clip entering is safer. He pushes his opponent's leading arm away from his entering path.
> ...


This is why video has a higher value for folks with a base to work from. We can get a lot more detail in a short time than we would likely get in a class.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 7, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> I'd say if you can try techniques on your training partner(s) you're getting good feedback. If you can find people from other martial arts schools to try them out on you're getting better feedback than many students in brick and mortar schools.


You've introducing something that's not distinctive here, though. The brick-and-mortar student could also seek people from other arts. But that's more nit-picking on my part, so back to a salient point....

With a partner, you can't tell if what you're doing works because the partner lets it, or because it actually works. You also can't tell (as with my example of a punch's power) whether what you're doing kinda works in spite of the flaws, or works because you're doing it well. With the guitar, if it sounds right, then it's working, and not much else matters.

But you make some good points. There are some things I'd expect most people could probably manage to learn from video of some sort. But from raw beginner? With the mistakes I see beginners make - mistakes they are often entirely unaware they are making - that's a VERY long learning curve, and is likely to include learning some things quite "wrongly".


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 7, 2019)

Can you learn from the following short Q&A?

Q: How did you set up your leg hooking?
A: I knee his leading leg.

If you can learn from just words, video can give you 10 times more information.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 7, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> You've introducing something that's not distinctive here, though. The brick-and-mortar student could also seek people from other arts. But that's more nit-picking on my part, so back to a salient point....
> 
> With a partner, you can't tell if what you're doing works because the partner lets it, or because it actually works. You also can't tell (as with my example of a punch's power) whether what you're doing kinda works in spite of the flaws, or works because you're doing it well. With the guitar, if it sounds right, then it's working, and not much else matters.
> 
> But you make some good points. There are some things I'd expect most people could probably manage to learn from video of some sort. But from raw beginner? With the mistakes I see beginners make - mistakes they are often entirely unaware they are making - that's a VERY long learning curve, and is likely to include learning some things quite "wrongly".





gpseymour said:


> There are some things I'd expect most people could probably manage to learn from video of some sort. But from raw beginner? With the mistakes I see beginners make - mistakes they are often entirely unaware they are making - that's a VERY long learning curve, and is likely to include learning some things quite "wrongly".


So, what about the roughly ten other people and me that learned fencing from a book and each other? Sure, we made mistakes, but we got objectively pretty good and there were a _lot _of other fencers from that class that were as good as the average martial art student that is similarly only semi-dedicated.

To address the matter of whether your training partner is being too compliant, I agree that could be a problem just as it can be in a brick and mortar school. The real answer is to have as many training partners as possible in either circumstance and if you want to validate your experience do some sparring with people not part of your school if you can. That can be unfortunately very hard to arrange no matter where and how you train.

And I just want to verify that you did catch my description of what I'd want to see in online training? Not just an instructor passively posting videos, but rather actively reviewing students' work and giving feedback, ideally at least some of which would be done real time.

EDIT to add: Oh, and I think I've had one too many coffees on very little food today. I hope I'm not coming off as too aggressive or critical of others' opinions!

EDIT 2: Also, I want to clarify that I'm not at all trying to say that online instruction is or could be superior to really good brick and mortar instruction. My point is that people on this board dogmatically reject the idea that it could be useful for anyone or that anyone could develop real skills through that medium. I feel strongly that if the technology was used well that A) a good instructor could do a much better job of online instruction (all other things being equal - the student has adequate equipment, access to training partners, etc.) than the average or poor instructor would do face to face and B) if you live in a lot of places you may not even have access to a poor quality instructor.

I think that embracing the format and encouraging good instructors to consider how to implement it effectively could lead to a lot of positive things in the martial arts world.  I also agree that potential online students need  to be aware that there are probably a greater percentage of digital mcdojos than there are physical ones and that it would be valuable to give novices a really good checklist of what the potential problems might be that are unique to an online format.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 7, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> So, what about the roughly ten other people and me that learned fencing from a book and each other? Sure, we made mistakes, but we got objectively pretty good and there were a _lot _of other fencers from that class that were as good as the average martial art student that is similarly only semi-dedicated.
> 
> To address the matter of whether your training partner is being too compliant, I agree that could be a problem just as it can be in a brick and mortar school. The real answer is to have as many training partners as possible in either circumstance and if you want to validate your experience do some sparring with people not part of your school if you can. That can be unfortunately very hard to arrange no matter where and how you train.
> 
> ...


Part of where we're talking across each other is the issue I addressed earlier about learning to do something, versus learning the art. Those are not the same thing in all arts. So, if you want to learn to compete at a sport, then if you manage to do well, you've learned what you needed (without getting into the issues of self-injury through bad technique yet). If you're trying to learn a specific art, that's a different thing, and I think Tai Chi would be high on the list where that's an issue. If you can throw a Judoka within the rules, you can compete in Judo competitions. But to learn Tai Chi, you need to learn the principles of Tai Chi, and those are difficult for practitioners to describe clearly - they often say things like, "If you could feel it, this would make more sense." Aikido is the same way. I'm not sure there's a solution for this in video. I could teach my techniques, and they might actually learn to do them well (assuming they have a range of opponents to play with, etc.), but they probably won't be learning what my students learn, because they'll never feel the relaxation, sudden down-force, and other things I only know how to communicate by letting them feel them.

And I guarantee they'd make mistakes in two categories (both of which they can't fix): 1) ones they don't know are mistakes, and 2) ones coming from movements they don't realize they're making. Now, they might manage to overcome these with force, strength, athleticism, speed, or simply getting really good at something that covers the mistake. But the mistake will still be there.

With your fencing, I can't speak to that by much, because I don't know the situation. You were around a lot of other fencers - were they all untrained (or trained in a different fencing style)? If not, you had some knowledgeable feedback to go with the video training. I also can't know if you learned fencing, or to play the fencing game (I'm not even sure if that's a distinction in fencing). Think of someone learning enough from Tae Kwon Do tapes (yeah, they got out their old VCR for this one!) to compete in local  WT competitions. That's certainly not the same as learning TKD.

I'll add that I actually like video content - just not without some live instruction, or some base to build on. I've started putting together some videos for my students. I'll probably leave them for others to see, as well, though much of it would be of far less value even for folks elsewhere in NGA.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 7, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> With your fencing, I can't speak to that by much, because I don't know the situation. You were around a lot of other fencers - were they all untrained (or trained in a different fencing style)? If not, you had some knowledgeable feedback to go with the video training. I also can't know if you learned fencing, or to play the fencing game (I'm not even sure if that's a distinction in fencing). Think of someone learning enough from Tae Kwon Do tapes (yeah, they got out their old VCR for this one!) to compete in local  WT competitions. That's certainly not the same as learning TKD.


I didn't even have video, it was strictly books. Now to be fair, there was some minimal institutional knowledge in the sense that there were students who had taken the class before, still, they had the same level of non instruction that I got, but I admit I did get the benefits of their having practiced the things they'd figured out essentially on their own. They didn't really teach, but they were more challenging sparring partners from whom you could steal tricks. But if you went back just a few semesters you would have been looking at students with no one with any background at all in sport fencing and they managed to get to a point where they were pretty good. There was a guy who had done kendo in the class and of course people who had done wrestling and TKD and things, but kendo is about as far removed from western foil fencing as TKD is and no one had done foil anywhere else. Regardless, I don't think online training is by it's nature training in a vacuum. If you can find training partners it's likely that some of them may have done something before so I think that this whole idea that training online is always going to be completely different is based on some really weird assumptions and by creating arbitrary rules about what does and doesn't count as online training.

As to whether what I was doing was fencing or not, well that's a matter of semantics. Since I started out in standard rather than electric foil I'd say my style and background were much closer to "real" sword work than most people who start on electric. My more recent experience with rapier seems to bear this out. Similarly, when I started training with a retired Olympic coach he didn't change anything about the fundamentals of my technique, he just looked at what I did and refined the bits he thought I could do better so from that perspective as well, he seemed to think I was doing  real "fencing" well enough.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 7, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> PIf you're trying to learn a specific art, that's a different thing, and I think Tai Chi would be high on the list where that's an issue.


MA is no difference. During the 1st year of my high school, I was a beginner student. When my teacher taught advance students the form "little tiger and swallow", I hided myself behind the tree and learned it by watching. A year later during a high school annual event, my teacher asked me to demonstrate that form.

When I competed in Karate tournament in form division, I had used that form to win many 1st places in black belt division.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 8, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> I didn't even have video, it was strictly books. Now to be fair, there was some minimal institutional knowledge in the sense that there were students who had taken the class before, still, they had the same level of non instruction that I got, but I admit I did get the benefits of their having practiced the things they'd figured out essentially on their own. They didn't really teach, but they were more challenging sparring partners from whom you could steal tricks. But if you went back just a few semesters you would have been looking at students with no one with any background at all in sport fencing and they managed to get to a point where they were pretty good. There was a guy who had done kendo in the class and of course people who had done wrestling and TKD and things, but kendo is about as far removed from western foil fencing as TKD is and no one had done foil anywhere else. Regardless, I don't think online training is by it's nature training in a vacuum. If you can find training partners it's likely that some of them may have done something before so I think that this whole idea that training online is always going to be completely different is based on some really weird assumptions and by creating arbitrary rules about what does and doesn't count as online training.
> 
> As to whether what I was doing was fencing or not, well that's a matter of semantics. Since I started out in standard rather than electric foil I'd say my style and background were much closer to "real" sword work than most people who start on electric. My more recent experience with rapier seems to bear this out. Similarly, when I started training with a retired Olympic coach he didn't change anything about the fundamentals of my technique, he just looked at what I did and refined the bits he thought I could do better so from that perspective as well, he seemed to think I was doing  real "fencing" well enough.


That's sort of the point I've been making. If it's not in a vacuum, then it's a bit of a different beast. Like one of the other guys was saying about seeing the instructor a few times a year - that can change the whole dynamic. So, a rank beginner who just works with another rank beginner and video will have far more problems than one who gets together with other martial artists and swaps ideas. Even if the other martial artists are fairly new, each will know and be able to do something the others do not, and each will show up weaknesses the others will not.

But they still might not be learning the art/system. That's not a problem unless that's their goal.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 8, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> MA is no difference. During the 1st year of my high school, I was a beginner student. When my teacher taught advance students the form "little tiger and swallow", I hided myself behind the tree and learned it by watching. A year later during a high school annual event, my teacher asked me to demonstrate that form.
> 
> When I competed in Karate tournament in form division, I had used that form to win many 1st places in black belt division.


You learned movements. That's not the same as learning the principles, in some cases. I could definitely learn to mimic a form from a video, and might even learn to do it well (okay, I wouldn't, but someone more detail-oriented might). But that doesn't usually carry any of the vaguer aspects of an art like Aikido, Tai Chi, etc.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 8, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> Of course the "self-correction" can be another issue. If students can send his video back to the teacher, the teacher can correct it through E-mail.


A teacher might spot some errors over video, but likely miss some too.  But the student cannot reliably correct his errors on his own, even if the teacher can point them out to him though an email.  Beginners make the same mistakes over and over, and need to be corrected repeatedly, often requiring that the teacher physically move the student into a position or posture because the student just fails to recognize how much they are not correct.


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## vince1 (Apr 8, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> You learned movements. That's not the same as learning the principles, in some cases. I could definitely learn to mimic a form from a video, and might even learn to do it well (okay, I wouldn't, but someone more detail-oriented might). But that doesn't usually carry any of the vaguer aspects of an art like Aikido, Tai Chi, etc.



Many years ago I trained in TaeKwonDo/Hapkido and received my red belt. Later in life I studied Chow Gar Southern Mantis along with some Ship Pal Ki. A year ago I started Aiki Jiu Jitsu and i was informed by my new teacher that most of my blocks/punches and some kicking techniques were being done wrong. My teacher worked with me and made the SUBTLE corrections to my technique which to my amazement  made all the difference in the world.

This brings up another discussion about how many schools(dojo) are teaching poor technique .Also how could you learn a martial art such as Tai Chi online  or any martial art where correct technique makes all the difference in the world in a combat situation.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 8, 2019)

vince1 said:


> most of my blocks/punches and some kicking techniques were being done wrong.


Does your block/punch/kick work in the ring? 

If it 

- does, it can''t be that wrong.
- doesn't, you should detect that and correct yourself already.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 8, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> But that doesn't usually carry any of the vaguer aspects of an art like Aikido, Tai Chi, etc.


I don't believe anybody want to take an online Taiji class to be a fighter. 

If one only trains Taiji for "health", 

- whether his hand can coordinate with his foot or not won't matter that much.
- whether he can understand the power generation method or not also won't matter either.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 8, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> That's sort of the point I've been making. If it's not in a vacuum, then it's a bit of a different beast. Like one of the other guys was saying about seeing the instructor a few times a year - that can change the whole dynamic. So, a rank beginner who just works with another rank beginner and video will have far more problems than one who gets together with other martial artists and swaps ideas. Even if the other martial artists are fairly new, each will know and be able to do something the others do not, and each will show up weaknesses the others will not.


Sure, but what I've been saying is I don't think the instructor needs to be physically present, merely that a training partner and preferably many training partners _are_ physically present.


gpseymour said:


> But they still might not be learning the art/system. That's not a problem unless that's their goal.


I agree, but we've entered the territory of semantics and philosophy at this point in my opinion. More to the point, I don't think many people would pursue a strictly online course of study if they had good local options available for what they wanted to learn. And to be clear, I have never said that I thought good online training would be superior to good face to face training. I've been saying that good online training has the potential to be an effective means of learning. Going further, I think that it's likely that a really good online course could be  better than the average brick and mortar school and a whole lot better than not training at all. 

Let's say I really, really wanted to learn Nihon Goshin Aikido for instance and really wanted to learn to do it the "correct" way (ignoring what that means for the moment). If I lived in Hendersonville, NC it would be foolish of me to take purely online classes if I could go study with you directly. That's probably also true here in the Seattle area, where to my surprise I just learned there's been an NGA school since at least 1997. It would not be true in my home town, however, nor in most small cities in the US. So, what are my options? If you or someone with similar qualifications were offering a really well done online course and I could dig up a training partner or better still several training partners, I could take your online class and know that I was probably not going to do everything exactly the way you do it (which would be true even training face to face, though perhaps [probably?] there would be less variance) or I could take something else locally that wasn't the art I really wanted to learn, or I could not train. With a well designed online class the student is still getting much closer to "real" NGA than if they do something (or nothing) else.  

And that's assuming there are even other local options. I've been lucky (well, not purely lucky, to some degree this was a conscious decision on my part) enough to always live in places with a lot of great martial arts instruction. I've read quite a few posts from people in smaller cities and towns that don't have much of anything available to them.


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## Martial D (Apr 8, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> Sure, but what I've been saying is I don't think the instructor needs to be physically present, merely that a training partner and preferably many training partners _are_ physically present.



So now you have two guys with no understanding of what they are doing and nobody to answer questions or correct budding bad habits or form.

I don't really see any way around this.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 8, 2019)

Martial D said:


> So now you have two guys with no understanding of what they are doing and nobody to answer questions or correct budding bad habits or form.
> 
> I don't really see any way around this.


This is why the audio or text is important along with video. All video should include "key point".

For example, if you want to make a "head lock" video, you should state that the elbow joint should point straight down. The reason is simple. If your head lock elbow joint can point straight down (not horizontal), your  opponent's spine will be twisted, and his structure is crashed. If you can't achieve that, you should not use "head lock".


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## vince1 (Apr 8, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> Does your block/punch/kick work in the ring?
> 
> If it
> 
> ...



I have seen many UFC fighters in the ring that are/were in excellent shape that exhibit poor technique and still win. However I have seen other UFC fighters that clearly had martial arts/boxing training from an exceptional teacher/teachers and win easily. A good example would be Kron Gracie and Tony Ferguson who have exceptional BJJ technique and Tony has Wing Chun training as well. The best fighters understand the importance of technique/timing and the advantage it offers and more than likely did not learn from online videos.Both these elite martial artist make it look so easy.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 8, 2019)

@MetalBoar I have been thinking about some of the things you have been saying, and am formulating some thoughts.  I’ll try to relate some here and this may turn into a multi-part response as time permits.

Your foil fencing example is interesting, as I have some experience with it.  In about 1990 or 1991 I had one semester of foil as a college level phys-ed class.  I loved it, had a lot of fun, and some friends and I would check out the equipment over the weekend and fence to our hearts content instead of going to the bars.  We had a teacher who I believe, had legitimate training as a fencing instructor, at least to an appropriate level for our class.  I do not believe he was ever Olympic caliber or anything elite like that.  Still, I believe we received legitimate instruction with at least decent quality.

As I think back on that, I recall some of the corrections that we received from him.  One of the main ones was to turn far enough sideways and not expose the front of the torso to the opponent.  I mention this one in particular because I recall the correct position being somewhat uncomfortable.  After fencing for a while with the correct posture, the side of my neck would often be sore from the need to turn the head all the way to the shoulder, while in that right-side-foreword position.  I am certain that without the instructor detailing that  particular point, I never would have understood the proper position that I needed to strive for.  Without his repeated correction, I would have drifted back into an improper position that was more comfortable.  I needed the repeated correction, not to mention specific instruction to understand the correct posture in the first place.

I could have still fenced with bad positioning.  At that level, in a phys-ed class it would not have mattered.  But my position would have been more vulnerable and the quality of my fencing would remain low.  My own goal was to learn fencing to the highest level that I could.  So I wanted to eliminate bad habits wherever possible.  I needed proper instruction, and the interactive experience with an instructor in order to accomplish that.

Weapons are an interesting thing.  There is often a certain obviousness about their use, inherent in their design.  A sword (in the generic sense of a sword) is kind of simple in that you stab him with the pointy end and cut him with the edges.   Simple concept.  Yes, to a degree, anyone can pick one up and use it effectively, without any training at all. That same person could see some simple examples and put them to use, and become more effective rather quickly.  If that is what someone is happy with, the truth is that it is pretty easy to pick up the weapon, work with it alone,  view some training materials and figure out how to “do” it.  Yes, this can be done.

But this remains on a low level and fails to grasp the real capabilities of the weapon, and the skills that are possible with the proper training.  This is playing with a weapon (to some good effect) but is not really understanding the weapon.

To claim that it is impossible to figure some things out without a teacher, and to figure out some more with reference material, is not true.  You are correct in that assessment.  Intuition and athletic ability can carry one surprisingly far, and that is something I have pointed out numerous times here in the forums.  But in contrast to that I think it is easy to oversell what can be accomplished through those methods.  Genuine understanding of the methods and the capabilities and how best to go about practicing and developing those skills, only comes with a good teacher, with whom you can train interactively.  And a higher level of skill comes with it.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 8, 2019)

Martial D said:


> So now you have two guys with no understanding of what they are doing and nobody to answer questions or correct budding bad habits or form.
> 
> I don't really see any way around this.


Why don't they have anyone to answer questions? I've repeatedly said that to do a good online training program there would need to be some live streaming, exchange of videos, etc. There's no reason what so ever that students couldn't ask questions, either real time during a scheduled live streaming session or through IM, email, etc. Questions could be asked and answered through video clips with commentary. There would be less opportunity to get your questions answered immediately, perhaps, but when I was younger and really serious about martial arts I trained more hours outside of class than I did in class and had to wait for the next lesson to get my questions answered so I don't really see the problem.


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## Martial D (Apr 8, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> I don't really see the problem.



Oh. Well good luck then.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 8, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> @MetalBoar I have been thinking about some of the things you have been saying, and am formulating some thoughts.  I’ll try to relate some here and this may turn into a multi-part response as time permits.
> 
> Your foil fencing example is interesting, as I have some experience with it.  In about 1990 or 1991 I had one semester of foil as a college level phys-ed class.  I loved it, had a lot of fun, and some friends and I would check out the equipment over the weekend and fence to our hearts content instead of going to the bars.  We had a teacher who I believe, had legitimate training as a fencing instructor, at least to an appropriate level for our class.  I do not believe he was ever Olympic caliber or anything elite like that.  Still, I believe we received legitimate instruction with at least decent quality.
> 
> ...



I don't deny that some things would be harder or require more self assessment and self discipline to learn through an online format. I agree that it takes less effort to learn something if someone else is providing you with immediate corrections. That's something that is going to be hard to get from an online class, but if that's the standard then an awful lot of brick and mortar schools fail the grade as well. Occasional corrections? Sure, but any school with more than a small class size and even smaller schools with less skilled instructors aren't going to provide much in the way of immediate, consistent feedback.

I personally don't think a proper fencing stance is the tricky part for an online class. I think that sort of thing can be caught easily in videos of the student performing both drills and sparring. The student would just have to put more effort into self monitoring in between lessons and regularly review their instructor's feedback on that issue to make sure they remained aware of where they were open to attack. As the student progresses they'd need to be taught that the fencing stance is a tool to be used to guide the opponent's attack where they want it, not a rigid, fixed position. That sort of thing seems relatively easy to teach as a part of a larger discussion on theory and tactics once the student had enough foundation in the basic movements.

The part I'd worry about with fencing is the camera's ability to capture a small fast moving blade with enough clarity for the student and the instructor to be able to assess bad habits like excessively wide parries, parries that leave the foil tip pointed off target and that sort of fine detail. I expect that as technology gets better and 4k and better resolutions get cheaper this will become a non-issue. For something like the relatively slower movements of much larger arms and legs in unarmed martial arts I don't think this would be a problem. 

For unarmed martial arts I expect the subtleties of weighting and stance, positioning in tight quarters and grappling work, and subtle elements of angles of attack would be the most difficult part. I think this can be largely overcome with carefully constructed videos and well designed drills, though I admit it would take more work. I also think that level of subtlety is absent, minimally understood, and/or poorly taught in the average brick and mortar school anyway. It's not a fair bar to say that's necessary for online instruction to be valid unless you also agree that it's a requirement for conventional teaching methods as well.

I think a good online program is going to take real thought and work to develop and its going to require different approaches to both teaching and learning. I think that students will have a greater burden for self monitoring, that things will probably need to be taught in a more granular and more detailed fashion than is usually employed in conventional training and that some things will simply be harder and take longer to learn. I also think that if done well there could be advantages to an online format. The most obvious one is that students could train in an art that wasn't locally available and they could continue to study the same art with the same instructor even if they move. They would also have a video record of all of their own personalized feedback and lessons to review whenever and as often as they wanted. I also think that developing a habit of self monitoring and self evaluation leads to better martial arts progress in the long run than if you depend on someone else to assess things for you. As I've said before, I don't think online training is the best possible option but I have the luxury of living in a city with a lot of great martial arts. If I were in Smallville, Middle-America I would probably be thrilled to have access to a quality online training option. Or if there had been a real Internet and I could have gotten remote instruction from a real fencing coach back in 1991.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 8, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> Does your block/punch/kick work in the ring?
> 
> If it
> 
> ...


I agree (mostly) with the first part. The second part assumes that when it fails, the practitioner knows why. That's something many folks don't get to for a long time, and sometimes only if they run into someone (their instructor, a training partner, etc.) who points out the principles.

The one small point I'd make about the first half is that something can work in the ring, but still be problematic. For instance, if it puts a joint at risk of RSI (some blocks can do this at the shoulder). It can work, but still have that kind of problem. But that's a rare combination.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 8, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> I don't believe anybody want to take an online Taiji class to be a fighter.
> 
> If one only trains Taiji for "health",
> 
> ...


Given that limitation, I'd agree. I could certainly practice Tai Chi forms/movement for physical health without needing to learn the Tai Chi MA. This is what I was talking about in my distinction of whether they're learning the MA, or just movements from it.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 8, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> I don't deny that some things would be harder or require more self assessment and self discipline to learn through an online format. I agree that it takes less effort to learn something if someone else is providing you with immediate corrections. That's something that is going to be hard to get from an online class, but if that's the standard then an awful lot of brick and mortar schools fail the grade as well. Occasional corrections? Sure, but any school with more than a small class size and even smaller schools with less skilled instructors aren't going to provide much in the way of immediate, consistent feedback.
> 
> I personally don't think a proper fencing stance is the tricky part for an online class. I think that sort of thing can be caught easily in videos of the student performing both drills and sparring. The student would just have to put more effort into self monitoring in between lessons and regularly review their instructor's feedback on that issue to make sure they remained aware of where they were open to attack. As the student progresses they'd need to be taught that the fencing stance is a tool to be used to guide the opponent's attack where they want it, not a rigid, fixed position. That sort of thing seems relatively easy to teach as a part of a larger discussion on theory and tactics once the student had enough foundation in the basic movements.
> 
> ...


It is interesting that you point out the plethora of poor quality instruction often found in brick-and-mortar schools.  I agree with you.  There are lots and lots of schools that I also would not recommend someone join.

That is not a good reason to embrace a different, equally or more faulty method of instruction, which distance/video instruction is.

I know I will not change your mind on this.  That’s ok, you can certainly make up your own mind on it.  I will give you my thoughts and reasons for my position, for the sake of the discussion.  

As for wanting access to a system for which instructors in your area are absent, I guess I don’t feel that is a reason to pursue them through an inferior and deeply problematic learning method.  Sometimes things are simply unavailable.  Some things are worth doing right, or not at all.  Life isn’t fair. 

I did grow up in a small town with very limited martial arts availability.  After I graduated from college, I moved across the country in order to live in an area where I had access to the training and instruction that was important to me.  I made my life in a new city, found employment, built a family, and did it specifically where I could access the training that I wanted.  That was about 25 years ago.

I realize that not everyone is in a position to make a move like that, for various reasons that are all very legitimate.  Again, life isn’t fair.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 8, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> Sure, but what I've been saying is I don't think the instructor needs to be physically present, merely that a training partner and preferably many training partners _are_ physically present.
> 
> I agree, but we've entered the territory of semantics and philosophy at this point in my opinion. More to the point, I don't think many people would pursue a strictly online course of study if they had good local options available for what they wanted to learn. And to be clear, I have never said that I thought good online training would be superior to good face to face training. I've been saying that good online training has the potential to be an effective means of learning. Going further, I think that it's likely that a really good online course could be  better than the average brick and mortar school and a whole lot better than not training at all.
> 
> ...


I don't disagree with anything you've posted there. I think we're only nuances apart, really.

Your example of NGA gets to the heart of my point. I don't think you'd be learning NGA, really, by doing that. You'd almost certainly be learning a non-aiki derivative of it. To understand how far that is from how I see NGA, that'd be like learning a non-kick version of TKD. You might have all the hand strikes exactly the way they are taught in TKD, but without the kicks, would it really be TKD? That's what it would seem like to me if you didn't learn the aiki aspects of the art, and I don't see how those can be introduced/taught without physical interaction with someone who can already do them (so a mid-range practitioner, at the very least). If you've seen me try to even explain what "aiki" is on MT, you'll have an idea of how hard it is to communicate.

So, if you just liked the techniques and my overall strategic approach, you can probably learn those reasonably. It'd take longer, and you're going to get some of them working through entirely different principles (which I would argue makes it a different technique, but that is probably just semantics), but you could probably figure it out with some partners. I will say, you'd have to skip out on most of the standard NGA approach (the "classical" material), because having any number of partners but no instructor makes all of that probably counter-productive. There are some in NGA who would say that abandons the core of the art (so you wouldn't be learning NGA techniques, even), but I don't think I agree with that view.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 8, 2019)

Martial D said:


> So now you have two guys with no understanding of what they are doing and nobody to answer questions or correct budding bad habits or form.
> 
> I don't really see any way around this.


This is why I said earlier you'd need some access to people who have some knowledge - even if not of that art. And the learning curve would be very long.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 8, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> It is interesting that you point out the plethora of poor quality instruction often found in brick-and-mortar schools.  I agree with you.  There are lots and lots of schools that I also would not recommend someone join.
> 
> That is not a good reason to embrace a different, equally or more faulty method of instruction, which distance/video instruction is.
> 
> ...


I think I'm also struggling with the idea of wanting to train a specific style. The closest I can get to that concept is my personal interest in BJJ. But if BJJ wasn't near me, I'd just find something that fits my need, based on what's available. Especially when I was beginning (now I have enough grappling background to be able to pick up some BJJ from video).


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## Martial D (Apr 8, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> This is why I said earlier you'd need some access to people who have some knowledge - even if not of that art. And the learning curve would be very long.


Not even then. Say the guy with some knowledge is a karate guy, and it's an online boxing course
 Karate guy isn't going to be much help if you are chickenwinging your punches or are standing off Ballance or your timing is bad or (insert any number of bad habits you probably won't catch, even as a professional coach, watching someone on a webcam)


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 9, 2019)

Martial D said:


> Not even then. Say the guy with some knowledge is a karate guy, and it's an online boxing course
> Karate guy isn't going to be much help if you are chickenwinging your punches or are standing off Ballance or your timing is bad or (insert any number of bad habits you probably won't catch, even as a professional coach, watching someone on a webcam)


Good point - I should have said "related knowledge". Someone from Judo could figure out the basic mechanics of most NGA or BJJ techniques (and vice-versa). As for the boxing and Karate thing, I think a Karateka with an open mind and a history of exploration could go a long way to helping spot some of the issues. The power generation isn't so vastly different in my mind, so I can at least tell when what a boxer is doing is working, but just not the way I'm used to doing it. And I can spot openings the pure beginner probably wouldn't. That'd be far better than depending on folks with no knowledge, but maybe isn't going to produce something most boxers would recognize as "boxing", and which might not fare as well against boxers - which goes back to the point I've been making about maybe learning techniques but not the art/discipline in question.


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## Martial D (Apr 9, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> Good point - I should have said "related knowledge". Someone from Judo could figure out the basic mechanics of most NGA or BJJ techniques (and vice-versa). As for the boxing and Karate thing, I think a Karateka with an open mind and a history of exploration could go a long way to helping spot some of the issues. The power generation isn't so vastly different in my mind, so I can at least tell when what a boxer is doing is working, but just not the way I'm used to doing it. And I can spot openings the pure beginner probably wouldn't. That'd be far better than depending on folks with no knowledge, but maybe isn't going to produce something most boxers would recognize as "boxing", and which might not fare as well against boxers - which goes back to the point I've been making about maybe learning techniques but not the art/discipline in question.


Or you could avoid all this nonsense and contortionism and go get actual training from an actual coach.

Nobody that is good, ever, learned to fight on a website. Why are you enabling this kid?


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 9, 2019)

Martial D said:


> Or you could avoid all this nonsense and contortionism and go get actual training from an actual coach.
> 
> Nobody that is good, ever, learned to fight on a website. Why are you enabling this kid?


What makes you think I'm enabling him? Go back and look at my original posts.


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## Tony Dismukes (Apr 9, 2019)

vince1 said:


> I have seen many UFC fighters in the ring that are/were in excellent shape that exhibit poor technique and still win.


I will argue that there is no one currently in the UFC solely on the basis of their physical attributes. All of them are very, very skilled. Even those who aren't world class still have much more overall skill than most hobbyist black belts (and honestly a high percentage of instructors who run their own schools).

If you see a UFC fighter who seems to have bad technique, there are a few possibilities. 
1) He or she is using their technique in a way that you don't recognize because you don't have the right background.
2) The other fighter is making them look bad by virtue of even better technique or ringmanship.
3) They might actually have a bad habit on one area or another, but are compensating for it with superior technique elsewhere.

15-20 years ago you had some fighters who got in the UFC based just on physical attributes. Today the skill range is from very good to absolutely unreal.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 9, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> I think I'm also struggling with the idea of wanting to train a specific style. The closest I can get to that concept is my personal interest in BJJ. But if BJJ wasn't near me, I'd just find something that fits my need, based on what's available. Especially when I was beginning (now I have enough grappling background to be able to pick up some BJJ from video).


For the typical beginner who does not know what he wants to train and so asks, “what is the best style?” Then I feel the answer is, don’t worry about the style, and instead work with the best teacher you can find.

In my case, I had earned my shodan in kenpo while in high school.  That was the only school available to me and it had since closed.  So i wasn’t a beginner.  

While at the University of Wisconsin I stumbled upon the campus capoeira club, which was completely different from anything I had ever trained.  I worked with them during a couple of summers, as I was only on campus for two summer sessions.  It was clear that the instructors were not at a high level, they never pretended otherwise.  So after graduation, I pursued one or two job possibilities that did not work out and realized I needed to make some decisions about my life.  There was nothing keeping me in the Midwest and I knew that at that time (the mid-1990s) capoeira was a rare thing in the US and most of the good capoeira schools were in the San Francisco and New York City areas.  I did not want to go to NYC, and I had an aunt in the SF area so I had some support in that direction.  The UW capoeira club had an affiliation with a teacher in SF, so I decided it was time to strike out in a new direction, move across the country and build my life.

I also had interests in other martial arts and the SF area is a hotbed for lots of things including Chinese methods.  So I wanted to be in SF so I could have these options.

But when you want to learn something, you need access to a good teacher.  If there are none nearby, and it is really important to you, then you move.


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## vince1 (Apr 9, 2019)

Tony Dismukes said:


> I will argue that there is no one currently in the UFC solely on the basis of their physical attributes. All of them are very, very skilled. Even those who aren't world class still have much more overall skill than most hobbyist black belts (and honestly a high percentage of instructors who run their own schools).
> 
> If you see a UFC fighter who seems to have bad technique, there are a few possibilities.
> 1) He or she is using their technique in a way that you don't recognize because you don't have the right background.
> ...



1) Or the technique is being done so poorly it doesn't work based on the viewers lack of knowledge not being well versed on more than one martial art.
2) The other fighter is a better fighter because he/she has been taught the correct technique along with the subtle difference to make it work and seem almost effortless.
3) A bad habit has been created based on being taught incorrect hence sloppy technique.

Many reasons as to why, but I can see sloppy technique based on my own experience as well as  my current teachers 50 plus years of martial arts experience/training.


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## Kung Fu Wang (Apr 9, 2019)

I don't believe this thread is started to suggest an online Taiji class to train Taiji fighters.

If you just want to learn Taiji for health (or self-cultivation, inner peace, performance, ...), do you really need a good Taiji teacher?

If I suggest "Kung Fu walk" that "for every 4 steps that you walk, you throw a hook punch". I don't even need to put up a clip, and people can still do it for "health".

- Whether your punch coordinate with your leg or not is not important.
- When your hook punch use vertical fist or horizontal fist is also not important.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 9, 2019)

Kung Fu Wang said:


> I don't believe this thread is started to suggest an online Taiji class to train Taiji fighters.
> 
> If you just want to learn Taiji for health (or self-cultivation, inner peace, performance, ...), do you really need a good Taiji teacher?
> 
> ...


It has clearly morphed into discussion of the merits of video training in martial arts on a more broad basis, not just taiji for health.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 9, 2019)

@MetalBoar, I’ll offer some more thoughts from my own experiences with the topic.

I have three experiences with learning from video and I will relate them and my thoughts on the experience.  This was all before any kind of interactive experience was possible on the internet.

First, I earned my shodan in Tracy kenpo while in high school, I think it was 1987 or so.  I had two instructors: James was Nidan within the Tracy organization, and his student John was shodan, and later Nidan.  I started under James and continued under John when James moved away.  Anyway, James became interested in exploring the Chinese arts and began acquiring instructional videos from the Green Dragon school in Stowe, Ohio, under John Allen.  They offer a wide range of instructional videos, and are still in operation.  You can find them on the internet.  The idea was that several of us would each take a video, learn the material from it, and later share it with the group.  Some videos were forms from various systems, I think one might have been a collection of application scenarios, but from what system, I do not know.  We never did regroup to share what we had “learned” from the videos.

I was given a video of a beginning level form from a system they called “white crane of Omei”, a system I have never heard of from any other source.  (John Allen likes to claim his school is one of very few sources of “authentic” and “rare” Chinese systems, a claim that I personally have doubts about, but whatever).  Anyway, I followed the video and did learn the form, at least on a level of mimickry.  The video included some breakdown of application of movements found within the form, but it was kind of random and not systematic.  There was no discussion or instruction offered on the fundamentals of the “Omei White Crane” system, no discussion of the principles and mechanisms for developing power and how it relates to stances and movement and positioning, etc.  It was just movement and some interpretation of that movement, without any kind of foundation. 

I practice that form for a couple years or so.  I always felt something was missing from the experience, I did not really understand any of it or how to use it or what lessons it was supposed to teach me.  But there i was, practicing it, and honestly, feeling like a fraud the whole way.  I cringe to recall that in some context that does not merit further description here, I even suggested that I had some background in white crane Kung fu.  I console myself by saying that I was young and naive, but in my heart I knew it was a fraudulent claim.

Some years later I did a similar thing with Sifu Chiu Chi-ling’s Instructional video on the Tiger and Crane form from Hung-Gar method.  I did this because Tracy Kenpo has a version of this form within its curriculum, but it is a poor derivative.  Tracy kenpo likes to do that, adopt material from other sustems but without keeping the foundational methods from those systems that give the form meaning and make it worth while and valuable.  Anyway, my kenpo teachers had rejected the Tracy verson of that form and had attempted to teach Sifu Chiu’s version.  I was reviewing the video and realized they got a bunch of it wrong, so I tried to relearn it directly from the same video they had used.  The results were largely the same as the Omei Crane experience.  I was a fraud.  At that time I began training under my first legitimate Sifu, in Chen Taiji.  He had some experience in Hung-Gar so I offered to show him my form.  His reaction was that yes, the choreography was essentially “correct”, but just about everything about how I was moving was wrong.  Stances, power generation, body engagement, were all incorrect.   I was correct, and yet absolutely wrong at the same time.  While I could learn to mimick, what value I got from it was next to worthless, it had no bearing nor connection to how the Hung-Gar method is meant to work.

I’ll end this here because the system seems to be cutting my post short.  I’ll say that I got no benefit from the video learning.  It was mimickry and it was fraudulent, if I am being honest.


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## Flying Crane (Apr 9, 2019)

@MetalBoar, my third attempt at video learning was after I had been away from kenpo for some years, training capoeira.  I wanted to reconnect with my kenpo but had forgotten things.  I had a set of the Tracy instructional videos from my instructors, and used them to brush up.

For this kind of thing, I think video can be an ok approach.  If it is something you have already learned and need it for reminder on the specifics, I think that can be ok.

However, I had video of the material up through godan, which was well beyond what I had previously learned, so I worked through that material as well.

Again, it was just memorizing movement.  None of it was functional and could not become so from that way of learning.  There was little in the way of detail in the instruction.

Of course I no longer practice any of the stuff that I had attempted to learn through video.  It was junk, plain and simple. There is just no other way to describe the experience.

I did make one attempt at learning from a book.  This was before I had any formal martial arts training, so I must have been around 11-12 years old.

I was fascinated by the sai, was pleased that my parents allowed me to buy a pair from a supplier, and I bought Fumio Demura’s book, “Sai, Karate weapon of Self Defense”. I had a fantasy of studying the book in minute detail and working diligently to master the weapon.  I noted and subsequently ignored the author’s advice that a student below the level of brown belt should not undertake the sai.

Of course it was a failure.  I learned to flip the sai back and forth from a point-forward to an inverted grip.  That is it.  The book contained combinations of defense with sai against bo, and some other stuff, but I realized quickly there was no way I was going to be able to work through all that stuff.  It was really just pointless.

Maybe if I was older and had some legitimate training in martial arts, I might have been more successful.  Maybe, but I doubt it.

In the end, learning in this way makes me feel like a fraud.  For me, that is a problem.  Maybe other people don’t even consider it, maybe it does not matter to them, does not bother them, or they have never even considered it on that level.  I dunno.  But I have a real problem with it.

We live in a society where use of the sai in fighting and defense is extremely unlikely, so there is zero chance that I would ever build experience by using it in the world.  Proper instruction is the only way to understand the weapon, and trying to piece it together from a book is jus pointless.

So that kind of summarizes my experiences with learning from video and books.  In the end, none of it was fruitful.  It is just a bad approach to learning this stuff.  That’s my take on it.

I realize my experience did not include some of the more interactive tools available today, like real-time video connections and such. Yes, that could be an improvemement over the experiences that I had.  But I still feel that being in the presence of a good teacher is critical for this stuff.  The student needs the repeated hands-on correction and discussion of the details in a way that does not translate well over long distance.

On top of context in the instruction, the student cannot reliably self-correct until he has reached some level of skill and understanding.  There is just no good way around it.


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## vince1 (Apr 9, 2019)

Well said Flying Crane and have experienced something very similar while learning Chow Gar.


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## Monkey Turned Wolf (Apr 9, 2019)

MetalBoar said:


> I didn't even have video, it was strictly books. Now to be fair, there was some minimal institutional knowledge in the sense that there were students who had taken the class before, still, they had the same level of non instruction that I got, but I admit I did get the benefits of their having practiced the things they'd figured out essentially on their own. They didn't really teach, but they were more challenging sparring partners from whom you could steal tricks. But if you went back just a few semesters you would have been looking at students with no one with any background at all in sport fencing and they managed to get to a point where they were pretty good. There was a guy who had done kendo in the class and of course people who had done wrestling and TKD and things, but kendo is about as far removed from western foil fencing as TKD is and no one had done foil anywhere else. Regardless, I don't think online training is by it's nature training in a vacuum. If you can find training partners it's likely that some of them may have done something before so I think that this whole idea that training online is always going to be completely different is based on some really weird assumptions and by creating arbitrary rules about what does and doesn't count as online training.
> 
> As to whether what I was doing was fencing or not, well that's a matter of semantics. Since I started out in standard rather than electric foil I'd say my style and background were much closer to "real" sword work than most people who start on electric. My more recent experience with rapier seems to bear this out. Similarly, when I started training with a retired Olympic coach he didn't change anything about the fundamentals of my technique, he just looked at what I did and refined the bits he thought I could do better so from that perspective as well, he seemed to think I was doing  real "fencing" well enough.


I've got no bone in this argument whatsoever, but I'm curious about something (you may have answered, I only skimmed the responses). Before you started training with the retired olympic coach, did you or any of the other people from that class compete with the level of training knowledge you got from it? If so, how well did they do? Any ratings, that you know of? I'm curious how far you could get in the fencing circuit from books and practice.

Also, what type of class was it? I'm imagining a college credit class, or a library class, but find it weird to go through a class like that without some sort of teacher/instructor with experience.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 9, 2019)

kempodisciple said:


> I've got no bone in this argument whatsoever, but I'm curious about something (you may have answered, I only skimmed the responses). Before you started training with the retired olympic coach, did you or any of the other people from that class compete with the level of training knowledge you got from it? If so, how well did they do? Any ratings, that you know of? I'm curious how far you could get in the fencing circuit from books and practice.
> 
> Also, what type of class was it? I'm imagining a college credit class, or a library class, but find it weird to go through a class like that without some sort of teacher/instructor with experience.


This was almost 30 years ago so I may not have all details fully correct, but these are pretty close anyway: It was a for credit college class, it was not intended to prepare students for intermural competition though we did have intramural tournaments. It was a relatively new, or at least relatively newly rebooted, class for the college. The instructor they got to teach the class had whatever qualifications you needed to teach PE classes at a 4 year state college in California but no particular background in fencing besides the prep work he did after being assigned the class from what I recall of what he said when he introduced himself at the beginning of the semester. Even if he did have some background that I'm mis-remembering or was unaware of he certainly didn't put on a mask and fence with us, do anything in the way of physical interaction with the class, offer anything much in the way of feedback or correction nor provide any instruction in greater detail than what was contained in our text book.

I personally only participated in one USFA sanctioned tournament before I began private instruction. I finished 3rd in that tournament which was one place below the level necessary to earn an E rating. A friend of mine from the same school, who either had no other instruction or about a month of private instruction with the same guy I later trained under, took 1st in that tournament and earned a D rating. If it's relevant, he was a tremendously gifted athlete with a strong background in both TKD and boxing with impressive records in both and he was better at fencing than I was before he began private lessons. I don't remember who took 2nd, he was from a different city. I also participated in a number of non-official school and club tournaments before I began private instruction. It was in one of these that I beat my first A rated fencer, so no rating bump for me there. I would say that at that time, before any private lessons, that I was probably consistently fencing at about the bottom of C level. I feel confident that I could have gotten a C rating in a reasonable time period without more advanced instruction if I had lived in an area where I could participate in official USFA tournaments with any regularity.  

I started private lessons with an Olympic level coach after about 16-18 months of fencing. Several of us were training with the same gentleman at that point and of course we were all working together and with our other fencing friends who weren't able to do the private lessons so there was a lot of cross pollination going on. I lived in a city that hosted one and only one USFA tournament before this point so I don't have a lot of data about how any of us would have fared if we'd been able to compete regularly before that. Somewhere in the 12-14 month range I began doing a lot of fencing with people from other clubs and schools and so I had competed with people who had real coaches. Though they never gave me any direct instruction I did learn a lot from fencing with them. People who want to try to paint online training as if it can only happen in a hermetically sealed environment to count will probably want to point to this and say that my example isn't relevant.


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## MetalBoar (Apr 9, 2019)

Flying Crane said:


> @MetalBoar, my third attempt at video learning was after I had been away from kenpo for some years, training capoeira.  I wanted to reconnect with my kenpo but had forgotten things.  I had a set of the Tracy instructional videos from my instructors, and used them to brush up.
> 
> For this kind of thing, I think video can be an ok approach.  If it is something you have already learned and need it for reminder on the specifics, I think that can be ok.
> 
> ...


I hear what you're saying, and I think that's a risk not only with video based instruction but also with clubs that don't spar or at least do really good drills and to a lesser extent with clubs that never spar or train with people from other styles. I don't completely agree with the MMA camp in every respect on this topic but I do feel that if you never pressure test your art in some fashion it's hard to be confident it's going to work for you. Which brings me back to my primary requirement for training; It sounds like you studied the videos and drilled this on your own without working with a partner. If so, I absolutely agree that isn't going to produce useful results and I don't think modern interactive training online would help very much. There are a lot of things you can learn on your own, but I do feel martial arts (at least as I define the term) isn't one of them. Also, it sounds like the videos themselves were of questionable quality. Early on in my martial arts training I studied briefly at some schools that didn't do any sparring and had poor drills that didn't teach me anything of value either, that didn't mean that I didn't later find a lot of good schools. Again, I'm not sure there's any good online training out there right now but that doesn't mean that someone couldn't do an acceptable job of it with the right skills and commitment in my opinion - as long as you have one or preferably more local partners to practice with.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 9, 2019)

Tony Dismukes said:


> I will argue that there is no one currently in the UFC solely on the basis of their physical attributes. All of them are very, very skilled. Even those who aren't world class still have much more overall skill than most hobbyist black belts (and honestly a high percentage of instructors who run their own schools).
> 
> If you see a UFC fighter who seems to have bad technique, there are a few possibilities.
> 1) He or she is using their technique in a way that you don't recognize because you don't have the right background.
> ...


I'll add one other bit to this excellent post: in some ways, good technique gets worse and worse looking as the situation gets more chaotic. To an extent, this is the same as #2, but can apply even when the other fighter isn't making them look bad - it's just the nature of chaotic combat going all-out, as often happens in MMA, especially at upper levels.


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## vince1 (Apr 10, 2019)

gpseymour said:


> I'll add one other bit to this excellent post: in some ways, good technique gets worse and worse looking as the situation gets more chaotic. To an extent, this is the same as #2, but can apply even when the other fighter isn't making them look bad - it's just the nature of chaotic combat going all-out, as often happens in MMA, especially at upper levels.



I encourage you to watch the latest Kron Gracie vs Alex Caceres fight and witness two incredible elite fighters in action. One of the least chaotic fights that I have seen in a long time. Alex Caceres is an incredible fighter standing up mainly and also has a ground game. Kron Gracie quickly dismantles Alex in a calm methodical manner in the first round, just over 2 minutes. Kron didn't even break a sweat . It doesn't have to be chaotic based on correct trainers/mentors,martial art influences, timing, focus etc.


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## Buka (Apr 10, 2019)

Tony Dismukes said:


> I will argue that there is no one currently in the UFC solely on the basis of their physical attributes. All of them are very, very skilled. Even those who aren't world class still have much more overall skill than most hobbyist black belts (and honestly a high percentage of instructors who run their own schools).
> 
> If you see a UFC fighter who seems to have bad technique, there are a few possibilities.
> 1) He or she is using their technique in a way that you don't recognize because you don't have the right background.
> ...



Yes. The UFC of twenty years ago had some fighters any of us could have easily beaten, even guys in heavier divisions. But back then there were a lot of guys who really had no grappling skills per se, and some who couldn't punch worth a damn. Heck, do you remember UFC 1? Art Jimmerson? Kevin Rosier?
But at least they stepped up and fought. The biggest problem UFC 1 had was getting guys to actually compete in it.

Ain't no more of that happening in the UFC, that's for damn sure. They can all fight like the Dickens.


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## Gerry Seymour (Apr 12, 2019)

vince1 said:


> I encourage you to watch the latest Kron Gracie vs Alex Caceres fight and witness two incredible elite fighters in action. One of the least chaotic fights that I have seen in a long time. Alex Caceres is an incredible fighter standing up mainly and also has a ground game. Kron Gracie quickly dismantles Alex in a calm methodical manner in the first round, just over 2 minutes. Kron didn't even break a sweat . It doesn't have to be chaotic based on correct trainers/mentors,martial art influences, timing, focus etc.


It doesn't have to become chaotic, but it can. Even for people of high skill levels. When someone controls the situation, it's not chaotic for them, but can be for the other guy.


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