On Self "Training" In Martial Arts

[Headhunter]

As stated, not always a option for some people. for a variety of reasons. plus there is no gurantee said instruction could be worth the money you are paying for it.

It'll be worth more than watching YouTube videos even if it's the worst instructor on earth at least you'll get to work with a partner. That alone makes it more beneficial than self training

 

[Flying Crane]

This should be fun, prefrace for this: training is in quotations as i dislike calling it such. To "train" in martial arts by its literal definition all you need to do is any activity to aid your fighting skills.

Right, now to start my rambling on the subject.


So to begin with, i dont fully comprehend why it gets so much flak, somone generally does self study either alongside lessons or in lieu of them because they cant find anyone to teach them it. The obvious limitation is what material you are refering to when you self study. And if you can access any sparring partners and equipment.

Pending what is taught, would also matter as some skills are obviously easier to pick up and retain, some others arent.

Tieing back into the first statment, the only issues i see with it is: Quality and quality of material you are using. Both of which can vary in a school.

This is a fairly short rambling as there really isnt much to write on the matter. Self study has its place and isnt a choice for some people. ie, like HEMA, the martial art could only exist in treatises therefor you need to disect the sources to learn it, and have to learn it from a book.


If anyone else has any sort of rambelings on the subject, i forgot to cover diffrent sorts of media, but i dont think that has much of a place. As you should use it alongside doing it if you intend to learn any skills in this regard. That should fill in some blanks, and use (if possible) muiltiple diffrent kinds (of media).

Addendum: I dont really know how to fit this in after writing but: Goals also matter to its usefulness, if your goal is just self defence, you dont have to fight proffesional boxers in a ring or combat athletes, just the average person. (now if the average person where you live is one of them, you probbly could learn from one of them ) In a similar way if you just want to loose weight and stay healthy you dont have to run a marathon, or get into bodybuilding, powerlifting etc.

Jeezuz. Just...Jeezuz...

 

[Buka]

I don’t know, I heard somewhere that if you trained yourself too much you’ld go blind.

 

[Flying Crane]

I don’t know, I heard somewhere that if you trained yourself too much you’ld go blind.

How much is too much??!!!

 

[skribs]

I don’t know, I heard somewhere that if you trained yourself too much you’ld go blind.

I got a similar message when I was younger, but it wasn't martial arts related and I'll try not to go too far off-topic.

 

[dvcochran]

It'll be worth more than watching YouTube videos even if it's the worst instructor on earth at least you'll get to work with a partner. That alone makes it more beneficial than self training

I can't go that far. I have seen more than a few people who learned/were taught something wrong. Once something engrained it is hard wo unlearn.

 

[skribs]

I can't go that far. I have seen more than a few people who learned/were taught something wrong. Once something engrained it is hard wo unlearn.

Yeah, but how many instructors teach it so wrong it's worse than self training?

 

[Buka]

How much is too much??!!!

I’m not sure, not having reached that point yet. Lord knows I’m trying.

 

[dvcochran]

Yeah, but how many instructors teach it so wrong it's worse than self training?

More than you think I suspect. I have seen it more often in larger schools/classes where groups are delegated out to adult BB's. Some people don't have much of a bone for teaching.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

Look. You could test it. Do jujitsu for 6 months via you tube. Train with whoever, compete and see how you go.

I mean a jujitsu competition isn't life or death.

You could very well do that, you cant exactly argue with results in that regard. In a similar way you could come up with your own exercise routine and enter a endurance comptetion to see how well you go.

People have been studying HEMA long enough that there are study groups and schools in many location, just like most martial arts. I have a HEMA school in walking distance of my house, that also teaches Irish Stickfighting under a recognized master of the Antrim style.

HEMA is pretty much the perfect example as people have had to learn it from a book to reconstruct it. As what ever style it is, next to no lingeges (if any) exist for that before people started resurecting it. and other systems etc would translate from not at all to so-so if you did it that way. And we could get a lot of detaisl for how people went about resurecting it. Unlike at the dawn of martial arts as below.


Plus, just a underlying thing here, someone had to make up the first actual proper fighting system and they would have started with nothing but the insticts they were born with. So its kind of clear you can, come up with a system from nothing but your insticnts and experience. The length and quality will vary and can be disputed from starting with nothiness. But now days you wont likely start with nothing as you have wealth of information in the subject to access at your finger tips if you have access to the internet.

 

[Tez3]

You could very well do that, you cant exactly argue with results in that regard. In a similar way you could come up with your own exercise routine and enter a endurance comptetion to see how well you go.

You missed the point in the comment there..

 

[skribs]

HEMA is pretty much the perfect example as people have had to learn it from a book to reconstruct it. As what ever style it is, next to no lingeges (if any) exist for that before people started resurecting it. and other systems etc would translate from not at all to so-so if you did it that way. And we could get a lot of detaisl for how people went about resurecting it. Unlike at the dawn of martial arts as below.


Plus, just a underlying thing here, someone had to make up the first actual proper fighting system and they would have started with nothing but the insticts they were born with. So its kind of clear you can, come up with a system from nothing but your insticnts and experience. The length and quality will vary and can be disputed from starting with nothiness. But now days you wont likely start with nothing as you have wealth of information in the subject to access at your finger tips if you have access to the internet.

You are correct about what had to happen for HEMA. However, there are a few key details that you're missing.

1. Most of the people who started HEMA had a solid martial arts foundation to build on. There are a lot of martial arts that continue to this day which feature weapons, including kendo, fencing, kobuto (apologize for my spelling, Japanese weapon forms, such as bo staff), kali, and escrima. There is a lot of research that has been done on various weapons, how they would be used, and what their pros and cons are.
2. HEMA was not studied individually or in small groups. Many different people pitched in, from martial artists to historians.
3. HEMA is pressure-tested by having competitions in which students from many schools get together and compete, and has had 30ish years to blossom into what it is today.
4. HEMA is like any other martial art. Now that the groundwork has been laid, you can try and recreate it yourself (which is like trying to reinvent the wheel), or you can go to class and learn much more efficiently how everything is done.

If you want to create your own art from the ground up, you'll have a much better art if you spend 30 years training at various gyms. Let's say you spend 6 years at each school. You get a 2nd degree black belt in Taekwondo, a brown belt in BJJ, a good amount of experience in boxing, Kali, and Krav Maga. Now you can say "I like the boxing training, but I don't like the Taekwondo forms. But I do like the Taekwondo kicks. I think I prefer the BJJ version of fighting against a knife to Kali, but I like that Kali made me a good stick and knife fighter. I like the mentality of krav, but not the way I learned techniques. I think my style is going to use the boxing style to teach punches and the TKD kicks, and use the Krav Maga mentality with the grappling skills I learned from BJJ."

Or you can just spend 30 years reading books and theorizing about what works and what doesn't. Let me tell you why that's a bad idea.

One of my favorite games as a kid was Diablo 2. I bought the game, but before I could play it my family went on vacation. Instead of playing the game, I read the Prima Strategy Guide (basically a beefed up instruction manual) and learned everything I could about the game. I learned that for a Barbarian, the Leap Attack ability could cap out at around +120% weapon damage, where the Whirlwind ability that everyone loved only capped out at only +20%. (I may be fudging some of the numbers, but that was the gist of it). I thought I outsmarted everyone when I came up with a Leap Attack build instead of a Whirlwind build. I'd be doing twice as much damage!

Except, Leap Attack only hit one enemy. Whirlwind hit a whole bunch. Whirlwind also hit 3 times as fast. I also think Leap Attack didn't actually work on enemies that were too close and I'd use a basic attack instead. My build sucked. I did all the theorycrafting I could, and I came up with crap. It took a couple times using leap attack, and then watching my friend use Whirlwind for me to realize how bad I messed up. So I deleted the character and started over. My Whirlwind Barbarian was a lot of fun to play. It chewed through monsters like they were butter.

The point is, had I never actually played the game, and only ever sat there with my book, I'd have thought I had the right idea. I was only looking at the number, and not how the ability actually worked. There was a lot that I didn't know about the game, and that which I didn't know held me back. This is the idea behind training on your own from a book. If you don't have actual experience, you're not going to learn what you don't know.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

You missed the point in the comment there..

I will wait for drop bear, (the poster) to reply to see if that is indeed accurate.

 

[drop bear]

I will wait for drop bear, (the poster) to reply to see if that is indeed accurate.

There was no secret point. Rather than working with conjecture it will be more effective to work with facts.

So can this be done?

Do it and find out.

 

[Tez3]

There was no secret point. Rather than working with conjecture it will be more effective to work with facts.

So can this be done?

Do it and find out.

Who said anything about secret?
Rat was assuming you were telling him he was correct and he'd prove it in a competition

 

[frank raud]

HEMA is pretty much the perfect example as people have had to learn it from a book to reconstruct it. As what ever style it is, next to no lingeges (if any) exist for that before people started resurecting it. and other systems etc would translate from not at all to so-so if you did it that way. And we could get a lot of detaisl for how people went about resurecting it. Unlike at the dawn of martial arts as below.

Look art this this way, let's take a "simple" art, Western boxing. No kicks, no grappling. Essentially 4 major punches(jab, cross, hook and uppercut) and some footwork. You can train by yourself, shadow box, skip rope, hit the heavy bag, etc. by yourself. You can convince yourself you are a boxer. But the minute you step into a ring with a TRAINED boxer, all the faults in your training will be exposed. Now, let's add more techniques(kicks, sweeps, throws, chokes) that you have only learned from a book, not having someone knowledgeable to correct your errors. That awesome rear naked choke you do? Your elbow is off to the side, not below his chin, so you cant apply even pressure to both sides of his neck. Did your book correct you when you drilled it wrong a 100 times? Those subtle techniques or throws that seem effortless? Suddenly a very different thing when you have an un cooperative person to work with.

 

[skribs]

Look art this this way, let's take a "simple" art, Western boxing. No kicks, no grappling. Essentially 4 major punches(jab, cross, hook and uppercut) and some footwork. You can train by yourself, shadow box, skip rope, hit the heavy bag, etc. by yourself. You can convince yourself you are a boxer. But the minute you step into a ring with a TRAINED boxer, all the faults in your training will be exposed. Now, let's add more techniques(kicks, sweeps, throws, chokes) that you have only learned from a book, not having someone knowledgeable to correct your errors. That awesome rear naked choke you do? Your elbow is off to the side, not below his chin, so you cant apply even pressure to both sides of his neck. Did your book correct you when you drilled it wrong a 100 times? Those subtle techniques or throws that seem effortless? Suddenly a very different thing when you have an un cooperative person to work with.

Or you work with another untrained person, but he taps when your arm is around the neck, because he doesn't understand how chokes work either. So you think you have feedback on what works, but you can't actually choke someone out.

 

[dvcochran]

But the minute you step into a ring with a TRAINED boxer, all the faults in your training will be exposed.

But he clearly says a trained boxer. I would think that factors out the untrained person(s).

 

[Bruce7]

This should be fun, prefrace for this: training is in quotations as i dislike calling it such. To "train" in martial arts by its literal definition all you need to do is any activity to aid your fighting skills.

Right, now to start my rambling on the subject.


So to begin with, i dont fully comprehend why it gets so much flak, somone generally does self study either alongside lessons or in lieu of them because they cant find anyone to teach them it. The obvious limitation is what material you are refering to when you self study. And if you can access any sparring partners and equipment.

Pending what is taught, would also matter as some skills are obviously easier to pick up and retain, some others arent.

Tieing back into the first statment, the only issues i see with it is: Quality and quality of material you are using. Both of which can vary in a school.

This is a fairly short rambling as there really isnt much to write on the matter. Self study has its place and isnt a choice for some people. ie, like HEMA, the martial art could only exist in treatises therefor you need to disect the sources to learn it, and have to learn it from a book.




If anyone else has any sort of rambelings on the subject, i forgot to cover diffrent sorts of media, but i dont think that has much of a place. As you should use it alongside doing it if you intend to learn any skills in this regard. That should fill in some blanks, and use (if possible) muiltiple diffrent kinds (of media).

Addendum: I dont really know how to fit this in after writing but: Goals also matter to its usefulness, if your goal is just self defence, you dont have to fight proffesional boxers in a ring or combat athletes, just the average person. (now if the average person where you live is one of them, you probbly could learn from one of them ) In a similar way if you just want to loose weight and stay healthy you dont have to run a marathon, or get into bodybuilding, powerlifting etc.

I like your post.
Years ago I train with excellent teachers for a number of years.
I have alot of old books and the superfoot video were help, but I still really was not making near the progress I wanted until I found a good teacher.

There is an old saying " It is better to look for a good teacher for ten years than train for ten years with a bad teacher.

I truly believe that old saying.











i

 

[drop bear]

Who said anything about secret?
Rat was assuming you were telling him he was correct and he'd prove it in a competition

He might. I don't know. That I skins of my whole thing. What work is what works. Not what we think works.